Santa Monica has been named among the nation’s Top Ten Digital Cities in a survey involving hundreds of governments across the country.
This is Santa Monica’s fifth top ten ranking in the annual survey, which tallies a community’s use of computer technology on dozens of measures.
The survey is entering its 11th year and is becoming increasingly popular as governments are digitizing operations in ways that go far beyond replacing metal filing cabinets with computer databases, according to Todd Sander, director of Digital Communities, the organization that conducts the annual survey.
“The highest-ranking cities in the survey showed great strides in consolidating and enabling shared services, government transparency and communications interoperability,” he said. “We applaud these innovators as they work in the spirit of collaboration to provide extraordinary value to constituents despite budget setbacks.”
This year Santa Monica ranked 10th among the nation’s Top Ten Digital Cities with a population of 75,000 – 124,999, one of four city-size categories measured in the survey.
For the full list of Top Ten Digital Cities visit: http://www.digitalcommunities.com/survey/cities/?year=2011.
Such consistent placement among the Top Ten is quite an accomplishment given how rapidly the world of government technology is evolving, according to Kimberly Samuelson the government marketing director for Laserfiche ECM, which supplies document management software to Santa Monica and 18 other communities named to the Top Ten this year.
“In light of present day budget cuts and the volatile economic climate, it’s no easy task to fund and follow through on digitizing government operations that have been paper-based, often for a hundred years or more,” Samuelson said. “Yet tax payers are eventually served far better when government makes the extra effort to embrace this technology as Santa Monica has.”
