The Obama administration, in conjunction with the Smart Cities Council Annual Meeting, on Sept. 14, announced $160mm in federal research, grants and collaborations to help local communities manage major challenges using 21st century tools. As part of the initiative, the Administration is announcing: More than $35 million in new grants and over $10 million in proposed… Read More
Open Data Standards Affect City Spending Decisions
City decision makers should consider the new federal “open data” standards before building their own digital infrastructure. The DATA Act 2014  requires the Department of the Treasury and the White House Office of Management and Budget to transform U.S.federal spending from disconnected, hard to find documents into open, standardized data, and to publish that data online.… Read More
Fate of Boston’s Failed 2024 Olympics Bid – Determined in 1822
Boston is no longer in the running for the 2024 Summer Olympics. While the City convulses in streams of joy and sorry, the question “what went wrong†emerges. The answer to that question may go back to 1822 when the city was incorporated, over 200 years before the Olympics would have happened. Or maybe the… Read More
Infrastructure Problem: One of Many Assets Needing Attention
In 2011 the USA rated a grade of D+ on Infrastructure from the American Society of Civil Engineers, citing a need for a $3.6 TRILLION investment by 2020. Despite one of America’s favorite comedians, John Oliver, using comedy to call attention to this infrastructure problem on national television, not much is changing.  Nor is the… Read More
Olympics 2024 – Proxy for a Real Boston Master Plan Process
Don’t pick the fruit until it’s ripe. That was one of the more profound lessons learned from my favorite Capital Finance professor. The people of Boston, contemplating a decision about whether or not the city should host the Olympics in 2024 would be wise to take this lesson to heart. The City of Boston, with… Read More
Boston Trains Face Infrastructure Finance Challenge
John D. Macomber, Harvard Business School lecturer and construction finance expert addresses the long term challenge of infrastructure finance in the context of the short term public transit crisis facing the city of Boston  and the MBTA in the city’s snowiest Boston winter on record… so far. The MBTA faces the same problems that confront every… Read More
Improve City Services with Innovation, Technology
(excerpt from:  Using Innovation and Technology to Improve City Services) Cities are increasingly becoming the public sector service delivery engines in the United States. They have heard a call to action: residents expect cities to find ways to improve services. And cities are gearing up to do so. City governments, residents, and interest groups are… Read More
Five Elements of City Performance Improvement
The City of Carlton, Oregon engaged a team to establish a performance management approach that improves Carlton City government results. Under the new approach, the City would continually focus on its mission and goals and use performance information in management and policy decision-making. A results-oriented focus would permeate the City government’s strategic planning, budgeting, measuring,… Read More
The Future of Digital Services: Five Trends Transforming Government
Government is often perceived as being behind the digital innovation curve, taking significantly longer to adopt web-based solutions than the private sector, with less enthusiasm and less skill. But in recent years, federal, state, and local agencies are challenging that perception. Creating and optimizing digital services has become a top priority for government.The pressures forcing… Read More
New Evidence Shows Citizen Engagement Increases Tax Revenues
Evidence continues to show that citizen engagement, citizens participating in public policy issues, leads to increased tax compliance and higher tax revenues.  Quite a while ago, drawing mainly from the literature on tax morale, Tiago Peixoto at DemocracySpot posted about the evidence on the relationship between citizen engagement and tax revenues. As a side note, he is still… Read More
Boston Olympics Needs Infrastructure, How About the HYPERLOOP
Boston is divided about the possibility of hosting the Summer Olympics in 2024. Public concerns fall into three categories : How much will it cost? Will it distract from other priorities? What do we get out of this deal? The cost estimates range from $5 b with no cost from the citizenry to $20 b. … Read More
Gas Leaks Threaten Public Health, Time to Fix Pipes
(Could this be a job for Big Data, Citizen Journalists and Hackers?) Not only is the greater Boston region losing about $90 million a year from its old cast iron pipeline system, but these leaks, comprised primarily of methane which has 72 times the potent heat trapping effect on atmospheric warming as carbon dioxide, contribute… Read More
Software for Cities: Know your Problems Before Purchasing
Cities buy software but are cities really getting the problem solving value from that software? Understanding the value of the huge amounts of data now available and designing the software and databases to yield solutions to difficult problems through predictive analysis of the data leads into the next generation in city software. For hundreds of… Read More
Public Buildings & Services: How Much Does Municipality Need?
Article 8 in a series on the Arlington, MA Master Planning process. Prepared by Barbara Thornton Town buildings, both school and municipal, comprise 1.3 million square feet of building space. That is a lot of property to maintain. And it doesn’t include the Town’s open space, parks and fields.  Some properties key to the town’s… Read More
Arlington Master Plan Considers Economic Development
Article 4 in a series on the Arlington, MA Master Planning process.  Prepared by Barbara Thornton Most of Arlington’s budget depends on the Town’s tax base. As the cost of services increases, the Town budget must increase. Massachusetts communities are limited in their ability to increase taxes on existing property. Many municipalities have developable land… Read More
Traffic and Transportation Issues Shape Arlington Future
Article 3 in a series on the Arlington, MA Master Planning process. Â Prepared by Barbara Thornton A conversation about transportation issues extends well beyond rush hour car traffic congestion. As the Town contemplates its future 20 years from now, should it build wider streets, wider bike paths, wider sidewalks or none of the above? If… Read More
Build A City IT Master Plan
Cities started  master planning in response to the evolution of zoning law which initially gave municipalities the power to determine land use patterns for commercial, residential, industrial and open space uses. The practice of land use planning through zoning has evolved and resulted in many new tools for shaping the City’s growth, economic health, housing,… Read More
City Software: From Silos to Platform
By Barbara Thornton. Originally published 9-27-14 as a guest post  in  Sangeet Paul Choudary‘s blog Platform Thinking, The New Rules of Business in a Networked World.  This post leverages the Magnet – Tools & Rules – Data framework that Choudary first alluded to in a Harvard Business Review article here.  In this post, Barbara uses this Platform Thinking… Read More
Feds Offer Bigger Playbook for Guiding Government Managers into Digital Era
On August 3, 2014 AssetStewardship.com posted Top 10 Tasks Required For Cities Acquiring Digital Software to help remedy the dearth of guidelines for municipalities investing in IT.  Not to be outdone, the federal government, on August 12, 2014, launched the U.S. Digital Service and presented a Digital Services Playbook.  We like this a lot.  There is a… Read More
Top 10 Tasks for Cities Acquiring Software
Cities face new and unanticipated challenges as they consider adding software. For city, town, county and regional governments around the world, this is the dawn of a new era, digital cities. Over 557,000 municipalities in the world and most of them still rely primarily on paper processing for their workflow. The 2013 attempt by the… Read More