Click here for full coverage of winners in all population categories.
1st Tamarac, Fla.
Tamarac is setting a high bar for digital inclusion and community among smaller U.S. cities, earning first place in the smallest population category. Guided by its “Excellence Always” vision, the city has built a resident-first ecosystem that blends AI, immersive tech, and smart infrastructure. Central to that effort is Tamarac's new Omni-Channel Call Center, powered by Amazon Connect and Amazon Bedrock AI, which enables residents to access city services 24/7 via phone, text, chat, video and social media. Virtual agents can now engage in conversation with residents, reducing wait times and freeing staff to focus on more complex issues.
The city also recently deployed BeWith.io Community Calendar, an AI-driven engagement platform that personalizes civic events for residents, and Skynav, an immersive virtual city tour offering accessibility features, personalized destination insights and interactive navigation.
Operationally, Tamarac’s IT team is also focused on a cloud migration project to transfer key applications to secure and scalable platforms, and an upcoming digital twin pilot to visualize infrastructure in real time.
2nd Marietta, Ga.
Marietta, Ga., continues to adopt ways to protect information technology and built infrastructure. This year, the city implemented a new identity management platform that is AI-native, providing real-time monitoring and autonomous threat response. The adoption enabled a streamlined monitoring and investigation process and allows team members to more quickly respond to suspicious behavior.
Utilities play a large part in customer service calls, which are managed in a newly adopted cloud-based call center. AI enhancements include live coaching for customer service agents, chatbots to answer resident questions and new hire onboarding. Thirty percent of routine questions are now answered in chat, more calls are resolved during the first call and wait times have gone down by 20 percent. The system is based on city processes and procedures, while the chatbot is live 24/7.
Resident-facing digital government services also include a redesigned city website, enhanced mobile app and streamlined forms for reconnection services. It is easier for departments to update webpages with improved tools; residents have more payment options and information on the mobile app; and new forms help residents reconnect utilities faster at any time of the day.
3rd Gainesville, Ga.
Gainesville, Ga., has made steady progress updating and improving technology to better serve their community. One notable effort is the city’s transition from on-premises Microsoft Office and Exchange to a fully cloud-based 365 environment. This enabled employees to go fully remote while boosting security with updated features. Since the switch, the city has significantly improved business continuity and streamlined communication between departments.
Cybersecurity has also been a big focus. The city conducted a “friendly hacking/cracking” exercise to determine the general strength of employee passwords. With the information obtained, a new password policy was enacted, increasing system security.
Gainesville uses automated call trees to direct constituents to multiple city services, each utilizing a recorded script coinciding with the service. To streamline the process of recording a new script whenever updates are necessary, AI has stepped in to reduce the workload. With training based off of voices, a new script can be created without spending extra time and money to update old scripts. The city is also now implementing artificial intelligence into their repertoire through a voter information tool that can poll citizens via text.
Taking on the role of chief information officer in March 2024, Russ Hilmandolar began cataloging all IT/OT/SCADA equipment used at Gainesville’s water treatment facilities. The data he found, working together with his counterpart in Water Resources, is now used to accurately forecast and plan for upgrades and renewals for the city’s water plants.
4th Coral Gables, Fla.
Coral Gables, a city of about 50,000 residents in the Miami metropolitan area, finished fourth this year, powered in part by its continued investment in smart city projects, including its distinct AI-powered modular poles. Those poles, initially deployed in 2021, continue to evolve, combining many smart city technologies – public Wi-Fi, traffic sensors and closed-circuit cameras – within slim poles built to withstand hurricane conditions, which are not uncommon in South Florida. These poles are now working in tandem with several other Coral Gables projects, including the Smart City Hub public platform, which allows residents to explore open data.
The city, like many of its peers, is also continuing to explore the use of AI, specifically with the use of crowdsourced and commercial AI-powered analytics in a wide range of areas, including public sentiment and traffic data. Coral Gables is also looking into AI-as-a-service data marketplaces that could boost productivity in municipal offices, as well as in the field.
Finally, another notable priority of late for Coral Gables is cybersecurity. The city’s IT department is continuing to promote the use of cyber monitoring tools while also working to expand authentication work across other city departments, too. And AI is touching that work as well, with Coral Gables moving to enhance its AI-based gamified cybersecurity training library.
