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Well-managed cities, use data to improve their cities by equitably delivering services and solving problems. In the last ten years small and mid-sized cities have begun collecting and storing data for this purpose, and look to use that to become more effective in their communications with residents, businesses and stakeholders.
However, for smaller cities, finding, gathering, interpreting, and making data usable is a costly and time-consuming challenge that can create speed bumps on the road from good to great. Metropolis IQ makes this process easier, faster, and more budget-friendly for resource constrained cities to understand what’s happening and take action.
Metropolis IQ MIQ Insights is a cutting-edge SaaS platform designed specifically for local governments, offering a seamless and efficient way to understand and enhance local economic and workforce development. MIQ Insights goes beyond mere data presentation by providing comprehensive visualizations and contextual analysis. This allows users to grasp the significance of the data, understand key takeaways, and leverage insights to make informed policy decisions and communicate with constituents at the local level.
Involving key leaders and aligning stakeholders is critical to success
Support from top leadership such as the mayor and city manager are critical to the process of becoming a city that works, because even in small cities data can be segregated in data silos controlled and maintained by individual departments, and limited in scope by the collection means available to a department. City leaders can influence the activities of department heads, encouraging collaboration, merging goals, and discovering opportunities for merging data sets to eliminate redundancy and gain new insights through correlative analyses. These new insights can be shared with stakeholders and other influencers who can use it to energize programs for the benefits of residents and individuals in need of interventional service.
How cities are turning into Smart Cities
Bloomberg’s program What Works Cities illustrates how cities can use data to become high performing cities:
• Ensure the backing of key leaders (City Manager and/or Mayor)
• Work to achieve alignment of stakeholders who will provide input and people power and will obtain benefit from the results
• Scope the development project and develop a fundable proposal
• Implement processes for monitoring change and managing setbacks
• Build in reporting mechanisms to monitor progress and manage issues.
While smaller cities may not have the IT, workforce development, research, or data analytics resources of larger ones, the availability of online data resources like MIQ Insights can put many more capabilities in reach, enabling cities like Carlsbad, CA to shine in programs such as Bloomberg’s What Works Cities.
Other data shows that 70% of cities are using data to better communicate with residents. By correlating interactions with residents through applications, city maintenance requests, nuisance complaints and other resident-generated information, city officials can better understand by each community where the issues are and what local residents are concerned about. With consistent, reliable information available, they can establish lines of communications with individual residents and influential groups that will help a city respond to issues before they become crisis’.
Artificial Intelligence for Smart Cities
Because qualified staffers can be more challenging to hire for smaller or under budgeted local governments, some cities look to Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools to help them understand their data. In general, the first tools they used were predictive, that is they used data to make predictions about future events and influences, evaluate risks and plan for possible predicted outcomes. A follow-on AI technology is the now well-known generative AI, which uses inferences derived from learned information to generate content on demand.
There is a clear distinction between predictive AI and generative AI. Predictive AI should be seen as a tool to help city personnel improve the quality of their conclusions, not make those conclusions. AI such as is offered by Metropolis IQ can suggest other ways of looking at the data, pointing out relationships that are not immediately obvious but could be influential. City staffers will become better at getting value from predictive AI as they learn to take advantage of its strengths. The value of generative AI lies in its ability to pull in previously unknown information and use it to construct supporting arguments and data. Staffers often “boilerplate” written text that they re-use in a variety of contexts, as the requirement for support is the same, however, to maintain credibility the boilerplate needs review at nearly every usage to ensure that the data from which it was derived is still current. This task can consume labor resources when cities are confronted with the need to generate many reports.
Cities need help with reports
The success of initiatives and programs for cities of any size is dependent on the quality and durability of their communications with residents, stakeholders and state and federal government entities. Proposals and requests for funding are required for every government or NGO offering. Generally regular project reports are required for any project funded by local, state or federal entities. A city’s record of successes is the measure for follow-on funding and the continuing success of city leaders in the eyes of the public, which makes final reports for successful projects critical. An often overlooked but vital line of communication are the interim reports to stakeholders and other influential groups, which can help to limit misunderstandings and head off potential issues.
All of these will require up to date supporting information, graphs and charts to set context and/or provide additional justification or validation.
Metropolis IQ tools for cities that work
Metropolis IQ brings the promise of current content generation technology to economic and workforce development reports, redefining the report generation process with months to minutes turnaround, jurisdictional relevance and current, accurate information. Proprietary algorithms emulate the analytical processes of trained research professionals to produce cogent graphics and supporting narratives that are closely reviewed by subject matter experts. Regular updates ensure that data is best and latest available, saving hours of research. Common reports can include Comprehensive Economic Development Strategies (CEDS), workforce analytical overview reports, innovation reports and priority sector reports.
So much more than just an interface to generative AI, Metropolis IQ products are built for the daily reporting needs of busy local government professionals.
