CITY OF TUCSON
QUICK FIRE QUESTIONS
In the hot seat with Collin Boyce , Chief Information Officer at City of Tucson .
How does the digital approach at the City of Tucson differ from other US cities ? We take a very private-sector approach to how we use data at the City of Tucson . What makes us different is we try to be faster and more agile , and we ' re willing to push the boundaries a little bit more than our government contemporaries .
But as we are funded by sales tax , we have to be careful how we deploy services . We are using some AI , but we are not doing cloud yet . We tend to favour old licence models as it helps to keep the lights on when the economy isn ’ t great .
How do you ensure that you continue to be agile to the needs of the citizens who are more environmentally aware today ? By keeping our finger on the pulse on what our citizens want . The City of Tucson has a unique approach as we have an employee
whose full-time job is to connect with citizens . We are just about to release an app where we ' re going to crowdsource information . We also look at data in a meaningful way , and by doing this can start to find common problems and solutions . When you look at cities that are agile , it is always down to their hybrid approach , combining what the citizens want , the leadership vision and what the local government department needs . If you take those three things and put them together , you get the whole pie .
How do you see Tucson evolving as a smart city in the next two years ? We ’ re using data in more meaningful ways to create an amazing footprint . We are using some AI with Google to do some natural language processing in routing citizens to the correct government department . Lots of little things are happening , but when they all come together , we ' ll be better able to serve the citizens .
130 January 2022