Before the pandemic, government IT and business leaders were focused on supporting and skilling their workforces, extracting new value and insights from data, launching citizen-friendly digital services, and ensuring security and resiliency for vital systems and operations. Today, we view these issues through a different lens, but they remain atop the agenda for government leaders – and current events make them even more urgent.
The Special Districts Program — an AT&T program with Government Technology — tackled these priorities throughout 2019. The program is a unique forum dedicated to sharing ideas, building relationships and solving common problems among our nation’s 38,000 special government districts.
These districts are critically important to the success of our communities and our nation. They operate power grids, drinking water and wastewater systems, airports, seaports and other critical infrastructure. They provide fire and rescue services, as well as transit and transportation. They operate libraries, parks and recreation facilities, and affordable housing programs. The performance, reliability and resiliency of special districts impacts all of us.
As former Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter pointed out during the Northeast Regional Summit, their unique structure equips them to tackle issues that can be difficult for conventional government entities to address.
“What I find so interesting about special services districts is they have more flexibility and speed than traditional government,” he said. “Your active engagement and partnership with the local government is critically important to the life, liberty and pursuit of happiness of citizens.”
As they continue to fill these vital roles, special districts must evolve to meet new demands and explore new opportunities. Through five regional summits held in 2019, the Special Districts Program helped district leaders and their teams confront these critical issues, providing a platform for collaboration and networking. Also, an expanded IT and Leadership Awards Program recognized success throughout the country and continued to spotlight stories of innovation.
Success stories and advice generated through these and other program activities are collected in a comprehensive 2019 year-end report. The report shows how districts are using technology to meet urgent needs today and position themselves to navigate emerging issues and disruptive events in the years to come. It includes real-world examples of special districts implementing data analytics to become more predictive, moving key systems to the cloud to improve efficiency and resiliency, launching collaboration platforms to strengthen internal communication, rolling out mobile-friendly citizen services to expand access, and modernizing networks to boost flexibility and capacity.
These activities were important in 2019 – and they’re absolutely vital today.Following are nine takeaways compiled from insights from AT&T technologists, special district leaders and other experts.
- Prioritize privacy. The nature of privacy is evolving rapidly, and special districts must be ready for these changes. New laws give citizens more control over their personal data. A comprehensive approach to privacy will be crucial to comply with new requirements.
- Prepare for 5G. 5G — an emerging wireless technology — will be a game-changer for special districts. Not only will 5G deliver dramatic increases in speed and throughput, it will enable use cases like wireless streaming video from security cameras and real-time decision-making for autonomous vehicles.
- Think mobile. Broad adoption of smartphones, tablets and similar devices across all sectors of society makes mobility an important strategy to engage and serve constituents. Citizens expect to use mobile apps to pay transit fares, sign up for recreation programs, apply for benefits and more.
- Invest in employees. Upskilling existing employees can help address skills gaps — especially for hard-to-recruit specialty positions. Special districts are finding it can be more cost effective to invest in and train their current workforce.
- Seek input. With the pace of technological change increasing exponentially, special district leaders must do their homework before committing to a technology. Engage an array of industry sources to gain insights around technology trends and emerging use cases. Consider using pilots to test and prove solutions.
- Evaluate security. The federal Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency provides free Cyber Resiliency Reviews through its Cybersecurity Advisor Program. AT&T also offers a comprehensive analysis that districts can take advantage of to improve their security posture.
- Find a partner. The risk landscape for special districts is expanding, and it's difficult to recruit talented cybersecurity professionals to the public sector. These factors make security services more attractive to special districts. The right security partner can provide everything from endpoint protection to real-time network monitoring and threat intelligence-as-a-service.
- Plan for resiliency. Special districts often play a vital role in emergency response and recovery. FirstNet, the dedicated national communications network for first responders, equips special districts to reliably communicate with other agencies during an emergency. Many special districts qualify for FirstNet as extended primary responders under the National Incident Management System framework.
- Optimize networks. Future enterprise networks will face unprecedented bandwidth demands due to proliferation of high-definition video and other evolving use cases. Software-defined networks let special districts scale network capacity up or down, without adding or altering hardware devices. They also include intelligent management tools that let organizations adjust bandwidth on the fly based on customer-defined business rules around cost, consumption and other factors.
Read the full report here.
