Cities Giving IT A Bigger RoleCities Giving IT A Bigger Role

More city governments are placing tech initiatives front and center in 2002--due in part to a new breed of mayors, as well as heightened concerns about public safety.

Some of the new mayors are from a younger generation than their predecessors, and are more comfortable with technology as a result, says Cathilea Robinett, executive director of the Center for Digital Government. The most striking example of this is 31-year-old Kwame Kilpatrick, Detroit's youngest mayor (and probably the only one who's ever worn a diamond stud earring). During his campaign, Kilpatrick said the Detroit Police Department was one of his top priorities, and he wanted to use computer technology to help the city solve crime problems. "For mayors, public safety has always been the entry point for technology," says Robinett. That's increasingly true, as public safety issues are driven by potential terrorist threats.

Several cities have appointed new heads of IT within the past week, including New York's Information Technology Commissioner Gino P. Menchini. The city's new mayor, Michael Bloomberg, is no stranger to technology--he made billions because of it. And he certainly values IT's role in his administration--Menchini's appointment was one of the first he made. "That usually doesn't happen with an IT office," says Robinett--in the past, many cities tended to fill other posts first and didn't treat IT appointments with a sense of urgency.

Robinett says that the most recent mayoral campaigns focused on technology more than ever. One campaign promise from Jane Campbell, now Cleveland's mayor, was to create an office of technology and innovation and appoint the city's first "tech czar." The person charged with creating the office of technology and innovation is Campbell's chief development officer Tim Mueller, who's also the co-founder of Vantage One Communications.