BATON ROUGE - The Center for Digital Government has named Baton Rouge a Top 10 Digital City, marking the seventh consecutive year Baton Rouge has ranked among the top digital cities in the U.S., according to a Tuesday news release from the office of EBR Mayor-President Sharon Weston Broome. 

Baton Rouge ranked seventh among mid-sized cities in the 2021 Digital Cities Survey, joining other leading cities like Alexandria, Virginia; Bellevue, Washington; and Fort Collins, Colorado.

“This recognition validates all the hard work and advancements our City-Parish has made over the past several years to integrate technology and innovation into all we do in East Baton Rouge Parish,” said Mayor Broome. “From public safety and human services to transportation and drainage projects, technology is a foundational part of our approach to delivering quality programs, services and investments that help build a strong quality of life for our residents and community.”

Over the past year, the City-Parish has implemented numerous technology initiatives and systems to improve internal efficiencies and deliver more effective services to residents while continuing to navigate the COVID-19 pandemic.

These initiatives include investing heavily in cybersecurity defenses, education, and infrastructure, as well as launching Open Budget BR, an interactive platform to promote transparency and engagement surrounding the City-Parish annual budget. 

Other digital initiatives involved gathering and monitoring data to inform the East Baton Rouge Parish stormwater master plan—one of the largest data collection and management efforts in City-Parish history—and establishing comprehensive IT infrastructure in real-time to support vaccination sites.

The City-Parish also implemented a unified telecommunications system to improve staff connectivity and responsiveness to residents, which will generate millions in cost savings, and launched the Citizen Data Academy virtual training series to help residents use and leverage the City-Parish’s open data resources.

Each year, the Center for Digital Government—a national research and advisory institute on IT policies and best practices in government—conducts the Digital Cities Survey to inform its digital city rankings. This comprehensive survey is distributed to all U.S. cities, towns, villages and consolidated city-county governments.

The Center for Digital Government will recognize the City-Parish and all of the 2021 Digital City honorees at a virtual awards ceremony on Dec. 8. 

For more information, visit: https://www.govtech.com/dc/digital-cities/digital-cities-survey-2021-winners-announced.