What: Yorktown’s citizen services are becoming obsolete. In a world that is constantly changing, revolutionizing and advancing, Yorktown is being left behind. We can’t even sign up our kids for town Parks & Recreation programs online! We need to fundamentally redefine how we communicate, deliver citizen services and make faster decisions based upon analytics and data. This starts by closing the innovation gap, giving our town employees modern tools to accomplish daily tasks and reorganize the workflow of town services to maximize output. Most importantly it relies on design thinking techniques that puts citizens, the real end users, at the table to make sure government understands their needs and is tackling them accordingly.
How: This is the real mission for the foreseeable future if we choose to accept it. Modern technology is constantly evolving and producing tools that make our dailys tasks easier, allow our local government to become proactive and ultimately less costly by tackling tomorrow’s problems today. Tech companies from IBM to Google are investing millions of dollars in research and development for local governments. It is time Yorktown becomes an active participant.
Why: It’s time Yorktown got with the times. We are continuing conversations that started, in some cases, 50 years ago! The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over but expecting different results. If we really want a community that leads then we must start a new conversation focused on maximizing modern day tools to redefine how our government provides services and communicates with our citizens.
