DEPARTMENT: Office of Innovation
DEPARTMENT HEAD: Jose De La Cruz, Chief Innovation Officer and Craig Hopkins Chief Technology Officer
COUNCIL DISTRICTS IMPACTED: City-wide
SUBJECT:
Briefing on the SmartSA program including the strategy for FY 2018, focus areas and projects.
SUMMARY:
This item provides an overview of the City of San Antonio Smart City Program SmartSA.
BACKGROUND INFORMATION:
The City’s Smart City program (SmartSA) focuses on building a connected, inclusive, and resilient community that supports a high quality of life for San Antonio. The City’s technology strategy that supports SmartSA, leverages the domains of big data, hardware infrastructure, fiber and mesh networks, IoT devices (sensors and beacons), as well as entrepreneurial vendors, partners, and startups. At its core, for a City to be “smart”, it must strategically connect technology with initiatives and outcomes that drive increased livability, workability and sustainability for its residents. This intentional approach to technology adoption allows cities to improve community services in more resourceful ways.
In FY 2018, the SmartSA strategy focuses on addressing two challenges: mobility and access to City services. Addressing these challenges requires a collaborative effort across agencies that will serve as the foundation for shared data and technology infrastructure. The City has begun leveraging existing innovation and technology relationships between the City, CPS, SAWS, VIA, and the San Antonio River Authority. The team will continue to reach out to others including Bexar County and the Bexar County Appraisal District for their involvement.
The team has identified several key areas to work on that includes: (1) establishing a governance model for the program, (2) creating a data sharing/data management plan (to include quality, management, security, analytics), and (3) determining what shared infrastructure (networks, devices, cyber security, hardware), can be utilized for smart city type projects. In addition, several short-term projects were identified in the areas of mobility and access to City services. They include (1) developing employer-based transportation demand management and (2) inventorying and exposing current resident services that can be delivered digitally.
Councilman Treviño submitted a City Council Request (CCR) On November 30, 2017, directing ITSD to begin the process of, and lead the effort in, creating a shared data program with all local area governmental agencies (City of San Antonio, Bexar County and Bexar County Appraisal District) and municipally owned utilities (San Antonio Water System and CPS Energy). On January 17, the City Council Governance Committee heard this CCR and forwarded it to the Innovation and Technology Committee.
Innovation and Information Technology staff will utilize the City’s FY 2018 SmartSA strategy as the program to initiate a data sharing/ data management plan between the City, CPS, SAWS, VIA, the San Antonio River Authority, Bexar County and the Bexar County Appraisal District. The goal of this program would be to ensure data accuracy across all user platforms; uniform updates would ensure up-to-date service, consistency, and efficiency in the work of our government agencies. Throughout this process, data security and privacy issues must be considered and addressed in the collection, sharing, and storage of aggregated data.
ISSUE:
The goal of the SmartSA program is to encourage inter-agency collaboration to further San Antonio’s vision of becoming a connected, inclusive and resilient community that supports a high quality of life.
ALTERNATIVES:
This item is for briefing purposes only
FISCAL IMPACT:
This item is for briefing purposes only
RECOMMENDATION:
This item is for briefing purposes only