City of Madison is a Top 10 Digital City!

The City of Madison is a Top 10 2022 Digital Cities Survey winner! Placing sixth in the 250,000-499,999 population category, the Center for Digital Government recognized Madison for enhancing transparency, expanding digital inclusion and resident engagement, and growing a digital workplace in the new era of hybrid work.

“Digital modernization is a key theme for 2023 IT work planning,” commented Sarah Edgerton, City of Madison Information Technology Director, “our ongoing digital transformation creates more accessible and meaningful online experiences for residents, visitors, policymakers, and business partners.”

City of Madison is prioritizing several transformational digital efforts this year, including:

• Aligning the City’s technology goals with the IT Strategic Plan, which highlights Information Technology’s core value of equity and inclusion.
• Hosting focus groups to improve the digital divide in Madison communities.
• Preparing for a potential Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system to process resident requests and concerns, which will provide valuable data and insights into community needs, helping the City identify gaps in service and areas for improvement.
• Providing the framework for hybrid and remote work options for City employees, including moving to enterprise cloud strategies, increasing digital literacy, and modernizing paper-based processes.
• Reducing costs to the City by replacing redundant hardware and software with enterprise solutions when appropriate.
• Continually evolving the City’s legislative engagement practices with virtual and hybrid Board, Committee, and Commission meetings to remove barriers from public participation, like travel time, parking costs, childcare, and work scheduling. Constituents have registered their position on legislation over 8,000 times in the last year.
• Enhancing Report a Problem to improve residents’ experience when reporting concerns to the City. The system assigns requests to the appropriate City service area to investigate, resolve, and respond to residents. In a future iteration, residents will be able to track updates on their reports in a single system.
• Supporting the work of Results Madison, one of the City’s key data transparency initiatives to produce outcome-based budgeting. Results Madison defines outcomes, strategies, services indicators, and performance measures for each City department and links those measures to spending. Residents can learn more about the City’s service alignment with Results Madison at cityofmadison.com/budget.

“We are thrilled to be recognized as a Top 10 Digital City,” states Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway. “Technology has brought our services closer to residents, while also showing us areas for growth. We continue to listen and learn so everyone can thrive in Madison.”

Each project and initiative highlighted in this year’s survey have involved collaboration from Information Technology, multiple City agencies, and community business partners.

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