Top digital cities for 2009

The Center for Digital Government has unveiled its annual list of top digital cities--those municipalities that are integrating information technology into operations to better serve their citizens. It's a piece of information that many companies could capitalize on, too, since there are plenty of communities lacking enough bandwidth to include all homes and offices in their region.

Going digital comes at a difficult time for everyone: Budgets are tighter, new technology is more expensive and consumers are more demanding of better service.

But there are distinct tends among the top municipalities. The survey found:

• 82 percent of respondents have webcasts--streamed audio and video, live and archived
• 74 percent have RSS feeds (up 21 percent over last year)
• 87 percent have city government body meeting minutes available online, archived and searchable
• 73 percent conduct online surveys or polls

The top municipalities by population:

• Corpus Christi, Texas (250,000 or more population)
• Norfolk, Va. (125,000 - 249,999 population)
• Santa Monica, Calif. (75,000 - 124,999 population)
• Flower Mound, Texas (30,000 - 74,999 population)

There are some interesting projects in every city. Corpus Christi, for example, has an automated water and gas meter-reader that generates an online billing statement. Santa Monica is working on a mobile device that citizens will be able to use to see if parking is available at their destination. And Flower Mound, Texas, operates numerous Facebook pages, several Twitter blogs, a YouTube channel, a Flickr page and a Nixle site to connect with its citizens.

For more on this year's top digital cities:
- see this Govtech.com article

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