Digital Cities 2023: Up to 75,000 Population Category

The 56 winning cities in this year’s awards from the Center for Digital Government focused their efforts on technology projects that impacts residents communitywide.

Innovation, accessibility and ease of use have been top of mind for Tamarac, earning the city first place within its population category. One of the city’s top priorities in achieving this has been its smart city initiative, which focuses on embracing Internet of Things concepts and developing a smart city and technology strategic plan to streamline operations. So far, changes such as connecting devices in the city’s fire stations like alert systems, HVAC systems, exhaust control systems, generators and fuel tanks to a centralized network for remote control and monitoring have taken place, along with connecting the city’s parks to high-speed fiber connections to ensure reliable Wi-Fi coverage. Other efforts, like upgrading the city’s enterprise resource planning software and merging enterprise and web-based systems, are also underway to make doing business with the city easier. For context, the city started using CentralSquare Technologies’ NaviLine government enterprise software suite in 1998 for its enterprise resource planning needs. However, the system has slowly become obsolete, resulting in the decision to migrate to the company’s newer Finance Enterprise, Community Development and Enterprise Asset Management software. The migration process is expected to take three to five years. Once complete it will provide staff and residents with rich web applications and improved access to online services.

Lastly, the city has also made great strides in increasing its cybersecurity. In the past year alone, three significant initiatives were implemented, including launching a multi-OS vulnerability management and compliance solution that helps the city identify, assess and address vulnerabilities in its IT infrastructure; plus a continuous autonomous penetration testing solution that emulates the behavior of real-world attackers; and Microsoft 365 Defender, which provides comprehensive email protection from attacks such as credential phishing, business email compromise and ransomware. These new solutions join the city’s multilayered approach to security.

 

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