{"id":8398,"date":"2018-04-30T10:01:19","date_gmt":"2018-04-30T14:01:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/digital.hbs.edu\/platform-digit\/submission\/new-york-citys-digital-future\/"},"modified":"2018-04-30T10:01:19","modified_gmt":"2018-04-30T14:01:19","slug":"new-york-citys-digital-future","status":"publish","type":"hck-submission","link":"https:\/\/d3.harvard.edu\/platform-digit\/submission\/new-york-citys-digital-future\/","title":{"rendered":"New York City\u2019s Digital Future"},"content":{"rendered":"

The New York City government has nearly 300,000 employees and a budget of $89 billion, and is responsible for performing vital functions to serve its diverse population of 8.6 million people, 4.5 million workers, and 61 million annual visitors.[1]<\/a> But with an aging workforce, the strict regulations and constraints of public sector work, and a hodgepodge of systems some of which are decades old, the City faces significant challenges in adapting to an increasingly digital and fast-paced world. As residents become used to the speed and convenience of app-enabled services from Uber to Seamless, and increasingly sophisticated consumer systems from online banking to watch-anywhere TV streaming, the expectations for City services ratchet up.<\/p>\n

The challenges the City faces in adapting to digital transformation are compounded by what you could consider the City\u2019s competitive position\u2014who they choose to serve and how. While companies can select their customers\u00a0 strategically, price discriminate, and limit the adaptations provided in edge cases, City services must be available to all, and in many cases must indeed be targeted to those hardest to reach and serve, such as the 49% of New Yorkers speaking languages other than English at home, the City\u2019s 63,000 homeless people, or its 60,000 blind residents.[2]<\/a><\/p>\n

Mayor de Blasio frames many of these challenges as opportunities. \u201cThe \u2018good old days\u2019 weren\u2019t so good for a lot of people. In the analog age, too many voices weren\u2019t heard… We must do better than that in the digital age. In fact, our job is to use digital tools to create more fairness, freedom, and opportunity than ever existed before.\u201d[3]<\/a><\/p>\n

But how can New York City seize that opportunity to improve equity and access while delivering excellent services to New Yorkers and bringing the interactions between the government and residents into the 21st<\/sup> century? Within such a large organization, leadership from the top, consistent drive throughout all levels, and a large number of dispersed initiatives are necessary to make digital transformation a reality.<\/p>\n

Leadership from the top<\/strong><\/p>\n

In addition to Mayor de Blasio\u2019s comments and a consistent push from Mayor Bloomberg before him to professionalize and modernize government, there are several teams and\u00a0 initiatives in City Hall pushing for a more modern approach to technology and data. The Mayor\u2019s Office of Data Analytics, established in 2013, has a team of data scientists and experts focused on aggregating data across agencies, making data openly available to the public, and working with individual agencies to use data to drive better problem solving. The Chief Technology Officer and his team focus on big, cross-cutting initiatives to keep the City at the forefront of urban technologies, from the rollout of the LinkNYC broadband kiosks across the city to NYCx, which challenges entrepreneurs and technologists to address urgent priorities faced by communities in the city.<\/p>\n

Consistent drive throughout all levels<\/strong><\/p>\n

In 2015, the Chief Digital Officer launched a project to build a Digital Playbook<\/a> for the City, which laid out a series of principles and strategies for designing digital services and experience with the diversity of New York City\u2019s residents in mind. Drawing upon human-centered design principles and a process to engage with New York City residents on how they use technology and what they expect of government, the Playbook emphasized six principles[4]<\/a>:<\/p>\n