Click here for full coverage of winners in all population categories.
1st San Jose, Calif.
San Jose’s new cyber strategy, enhancements to the Virtual Security Operations Center, mandatory training, simulation exercises, and centralization of identity and access management support its cybersecurity posture. City officials are also focused on delivering equitable and modern services to San Jose’s 1 million residents, and technology supports that goal. From using AI to address housing to using technology to support language access, San Jose is prioritizing its people. The 24/7 customer call center, SJ311, has been expanded to support residents in 200 languages. Notably, the city has a goal to increase 311 service requests in underrepresented areas through targeted outreach.
Furthering equity goals, the city has expanded its free public Wi-Fi network to cover more than 41,000 residential households in underserved neighborhoods. Tech Hubs support skills training and device access at San Jose library branches. The disability affairs officer is working to improve accessibility in city offerings, primarily focused on web services and PDFs.
San Jose’s IT Collaboration Group, launched in the spring, connects IT staff across departments for a unified approach to modernization. The city is also trying to open more channels through which local businesses can collaborate with the city, like monthly Innovation Days, during which companies can present solutions.
2nd Los Angeles
Historic wildfires, protests, persistent homelessness, preparations for the 2026 World Cup, 2027 Super Bowl and the 2028 Olympics — it’s never boring in Los Angeles, but city officials have their hands especially full these days, and gov tech is helping them keep it all together.
As downtown office vacancies and state economic woes threaten city revenue, the city’s tech leaders keep plowing ahead, streamlining business services to clear a path for better times and using data to better understand various urban challenges. That includes more data sharing among agencies to better connect people who lack permanent shelter with housing placement and other services. It includes creating what city officials call “centralized platforms” that can help with crisis management and recovery. And it includes boosting defenses against hackers so that upcoming global events aren’t compromised or ruined.
The city is building more protection against wildfires through deployments of AI-powered cameras and sensors, with software able to detect smoke and other indications of potential conflagrations. GIS provides real-time mapping of fires and offers evacuation routes. Another AI tool helps with smarter, more resilient building by using tech to check construction plans — an effort that can help in all types of situations, not just those brought on by emergencies.
As all that happens, the city’s 50,000 employees are enjoying a new Workday payroll system that recently replaced a 24-year-old increasingly creaky legacy tool and which also offers one-day onboarding and other benefits. City residents seeking non-emergency services are using the new Salesforce-backed MyLA311 website and mobile app, a 21st-century version of the old 311 system. With nearly 100 services available, the new 311 tool has produced service request outcomes 28 percent faster than the old way of doing things, thanks in part to the instant communication it enables between field crews and callers.
3rd San Diego
San Diego is a familiar top contender in the Digital Cities Survey, this year claiming a third-place ranking for its use of technology to better serve constituents and internal customers. The city recently made significant customer service improvements to its public utility operations, moving its call center to the Amazon Connect cloud solution and using web forms to better address customer issues. The move resulted in a 92 percent reduction in wait times, and 85 percent of customers reported that they were satisfied with the service they received. IT staff also had to rapidly deploy a solution to adjust the transient occupancy tax for hotels, which will bring in an estimated $82 million in increased funds in 2026. The new system was completed and tested ahead of the May 1, 2024, deadline.
Like many other cities, San Diego has been thoughtfully looking for opportunities to use artificial intelligence to its advantage. The city has implemented an AI Policy and AI Governance framework to guide the use of technology across the city’s 13,000 employees, and a generative AI solution has been trained on the administrative regulations and municipal code to speed access for city staff.
Where cybersecurity is concerned, the city has taken an aggressive approach to protecting its networks, including continuous improvements to its Security Operations Center (SOC), tabletop exercises with the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, and the integration of a threat hunting analyst role within the SOC.
4th Charlotte, N.C.
Charlotte, N.C., has been involved in a three-year $50 million technology upgrade involving cloud processing, data management, enhanced cybersecurity and more. Data governance has been enhanced through numerous dashboards and trackers in areas like Vision Zero, an interactive dashboard displaying data related to car crashes. A strategic progress tracker follows 31 metrics across five strategic priority areas to enhance accountability and visibility of city projects. My Charlotte Lookup is a new GIS-based application for residents to retrieve information for any address in Mecklenburg County, among other dashboards and data sets. The parking violations dashboard identifies the locations of parking infractions and aids in enforcement.
