Long Beach is one of 12 U.S. cities approved to participate in the $45M expansion of the prestigious Bloomberg Philanthropies Innovation Teams program, Mayor Robert Garcia announced today.

The program aims to improve the capacity of City Halls to assist residents, through data, open innovation and “strong project and performance management to help cities address pressing urban challenges,” Garcia said in a statement.

Through the program, the City of Long Beach will receive up to $3M over three years to create an innovation team, which will initially focus on economic development, advise the city on how to stimulate growth, create jobs, leverage city resources through the internet, implement solutions for improving services, enhance civic engagement and improve neighborhoods and business districts. The team, also called the “i-team,” will be selected by Spring 2015, Mayor Garcia said, and will be comprised of a new Chief Innovation Officer, a social sciences researcher, a data programmer, a designer and technology innovation fellows.

“We’ll have a process of casting a wide net, so we can bring the best and the brightest we can get,” said Mayor Garcia in an interview. “We’ll have access to some really great people that the Bloomberg Philanthropies Organization has access to. There will be a lot of people that will be interested to be a part of this team, and we’ll look for the best people we can get.”

Garcia announced that the city had applied to the program during his 100 Days speech. More than 90 cities were invited to apply for the grant in August.

Innovation teams work in-house as innovation consultants, moving from one city priority to the next.

Mayor Garcia and City Manager Pat West will lead Long Beach’s innovations team. Garcia considers this project to be among the most important things he has done for the city during his time as mayor.

“I think that it’s something that I’m most excited about since I’ve been mayor because I think it gives us the opportunity to really reinvent some of our government services and the way we look at economic development,” he said. “I’m really big on innovation and really creating a government of the future, and I think this gives us the resources, team and place to do that.”

Assistant City Manager Tom Modica said the next steps for the city are to formalize the grant award, finish paperwork and bring the project to the city council for approval.

Innovation team grants were also awarded to Albuquerque, N.M.; Boston, Mass.; Centennial, Colo.; Jersey City, N.J.; Los Angeles, Calif.; Mobile, Ala.; Minneapolis, Minn.; Peoria, Ill.; Rochester, N.Y.; Seattle, Wash.; and Syracuse, N.Y. Bloomberg Philanthropies also announced that two non-U.S. cities, Jerusalem and Tel Aviv-Yafo, Israel, will receive innovation team grants.