By Jim Welfley
July 4, 2011

After celebrating its 100 year anniversary, IBM sponsored Building a Smarter City Through Leadership and Information, a forum at the 79th Annual Conference of Mayors that brought mayors together to discuss how they can lead “Smarter Cities” through the strategic use of technology.

“Being smarter about how we provide services to our citizens and how we spend their taxpayer dollars is no longer a lofty objective,” said Baltimore Mayor Stephanie-Rawlings Blake, moderator for the forum. “It’s an absolute necessity for all of us as mayors.”

Washington (DC) Mayor Vincent C. Gray, St. Louis Mayor Francis G. Slay and Dubuque Mayor Roy D. Buol joined IBM Industry Solutions Software Vice President Chris O’Connor as panelists for the forum. The mayors each described what they believe a “Smarter City” is, what they are doing in their city to help make it work smarter, and some of the challenges they face when implementing new technology-based initiatives.

Gray believes a “Smarter City” is a city where “…we capture more information than we otherwise would, connect it to what citizens want and measure and show the results in an efficient way.”

Gray then illustrated how technology is making an impact on his city and helping DC become smarter. By streamlining small business processes, closing the digital divide and working with IBM to track and preclude water infrastructure issues, the city is harnessing technology to save resources and provide services under challenging conditions. The mayor explained that the city faced a $322 million budget deficit yet is unable to tax 50-60 percent of its property, runs its own $2 billion Medicaid program and its budget must be approved by Congress.

“I say all this because working harder is probably not the answer in our situation,” he said. “Working smarter is.”

In Dubuque, Buol detailed how a partnership with IBM has allowed the city to maintain its focus on sustainability by creating a system that allows citizens to monitor their water usage using real time data. Since implementing the system, there has been an eight-fold increase in water leaks found while the citizens have cut water use by 6.6 percent, all equating to a savings of 65 million gallons of water per year. Buol credits the data for changing citizen behavior.

“The value [of the data] to citizens is obvious,” said Buol. “It changed how they used energy and resources. Further, this is generational planning, as their children will learn to conserve the same way. We are now focusing on electricity and are looking for big ways to save.”

Slay reports that, in St. Louis, a small number of people are committing a disproportionate number of crimes. To help track these individuals, the mayor partnered with IBM to create a system that is coordinating the appropriate jurisdictions, law enforcement organizations and personnel to create a collective plan and catch repeat offenders.

“Many people work in silos, so it is difficult getting everyone at the table to tackle an overall objective,” said Slay. “But, generally, more and more technology is a tool to finding solutions to very challenging issues we have in our cities, particularly with tighter budgets.”

 O’Connor believes overcoming these obstacles begins with the leadership of our nation’s mayors. “Most successful harmonization of technology and constituent value is the result of passion of leadership,” said O’Connor. “It translates through to wanting change and taking advantage of technology.”

The forum also touched on social media, with the panelists agreeing that it is an essential component of future policy making.

“We are more accessible to people than we’ve ever been before,” said Slay. “We mayors today communicate with more people in a given day than all our predecessors put together.”

Added Gray, social media will play “a vital, inherent role” in the future of governance, with the evolution of the workforce helping to ensure it will happen.

“Some nod in room [when discussing technology] then go back and do what they were doing before,” he said. “But evolution will change this. Young people use technology like a pencil or pen.”