Mesa is a top-tier digital city again
After three years off the list, Mesa has returned to the top tier of U.S. cities using digital technology to serve their residents.
Mesa received the citation Nov. 15 during the National League of Cities’ annual Congress of Cities in Seattle.
It was awarded by the Center for Digital Government, an offshoot of e.Republic, a publishing and research company that focuses on how governments can better use technology.
The winning cities were cited for improving transparency, providing mobile apps for the public and using technology to save public money.
The awards were first issued in 2001. Mesa broke into the top-10 list among big cities in 2005, and by 2009 was ranked sixth in the country.
Mesa then dropped off the list for three years before returning this year in an eighth-place tie with Tucson among cities with more than 250,000 residents. Boston was No. 1.
Few other Arizona cities appeared in this year’s rankings. Avondale was No. 1 among cities with 75,000 to 124,999 population; Scottsdale and Marana also made the rankings in their population categories.
Mesa uses a variety of online tools to speed the public’s interaction with government, whether it be reporting graffiti, code-compliance issues or other problems.
The City Court has taken the technological lead in Arizona, pioneering an electronic case-management system for the Arizona Supreme Court and virtually eliminating paper records of court cases.
Perhaps most notably in Mesa’s use of tech, the online community forum iMesa continues to produce ideas for improving the city. Several were incorporated into a successful park-bond ballot initiative last year.
“Nationally, the number of tech-savvy digital cities is increasing, particularly among the larger jurisdictions responding to the survey,” said Todd Sander, executive director of the Center for Digital Government.
City Councilman Dennis Kavanaugh said, “Mesa takes pride in making its business public and transparent through its use of technology, and we are honored by Digital Cities as being one of the best cities in America for its efforts in this regard.”