In other areas, Charlotte has characterized its artificial intelligence adoption as having three phases: crawl, walk and run. In the 2025-26 fiscal year, the crawl phase is focused on establishing governance structures, training, preparing data and launching pilots. Requesting public documents is made easier with tools like JustFOIA, which streamlines the intake, processing and distribution of public records, modernizing a previous system that used manual processing, spreadsheets and SharePoint lists. Average processing time has been reduced from 16 days to two days. Finally, Access Charlotte has expanded to provide free Spectrum Internet service for more than 8,600 households, narrowing the digital divide. A key feature of the effort is its digital navigation program to offer outreach, training and digital literacy.
4th Seattle
Seattle ranked fourth among cities with a population of 500,000 or more in this year’s survey because it isn’t just designing for the future — it’s building it. Facing $500 million in budget reductions, the city’s technology leaders didn’t cut back; they doubled down on value creation. Seattle IT, led by Chief Technology Officer Rob Lloyd, co-created a new three-year strategic plan with 43 departments and nearly 300 stakeholders that set out to unify the department’s technology goals with Mayor Bruce Harrell’s “One Seattle” vision of safety, housing, health and economic vitality. In the past year, the city modernized major systems — from payroll to utilities — and launched or completed 39 AI pilots touching everything from public safety to accessibility.
Seattle’s digital efforts extend beyond back-end systems. Through its CiviForm platform, residents can apply for multiple benefits in a single session, cutting application times from half an hour to six minutes. A new Executive Order on inclusive information is also advancing the city’s digital presence, so every resident can access plain-language content, maps and services online.
With AI partnerships at the University of Washington and a growing civic innovation ecosystem, Seattle shows what digital government can become when technology and community share the same blueprint.
5th Boston
The Boston City Council in May codified the way the Department of Innovation and Technology works across departments, establishing formal authority to lead and standardize practices including data governance, modernization, procurement, cybersecurity and training. IT leaders believe the codification will drive progress.
The city’s Digital Service Team met at the junction of arts and culture when building the Boston Family Days portal this year. The program, introduced in 2024, grants museum and fine arts access for public school students and their families, but the mayor’s office wanted to know more about attendance. Research showed that 41 percent of Boston Children’s Museum guests were first-time visitors in 2024, as were 55 percent of Institute of Contemporary Art goers. The portal was built in-house, saving $500,000, and enables bulk student uploads, ticket sharing and outreach for more than a dozen museums and nine performance venues.
Boston — like other big cities — ranks high in traffic delays. The traffic management center works with Google Research on its Project Green Light to optimize 114 intersections. Metrics show fewer delays and reduced stops at retimed traffic lights, translating to 4,000 gallons of gas saved annually.
City priorities include enhanced constituent services, cybersecurity modernization, digital equity and broadband. The IT department has added technology and data roles, as well as a governance and policy team to liaise with all city employees. Boston also partners with higher education and technology firms, and builds solutions in-house to control costs and save time. Initiatives include BidBot, an AI procurement tool; machine learning for curb management; and environmental sensor use. The city has undertaken core cybersecurity efforts: refreshing devices, migrating digital storage to the cloud, updating operating systems, and implementing quarterly cybersecurity training. Unifying identity management for citizens, vendors and businesses is underway and will help integrate the user experience for all.
6th Mesa, Ariz.
Mesa, Ariz., is embracing technology with the development of a digital twin of the entire city. Launched in 2024, the project aims to create high-detail digital models of downtown Mesa alongside a citywide lower-detail model for urban planning and development. With the digital twin, Mesa aims to accelerate development reviews and enhance cross-department collaboration.
The city has also found creative use cases for AI. In one pilot project, streetlight sensors capture real-time temperature data to inform urban heat mitigation strategies, with hopes to enable high-resolution heat mapping. Additionally, an AI-driven parking detection system uses cameras and computer vision to monitor parking availability, reducing vehicle congestion and emissions in downtown areas.
On the cybersecurity front, Mesa has bolstered its defenses by implementing an identity managed detection and response solution. The system allows for real-time monitoring of authentication platforms, helping detect and respond to identity-based threats. With this enhanced security posture, Mesa achieved zero data loss during recent cybersecurity incidents.
More procedurally, Mesa revamped its business relationship management process to create stronger partnerships with departmental leaders. The new framework facilitates early engagement and reduces unnecessary tech purchases.
