Our pursuit of innovation
Finding a place to live shouldn’t come with hidden surprises like unresolved code violations or unregistered rentals — but for too many renters, it does. This was the inspiration behind one of our successful new data tools this year: Look Before you Rent, which was co-developed between the Department of Neighborhood & Business Development (NBD) and the Office of Analytics, Performance, & Innovation (API).
Last year, one of our department heads had the opportunity to present to more than 200 government officials at the 2024 Public Sector CIO Summit at Esri’s Headquarters in Redlands, CA. The presentation, titles “Pioneering Real-Time GIS,” focused on how the City of Syracuse has used Esri’s Velocity engine to capture crucial information from snowplow operations, enhancing resident communication and operational efficiency.
When the City of Syracuse decided to overhaul and digitize its procurement system, the goal was to establish new ways of working with our vendors and present opportunities to do business with the City more broadly.
This journey wasn’t just about digitizing paper processes. It was about rethinking procurement as a strategic, responsive, and inclusive tool for good governance. And like any ambitious transformation in government, success depended less on the tool and more on the approach.
Earlier this year, we had an opportunity to host the Innovation & Technology team from South Bend, Indiana for a knowledge exchange session covering data management, open data, performance management, and various other topics. Simply put, we learned a lot from what they shared – starting with the elegance of their team’s motto “listen first, build with.”
Big snowstorms have serious implications for city operations, with one lesser-known impact being that the Syracuse Fire Department (SFD) has to shovel all of the roughly 5,700 fire hydrants in the city. The Fire Department recognized an opportunity to track the status of hydrant shoveling in real time and, consequently, to better allocate their resources during a storm. So, SFD approached our Office of Analytics, Performance, and Innovation (API).
Syracuse held its first Open Data Day on Saturday November 4th at the Onondaga County Public Library in Downtown Syracuse. Over 100 participants came together to celebrate civic open data, attend educational sessions (on topics ranging from how to use Tableau to the synergy between urbanism, AR and open data portals) and engage in a hackathon focused on transportation data.
