Yesterday Paul unveiled his ‘Department of Innovation and Technology‘;
The City of Sioux Falls Mayoral Office has established a new department focused on innovation, technology and data.
“I’m excited for our new dedicated resources to help advance our city’s priorities by being an innovative and forward-thinking community,†says Mayor Paul TenHaken. “By embracing innovation, technology and data to help make key decisions, Sioux Falls will be well prepared for the next several decades.â€
The Department of Innovation and Technology will include the divisions of Geographic Information Systems (GIS), Information Technology, and Communications (formerly named Multimedia Support). These divisions will be under the leadership of a new Director, who will soon be appointed with the advice and consent of the City Council.
The new Director and their team will continue the great work these divisions already do, with a focus on how the City can do things better, more efficiently, more effectively, more sustainably, and with greater community impact. The Director will also work with other departments to foster innovation throughout city government.
“Initiatives like 5G connectivity for our city, autonomous vehicles, adaptive traffic flow technologies, mobile notification systems, and many other items will continue to move Sioux Falls ahead,†said Mayor TenHaken. “This restructure will ensure we stay on the leading edge of smart city government.â€
It will be interesting to see who the new director will be. I like the idea. The past administration pretty much put the IT department in a holding pattern and tasked them more with ‘keeping secrets’ than opening government up and making it more customer friendly. If Paul pulls this off successfully, it could be the greatest ‘WIN’ in his first term.
His idea and a good one. I foresee this will be as defined but also facilitate things like permit process and EMS response. Will the city have a blog that replaces Public Comment?
Operation “Spaceballs,” I mean ‘Space Force.’ But when are we going to get the “Director of greater wages for Sioux Falls citizens,” or is that too out of this world to ask?
One thing they can do is to allow access to the city’s Web site from outside the US. Just sayin’. Kinda hard to any potential attract investment from the global economy when as far as anyone outside the US can tell – the place doesn’t want ’em.
So far it seems the Mayor is doing a good job of weeding out the useless department heads. I hope he’s not finished.
The last mayor preferred bullshitters over competence, and I think that will become clearer as PTH gets more familiar with the remaining leftovers.
The changes in reporting structure make more sense as well.
Another positive change.