7th Austin, Texas
The Texas state capital earned a seventh-place ranking in this year’s survey, marking a year of targeted progress in digital equity, AI governance and modernized service delivery. Among the city’s most visible advancements was the launch of its All Services Hub, a redesigned digital entry point for city services. Developed through resident feedback and usability testing, the platform organizes services more intuitively and supports multilingual access, reflecting Austin’s equity goals. The effort also included integrating six standalone department websites into the main city platform, reducing total website pages by more than 40 percent and consolidating more than 3,800 redirects into fewer than 900.
Austin also took steps to modernize internal operations, including the implementation of Workday Human Capital Management, which streamlined hiring, onboarding and performance reviews. On the cybersecurity front, the city migrated to a new, in-house security information and event management platform, cutting licensing costs by more than half and enabling cross-department threat analytics.
In artificial intelligence, Austin piloted IBM’s AI governance platform and tested its own citywide virtual assistant under the “One City” initiative. The pilots emphasized transparency, risk evaluation and prompt accountability, aligning with Austin’s broader AI governance framework. The city also tested generative AI internally for content summarization and staff productivity across departments. Austin's open data portal saw a 66 percent increase in visits, boosted by improvements in data quality and reliability. Meanwhile, a new translation platform increased the accuracy of multilingual content to 87 percent, reinforcing the city’s focus on accessible and inclusive government services.
8th Albuquerque, N.M.
Over the past year, Albuquerque’s Department of Technology and Innovation (DTI) worked to deepen collaboration across government sectors, highlighting its role as a citywide technology partner. The city made a point to prioritize workers’ digital literacy; specifically, DTI supported the Health, Housing and Homelessness Department with data to better track and manage care for unhoused residents.
DTI also led upgrades to the city’s constituent-facing systems, most notably modernizing its website and initiating the Photo-Driven 311 Case Resolution project, through which citizens can access 311 using a phone app. This effort allows residents to see photographic confirmation of completed service requests, which reportedly increased transparency for users and reduced duplicate reports.
Additionally, Albuquerque piloted an array of smart sensors to detect hazards to citizens, such as arroyo flooding, falls in public areas, chemical exposure in areas like bathrooms and potential fires in open spaces.
9th Phoenix, Ariz.
Technology helped Phoenix make great strides in cybersecurity and resident engagement over the last year. The city made two strategic hires to improve its Security Operations Center: a deputy CISO and a dedicated threat intelligence officer. These plus a new dedicated vulnerability management team led to a 40 percent reduction in response times to cybersecurity incidents. Phoenix Information Technology Services also established a Cyber Risk Committee this year, which brings together multiple stakeholders, and a new Data Sensitivity Protection Program reduces risk of a data breach by identifying, labeling, organizing and monitoring any sensitive data the city stores.
Phoenix also looked to technology to improve resident engagement and outreach. The city enhanced its myPHX311 application with mobile-friendly services like autofill, single sign-on and comprehensive case tracking. The portal also now has a virtual assistant that can discuss more than 600 topics. The city also completed a major overhaul of its website, with improved content organization and UX/UI best practices.
The Police Department improved services with CommunityConnect, a new system from Versaterm/SPIDR Tech that provides real-time updates to victims who contact the police. When a call is placed with 911 from a cellphone, CommunityConnect will send a text message with a call confirmation and report number. Callers can also register with the Victim Information Portal online to receive updates and follow the status of their case.
10th Denver
Denver’s behind-the-scenes upgrades to its government systems are efforts going toward enhancing resident services, creating smoother user experiences on the city’s website and other tools. A few notable examples include ensuring ADA compliance across the city’s suite of applications and websites, transitioning the 311 information call center to cloud-based calling and workforce management systems, and creating an online services hub. And to aid its police department services, the city upgraded the non-emergency call flow with a smart interactive voice response system to better assist residents when they dial in. Integrating a generative AI chatbot and public meeting livestreams are improving public access and civic involvement.
The city of Denver recently established an internal Cybersecurity Risk Task Force, led by the Technology Services Department. With members from multiple agencies, the group aims to improve transparency and create a unified cyber strategy. Denver's conversational AI chatbot provides outage notifications and delivers reminders for cybersecurity training for city employees. This centralized initiative is a critical step in addressing the inevitability of cyber threats.