5th Tinley Park, Ill.
The Chicago suburb of Tinley Park has put in a lot of work overhauling major IT systems to modernize the way the city serves its residents. In 2025, Tinley Park replaced its legacy ERP, improving both internal processes and digital services delivery, and migrated its network infrastructure to a new, modern platform. A new Emergency Operations Center opened in July, a project that brought together IT, police, fire, 911 dispatch and public works, setting the city up for more effective and coordinated public safety efforts. Expansion of Tinley Park’s Axon Fusus Real-Time Crime Center has also improved public safety and response, and integrating Tinley Park’s computer-aided dispatch with the system means responders can map incidents in real time.
To help shore up cybersecurity, the city brought on a network and security administrator, a position that had long been vacant. The new hire immediately did an assessment of city systems and implemented a real-time network monitoring and alerting platform, which has helped IT identify and respond to potential issues in real time. That position was filled via a contract-to-hire model, which Tinley Park said helped maintain continuity of operations, improved timelines for hiring and ensured candidate skills were on par with what the role calls for.
6th Danville, Va.
The city of Danville is experiencing rapid economic growth: A new casino resort opened in 2024 and a battery technology company is setting up a new manufacturing facility, creating 2,000 new jobs. And as it grows, the IT shop has been busy modernizing and expanding systems.
Several projects have involved the public safety spectrum, including a $3 million modernization of a hybrid cloud solution, a project that involved consulting with five separate agencies. The new technology has transformed how those agencies work, broken down siloes between them, introduced scalability and reduced bottlenecks in daily operations. Similarly, the city beefed up its high-speed networks to accommodate expanded security badge and CCTV systems. A new fusion platform allows the city to bring together camera and sensor feeds into a single location to improve real-time situational awareness.
The city has completed many other projects — the establishment of a 24/7 security operations center for cybersecurity stands out — but one of the most transformative moves in Danville this past year was organizational. IT’s new Client and Administrative Service Division, stood up in summer 2024, focuses on client engagement, onboarding and training, operational efficiency and workflow enhancements. The new division has led to service desk automation, a new financial tracking system, expanded client training programs, upgraded SharePoint training sites, an advanced ticketing system for external technical users, and better marketing and communications strategies.
6th Punta Gorda, Fla.
Streamlining and efficiency have been themes in Punta Gorda, Fla.’s IT work for 2025. With a big focus on government experience, the city connects with residents not only via its website, which offers many digital services, and social media, but with the TextMyGov tool, which allows residents to easily report issues. The city regularly analyzes data from all platforms to evaluate their effectiveness. This year IT added a dedicated data analyst/AI position and implemented Power BI and Neogov PowerDMS to better analyze data across the city. They’re also developing a clear governance structure for AI use.
Punta Gorda takes advantage of an ongoing state grant to help access cybersecurity tools, and in 2025 they implemented a new system that consolidated functions previously handled by multiple software platforms. The city also upgraded its storage area network, making the system both faster and more resilient, and moved from legacy on-premise email to Office 365 and its suite of cloud-based tools.
One impactful project was around Punta Gorda’s automated metering infrastructure for water meters, which was damaged following multiple heavy hurricane seasons. IT worked with the Utilities Department as well as Billing and Collections to create apps that use the city’s GIS tools to allow meter readers and repair technicians to quickly document their work and share it in real time. This has improved both internal processes as well as customer service.
7th Newark, Calif.
The city of Newark claimed a seventh-place spot in this year’s Digital Cities Survey, climbing three places since last year. The improvement is tied to the redoubling of modernization efforts, a strong focus on resilience and cybersecurity, and a commitment to accessibility and digital equity.
In the last year, Newark has invested in server hardware upgrades that not only improve system performance across departments but also make the city’s system more resilient and less susceptible to disasters. At the same time, certain functions like permitting, payments and records management have been moved to the cloud for constituent convenience and security.
Where cybersecurity is concerned, Newark has taken a proactive approach by enhancing endpoint protection capabilities, training staff on incident avoidance and management, and building strong policy enforcement mechanisms. Future plans for the city include AI and machine learning threat detection, enhanced data encryption, and the implementation of zero-trust principles.
7th Delray Beach, Fla.
