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Last updated on Friday, November 9, 2018
(BLOOMINGTON) - The City of Bloomington has been recognized as one of the nation’s leaders in using technology to improve city services and tackle challenges.
In its 2018 Digital Cities Survey, the Center for Digital Government (CDG) named Bloomington one of the nation's top ten cities of its size. Now in its 18th year, the annual survey recognizes cities using technology to tackle social challenges, enhance cybersecurity, improve transparency, and facilitate access to public data and interaction with municipal services.
"This award reminds us that Bloomington is one of the cities leading the nation in its effort to harness technology to serve our residents," said Mayor John Hamilton. "Thanks to the efforts of our IT team, City operations are now more transparent and our services easier to use."
The City's online offerings ranked ninth among cities across the nation with populations of 75,000 to 124,999. Bloomington was lauded for its open data portal and open source performance dashboard. The City's B-Clear open data portal, available at data.bloomington.in.gov, currently houses 149 data sets. B-Clear is one source of data for the City's performance dashboard. Other sources of data include uReport, Bloomington's Open311 issue reporting system, and the City's Google Forms data. Furthermore, since it is open source, all of the source code for the dashboard application is available on GitHub.
CDG cited the launch of the citywide data visualization effort BloomingtonRevealed.com as contributing to the City's ranking in the 2018 survey. The web portal uses visualization tools and citywide data to give residents insight into homelessness and addiction issues facing the city, as well as its responses.
Other developments cited in the award as contributing to the City's technology portfolio include the development of the Certified Technology Park/Trades District/The Mill, the establishment of the BMGHack civic coding brigade, City Innovation Office projects, and efforts to improve broadband access in the community.
"We are a small but mighty player in the civic and government technology sphere," said ITS Director Rick Dietz. "Our team is dedicated to innovation and quality service delivery to give our residents ready access to public data and to provide essential digital services. However, this award recognizes IT efforts spanning all City departments and is really a credit to all City staff. Congratulations!"
The survey honors cities in five population classifications: 500,000 or more; 250,000 to 499,999; 125,000 to 249,999; 75,000 to 124,999; and fewer than 75,000. Bloomington joins Boulder, Colo., Lynchburg, Va., and Columbia Mo. among the ten Digital Cities Survey winners of its size. A full list is available at the following site: http://www.govtech.com/dc/articles/Digital-Cities-2018.html?page=3
The award is the second state and national distinction for the City's IT services this year. At the Indiana Digital Government Summit in late September, the City won 2018 Best of Indiana Award for Best Application Serving the Public (Local Government) for its 2017 website redesign.
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