DLBEP2015

ER13-765x415-10The Digital Cities Survey has ranked the City of Long Beach as ninth of the the Top 10 Digital Cities in the country using technology to improve services and boost efficiencies, the city announced today. It’s the fifth consecutive year the city has ranked in the top 10.

Long Beach moved down two spots in the rankings for cities with populations of 250,000 or more, from sixth last year to ninth this year.

“Being a Top-10 Digital City for five consecutive years demonstrates that we are continuing to use technology to deliver better and more efficient services for residents and businesses,” said Mayor Robert Garcia in a statement.

The 15th annual survey, part of the Center for Digital Government’s Digital Communities program, evaluated 10 major initiatives across various categories, including citizen engagement, policy, operations and technology and data.

The first place winners in the top 10 include Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Alexandria, Virginia, Avondale, Arizona and Shawnee, Kansas. Other cities in the top 10 included Los Angeles, Seattle, Las Vegas, Riverside and Sacramento.

“The top-ranked digital city governments in this year’s survey are using cloud services, data analytics and mobile apps—among other technologies—to help citizens interact with government more easily than ever before,” said Todd Sander, executive director of the Center for Digital Government in a statement. “These cities are true innovators and we applaud their efforts to increase transparency and open government, encourage citizen participation, and enhance cybersecurity.

According to the city, the following initiatives contributed to Long Beach’s ranking:

  • Focusing on innovation and technology through the implementation of new applications and tools to meet modern challenges. One aspect of this is working with the local startup community through city and community events such as Hackathons, Innovation Week events and Open Data Forums.
  • Engaging with national innovators such as CityMart, Code for America and Bloomberg Philanthropies to focus on business incubation and facilitating economic growth for all areas of the community.
  • Launching a new responsive website as part of the Citizen Engagement Initiative—www.longbeach.gov—built on a new powerful, efficient, and user-friendly content management system that helps users surf Long Beach with greater ease; and also consolidated 4,000 pages of information down to 2,500.
  • Enhancing the City’s open data site—a one-stop shop for data and information about Long Beach, including health statistics, demographic information, interactive maps, city records and more, in addition to working on finalizing an open data policy.

Above, left: photo courtesy of the Digital Communities for City and County Leaders website. 

Thumbnail image: Photo by Brian Addison, courtesy of the Downtown Long Beach Associates (DLBA).