Two Years In: A Reflection and Update on Smart City Planning with Kate Kigongo of West Hollywood, CA
From 2017 to 2018, Cityfi partnered with the City of West Hollywood to create the WeHo Smart City Strategic Plan, an ambitious initiative to holistically weave technology into the fabric of the city and better serve all community members. Now, two years after its launch, the 5-year plan’s implementation is nearly halfway complete and the City is on track to meet its goals.
As innovative and impressive as the plan was when it launched, we urbanists know that implementation can be a far greater challenge. As such, we asked one of the key leaders of the plan, Kate Kigongo of West Hollywood’s Innovation Division, to share a few insights from her experience that others may learn from.
Cityfi: WeHo Smart City was led by the Innovation Division and supported by various departments and three key cross-departmental groups: the Smart City Infrastructure Working Group; the Innovation Catalyst Group; and the Data Working Group. From an organizational design standpoint, what is the value of having these distinct groups? Does the value change in the planning process versus implementation?
Kate: Implementing the WeHo Smart City Strategic Plan is a citywide effort led by the Innovation Division. Our team is small, just two full time staff, and without the partnership of the City’s cross functional teams and working groups, we wouldn’t be able to achieve our goals. The working groups tackle different parts of implementing the strategic plan.
Strategy 1 asks the City to create a culture of data inside city hall. The Data Working Group is a large, cross-departmental group of individuals who are committed to making change by prioritizing data-driven decision making inside City Hall. Monthly meetings tackle everything from providing data resources to staff, brainstorming solutions to data roadblocks, and curating and crafting data training available for all staff. These Data Champions seek to make long lasting operational changes in their own work, and catalyze data growth across the organization.
Strategy 2 asks the City to collaborate and experiment to do more with less. The Innovation Catalyst Group is responsible for managing the Innovation Fund, a funding vehicle to test new ideas and software projects inside City Hall. Through this group, we’ve been able to fund workflow improvement and design communication software that give our staff the tools they need to be creative and innovative in their delivery of services to the community.
Strategy 3 asks the City to automate processes and experiment with new technologies. The Smart City Infrastructure Working Group breaks down silos between Divisions and Departments that work on infrastructure projects. The Innovation Division chairs the group, which brings together Engineering, IT, Facilities and Public Safety teams. We’re able to tackle problems and think outside the box on smart city pilot projects, connected infrastructure projects, and major capital improvement projects. This speeds up the pace at which we innovate in our public right of way.
Not every team in City Hall should work on every project. By targeting each work plan item with the appropriate working group, we’re able to build buy-in and support for initiatives without overwhelming the existing work plans of our partners across the City.
Cityfi: The progress report mentions that in addition to pilot smart city projects, WeHo has seen an organizational shift in the way you conduct business. Please tell us about that.
Kate: In many ways, the coronavirus pandemic sped up the rate of organizational change. The City was in the early stages of launching digital processes to improve the way we do business internally. This benefits the community because the more efficient we are internally, the better we can serve the public. Additionally, there were a number of early stage public facing digital projects, like online parking permits, that were in development but had not launched.
On March 17, 2020, innovation had to happen almost overnight. When the doors to physical City Hall were closed, a massive shift to become a digital City Hall occurred. Work plans and team priorities realigned to incorporate new workflows and digital tools. The phrase “necessity is the mother of all invention” really applies here.
There is still work to do — many of our existing analog workflows were simply recreated digitally without an emphasis on reimagining the digital user experience. Ideally, we would have gone through those exercises in person and with our users before bringing services online. But the coronavirus pandemic forced a new normal upon us, and the biggest benefit has been how nimble and adaptable to change it’s made the whole staff. We’re all open minded and ready to grow and change in the way we deliver services to our community. It will take extra work to go back and realign our processes to a better user experience, but our staff is equipped and ready for the challenge now.
Cityfi: The report uses a dashboard to show performance and progress towards each goal at a glance. What was the process to come up with these metrics and how did you choose the platform for your dashboard?
Kate: Early on in the strategic planning process, the Innovation Division knew that tracking our progress on the plan, down to the Initiative and Action level, was a critical component to evaluating success. Through extensive research, the City partnered with Envisio, a plan management software company, to map our plan on their software. Envisio allows our team to set deadlines for each action and initiative and gives us the ability to add notes, updates, reminders, and key considerations for each project. At each step of the way, we are asked to track the percent progress towards completion. This has been a great learning lesson in setting progress based metrics: the same step that might be 50% of progress on one initiative might only be 20% of the progress on another initiative. Using Envisio keeps our team accountable and mindful of our goals.
The initiatives of the Smart City Strategic Plan are set to be complete in 2022. But we know the work will not be done, as being a smart city means a continual cycle of innovation, testing, learning and implementing new ideas. In 2022, the City will explore what items remain on the work plan, what new ideas we might incorporate into the next update, and what new technologies the future holds.
WeHo Smart City is iterative, always evolving, and always looking for ways to improve the quality of life for our constituents.
Thank you Kate for your time. We look forward to seeing what the next few years have in store for West Hollywood and other smart cities around the globe!