The city of Delray Beach, Fla., is focused on implementing solutions that support residents and tourists alike. In part, this means an expanded IT workforce and the creation of technical strategist positions, which report to the IT team but act as partners with other departments.
Modernizing processes with technology supports those who visit, live and work in the city. For example, paper-based planning and permitting processes have moved fully online in the past two years in the eServices portal, which helps the city meet the needs of new businesses.
The city’s website is the central hub for accessing services. Other digital points of entry include city-focused apps such as the MyDelrayBeach app, CodeRED emergency management alert systems, and even a digital magazine. To better understand community needs, the city’s communications office tracks engagement data with platform-specific dashboards.
Delray Beach has also piloted an AI-powered receptionist solution — an idea born out of the need to better serve a blind constituent. AI is also being used within the city Police Department’s Real-Time Crime Center for monitoring and response. Also, the Public Works Department is exploring AI to monitor pavement conditions.
The city has upgraded its cybersecurity tools for strengthened digital defenses and has invested in physical security with smart locks in city buildings. Finally, the city is improving resilience with the continued build-out of a disaster recovery data center 400 miles from the city’s primary data center — an especially important investment as the city is in a hurricane-prone area.
8th Kalamazoo, Mich.
Dashboards and new cybersecurity tools are helping officials in Kalamazoo, located in south-central Michigan, improve public service while protecting the city’s assets, finances and reputation.
The city has created what it calls an IT service desk dashboard that offers a transparent way to track progress toward things like service-level goals. Viewable by any city employee, the dashboard shows that Kalamazoo has achieved higher than an 85 percent rate of “first call” resolutions — exceeding the 75 percent expectation — along with other tech-related metrics. The dashboard serves as a model of internal tracking for various city departments, and one day will open to the public, according to city plans.
As other local governments have suffered major cyber attacks — a trend that seems unlikely to abate — Kalamazoo has mandated annual cybersecurity training to help build vigilance. Citywide multifactor authentication and stronger access security for staff and contractors also help give city officials more faith that Kalamazoo might be spared the pain and headlines that come from data breaches, ransomware and other attacks.
9th Williamsburg, Va.
Ninth-place Williamsburg, Va., has made gains in resident engagement, connectivity and cybersecurity, with several improvements to overall IT operations run by its lean staff. One employment perk for Williamsburg’s six IT workers includes city-paid at-home Internet access, helping to ensure they are connected and responsive to city needs. The PDQ software platform allows IT staff to access and manage Williamsburg’s technology systems remotely.
Following internal operations findings that showed its cellular coverage to be “uncompetitive” compared to larger cities, the city conducted its own analysis and has begun to pursue upgrades. Williamsburg’s wireless network was replaced with a state-of-the-art standards-based Wi-Fi 7 system provided by Extreme Networks.
Williamsburg’s Citibot chatbot has been expanded to enable greater resident engagement. The question-answering service is now available 24 hours a day. Usage of the chatbot has increased, and its application is now being integrated into other departments like public works. Public engagement is also supported by PublicInput, which supports data analytics, outreach and other tasks. The platform was first used to centralize all engagement during the COVID-19 crisis.
Cybersecurity has been fortified with the deployment of Halcyon, an agent on every city computer that scans files for ransomware and other potential threats.
10th Dunwoody, Ga.
Dunwoody is making impressive strides in leveraging technology to boost transparency and community engagement. Over the past year, the city has advanced a range of initiatives — from upgrading cybersecurity and digital infrastructure to expanding citizen-focused digital tools.
And with transparency and accessibility as top priorities, the city maintains an open checkbook, online records portal and SeeClickFix for service requests, along with a redesigned permitting and licensing application to simplify public access. A new city app, digital signage and a mix of communication channels — including e-newsletters, social media and a YouTube channel that streams council meetings — help keep residents connected.
Dunwoody’s Real Time Crime Center represents an impressive innovation in public safety, integrating data from Flock Safety drones, Live911, ForceMetrics AI and other tools to enhance situational awareness and response. The city’s embrace of AI extends beyond law enforcement; applications like OneTrust AI and Microsoft AI are modernizing vendor risk management and automating administrative processes.
Internally, Dunwoody’s IT department has brought services fully in-house, overhauled its network, migrated most systems to the cloud and built an advanced Emergency Operations Center. Meanwhile, a citywide business resiliency plan is also underway to ensure continuity across departments.
