BATON ROUGE, La. – Nov. 10, 2020 – Mayor-President Sharon Weston Broome announced today the Center for Digital Government has named Baton Rouge a Top 10 Digital City for the sixth year in a row. Baton Rouge ranks third this year among mid-sized cities, marking its highest placement ever in the annual national rankings.
“This is an extraordinary achievement for our City-Parish government and underscores our commitment to innovation and leveraging technology wherever possible to serve our citizens — even in the midst of an unprecedented global pandemic,” said Mayor Broome. “It also demonstrates our commitment to continuous improvement as we constantly look for ways to integrate new digital services, data-driven approaches and technologies into all facets of our programs, services and operations.”
In ranking Baton Rouge a Top 10 Digital City alongside fellow leading digital cities like Bellevue, WA, Cape Coral, FL, and Pasadena, CA, the Center for Digital Government highlighted the City-Parish’s advancements and best practices in the public-sector IT community. This year’s rankings also considered how local governments used technology to respond to the COVID-19 crisis, which has been a hallmark of the City-Parish’s ongoing response to the pandemic.
In addition to its successful deployment of technologies to help thousands of users adapt to the onset of a new virtual environment for City-Parish government, including systems and processes that allowed for over 1,300 virtual meetings and served more than 10,000 participants of crucial government meetings, the City-Parish continued to make strides over the past year in advancing priority digital and technology initiatives focused on serving internal and external users.
These successful efforts include replacing a 30-year-old computer-aided dispatch system to inform efficient responses to 911 calls for service, leveraging these public safety system upgrades to help launch the City-Parish’s real-time crime center; beginning the process to modernize the City-Parish’s telecommunications infrastructure with a unified communications system that will generate millions in savings once operational; and making key advancements in how the City-Parish addresses cybersecurity risks through real-time defenses, ongoing internal and public education on how individuals can help mitigate these risks, and leveraging best practices to inform a robust cybersecurity framework.
Each year, the Center for Digital Government — a national research and advisory institute on IT policies and best practices in state and local government — conducts the Digital Cities Survey to inform its digital city rankings. This comprehensive survey is distributed to all U.S. cities, towns, villages and consolidated city-county governments.
The City-Parish and all of this year’s honorees will be recognized Nov. 10 at a virtual awards ceremony. For more information on the 2020 Digital City awards, visit: https://www.govtech.com/dc/digital-cities/Digital-Cities-Survey-2020-Winners-Announced.html