Montgomery Leaders Host “Smart City Readiness” Workshop
A “smart city” uses technology to improve services like energy, transportation, utilities or to reduce waste and overall costs. Montgomery earned that title earlier this year, from the Smart Cities Council thanks to some recent projects that do just that.
The city’s recycling plant officially re-opened in January. There’s now a new app that makes downtown parking less of a headache, showing you available parking spaces before you arrive. City garbage trucks now act as “eyes and ears” of the city and can help detect potholes and other road hazards as drivers travel their normal routes.
But rather than focus on finding on new tech initiatives, city, county, military and even industry leaders were focusing on how to fine tune the ones already in place at a workshop Tuesday. Montgomery was chosen out of 100 other major cities to host the workshop because of its Smart Cities Readiness Challenge Grant competition win.
Take the city’s open data portal for example. It’s supposed to create transparency when it comes to city records, crime stats and budget information.
The information is there but the focus has now shifted to its ease of use. “We don’t want you to have to be a computer programmer to make use of it” as Chris Conway explained. “We want it to be very intuitive, both to be able to get information and to be able to share everything back”, Conway is Montgomery’s city services director.
Conway says a major ingredient to making continuous strides to a smarter city, is constant input from Montgomery residents. “we can’t solve a problem that we don’t know about” he said.
Here’s how you can give your input:
-Contacting City Hall,
103 N Perry St, Montgomery, AL 36104
-Reaching out to your elected City Council representatives or
-email public relation’s specialist Griffith Waller, at gwaller@montgomeryal.gov.
