IBM makes Newark a Smarter City

IBM started a Smarter Cities Initiative, which is a $50million, 3yr initiative in 100 cities across the world. The grants provided with IBM is in the form of talent and technology. A team of six IBM executives lived and worked locally in Newark in May (2011) for 3 weeks and works with stakeholders and governments. They interviewed more than 50 government leaders and stakeholders and community participants.

The three areas to look for opportunities of transformation are:

1. Revenue Generation - the city looks to overcome a shrinking budget and reduced revenues
2. Cost Savings/Avoidance - the city hopes to drive down internal costs while providing more high quality/high impact services to businesses and citizens
3. Citizen/Business Experience with Government - city wishes to automate and simplify access to the government enabling better transparency.

Below is a video created by IBM to discuss their project here in Newark. They featured local business owners of Art Kitchen, who explained their frustration with the permit processes and lack of communication between the departments, which hinders their growth as a business in town.

The recommendations from the IBM team (from their summary report) are:

- Inter-departmental efficiencies - information sharing, communication, collaboration, workflow and process automation, data integration and governance including reporting, KPIs, performance management/dashboards.
- Paper reduction - automated processes, full/legal use of electronic signatures, web-based applications to disseminate and receive information from businesses, citizens and employees, extensive electronic forms, and digitization.
- Self-service-on-demand - enabling employees, businesses and citizens to interact dynamically with the City of Newark 24 by 7 thereby promoting communication and government transparency.



More info can be found here: www.smartercitieschallenge.org