The City of Danville has won first place in its population category in the 2020 Digital Cities Survey, which recognizes the use of technology by cities to tackle social challenges, enhance services, and strengthen cybersecurity.
The Center for Digital Government (CDG) announced the winners on Tuesday.
“Innovative cities are utilizing technology and analyzing data to better serve their citizens, respond quickly to citizen needs around COVID-19, and support digital experience initiatives,” said Phil Bertolini, co-director, CDG. “The Center for Digital Government congratulates this year’s winners for their hard work and efforts to use technology to enhance citizen interactions with government.”
Danville won first place among cities with a population of up to 75,000.
The CDG noted that Danville’s comprehensive governance structure includes policy, enterprise information technology budgeting, and centralized oversight of information technology costs, purchases, and service level agreements.
“The city’s approach to resiliency planning is a best practice,” the CDG stated in a news release. “It includes quarterly testing and annual updates to its strategic plan, daily threat monitoring, collaboration with other departments, and taking actions based on ongoing testing and assessment.”
Inez Rodenburg, director of information technology for the City of Danville, called Danville’s recognition as a top digital city “a testament to the work being done by all the departments to advance innovative technologies.”
“The advancements the City is making in the area of information technology sets the foundation for enabling departments to better serve the needs of the Danville community,” Rodenburg said.
The other first-place winners were San Jose, Calif. (500,000 or more population), Virginia Beach (250,000-499,999 population), Bellevue, Wash. (125,000-249,999 population), and Sugar Land, Texas (75,000-124,999).
The CDG presented the Future Ready Award to Lynchburg.
The Center for Digital Government is a national research and advisory institute focused on technology policy and best practices in state and local government. CDG is a division of e.Republic, the nation’s only media and research company focused exclusively on state and local government and education.