BATON ROUGE, LA — April 13, 2018 — Today, Mayor-President Sharon Weston-Broome announced that Baton Rouge is the winner of an IDC Smart Cities North America Award for its Public Safety Common Operational Platform (PSCOP), a digital application utilized by the Baton Rouge Police Department.

After weeks of public voting with close to 3,000 voters, IDC Government Insights announced the winners of the inaugural IDC Smart Cities North America Awards (SCNAA). The new awards were designed to recognize the progress North American communities have made in executing Smart Cities projects, as well as provide a forum for sharing best practices to help accelerate Smart City development in the region. Winners were named in 14 categories and with a tie in both Education and Sustainable Infrastructure, 16 cities were represented, underscoring the overwhelming success and efficiency of smart city projects implemented across the country.

“Since taking office, my administration has been focused on identifying ways to use data and leverage technology to make more informed decisions and better serve our citizens,” said Mayor Broome. “This award is yet another example of the tremendous strides we have made in building a smarter city here in Baton Rouge and setting a standard for similarly sized cities across the U.S. to learn from when implementing their own smart city initiatives.”

PSCOP is a digital interactive mapping application utilizing GIS technology to provide a single source for users to access near-real-time data and other information. This mapping information helps increase situational awareness, improve officer safety, and deploy limited resources in support of daily operations, crime analysis, and emergency management for all public safety agencies in the City of Baton Rouge and metro area partners.

In late 2017, Baton Rouge was ranked the fifth most digital city in the U.S. among mid-sized cities, a designation that was supported by the many ongoing efforts, like PSCOP, that are creating efficiencies in City-Parish government operations, enhancing service delivery and citizen engagement, and improving governmental transparency.

 For more information about each of the 2018 IDC SCNAA award recipients, please visit http://bit.ly/2EU8ZMO