Montgomery City Leaders Educate Dozens of Other U.S Cities on Becoming a Smart City
Earlier this month, the capital city was recognized as a smart city. Now, city leaders are educating dozens of other cities on what it takes to use technology for citizen engagement.
In a webinar for those other cities, Mayor Todd Strange along with representatives from Seamless Gov shared Montgomery’s path and techniques to becoming a smart city.
People living in Montgomery can find out everything they need to know and submit forms related to their needs through Montgomery’s smart city open data portal.
“Open data for us was a huge step forward in being transparent everything that we do. whether it be employee compensation, to checks we right, to overtime in the various departments, to streets that we have paved or are going to pave,” says Mayor Todd Strange.
After ranking number eight on the list of smart cities in the U.S Montgomery Mayor Todd Strange is hoping to educate other cities on how to embrace technology for citizen engagement.
“Technology is only going to get better and make your investment wisely,” says says Strange.
hundreds of people from 50 cities listened in on the live webinar.
“What they were really interested in is how can they engage with their citizens, how can they learn from the city of Montgomery to be able to drive programs – strategic initiatives to really start providing online forms and engaging with their citizens,” says Angela Langston Chief Success Officer of Seamless Gov.
Mayor Strange says, it’s all starts with finding solutions.
‘Finding some needs that citizens have, identify that and go find some people that are millennials or know a little bit about technology and just task them-give them a few resources, let them develop the initiatives and try to solve those problems,” says Strange.
City leaders say those solutions could drive economic development and growth.
“Every city is doing something in the technology area go find what that is, celebrate it and then publicize it because at the end of the day this whole mantra of gig city, or cyber city, or smart city, is really about having something and promoting it, says Strange.
To learn more about Montgomery’s Smart City Open Data Portal click here.
