ProGov21 Policy Library

IT Best Practices for small municipalities

Type Policy Brief or Report

Year -

Level City or Town, State

State(s) Massachusetts

Source Massachusetts.Gov

Policy Areas Data & Technology, Democracy & Governance

This report serves as a guide for town administrators, providing fundamental information, checklists, and best practices for navigating Information Technology (IT). It emphasizes the importance of understanding IT resources, costs, and maintenance, extending beyond hardware and software...

All-Ages Access: Making Transit Work for Everyone in America’s Rapidly Aging Cities

Type Policy Brief or Report

Year 2017

Level City or Town

State(s) All States

Source Transit Center

Policy Areas Transportation & Mobility, Data & Technology

Transit can be especially important for older individuals, who “age out” of driving as their mobility, vision, and hearing decline. However, public transit can be difficult for older people to navigate, and is unreliable or insufficient for many trips in most U.S. cities. To address...

Before the Bullet Hits the Body: Dismantling Predictive Policing in Los Angeles

Type Policy Brief or Report

Year 2018

Level City or Town

State(s) California

Source Stop LAPD Spying Coalition

Policy Areas Civil Rights, Data & Technology

Predictive policing refers to a range of policing practices that claim to use pre-existing demographic, environmental, and historic crime data to predict future patterns of crime as well as projecting “where crime will occur,” and “who” will commit crime. This method of policing has...

Most State Unemployment Websites Fail Mobile and Accessibility Tests

Type Policy Brief or Report

Year 2020

Level State, National

State(s) All States

Source Information Technology & Innovation Foundation

Policy Areas Data & Technology

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, thousands of workers have applied for unemployment benefits online, only to be met with a crashed webpage. To better gauge the overall functionality of state unemployment websites, ITIF tested the page load speed, mobile-friendliness, and accessibility...

Online and Observed: Student Privacy Implications of School-Issued Devices and Student Activity Monitoring Software

Type Policy Brief or Report

Year 2021

Level School District

State(s) All States

Source Center for Democracy & Technology

Policy Areas Education, Data & Technology

During the COVID-19 pandemic, many school districts have introduced student activity monitoring software and other digital tools aimed at facilitating remote classroom management and driving student engagement. Though helpful, these tools can also be intrusive. This report examines...

Wilson Hits a Fiber-to-the-Home Run with Greenlight Municipal Broadband Network

Type Policy Brief or Report

Year 2020

Level City or Town

State(s) North Carolina

Source Institute for Local Self-Reliance

Policy Areas Community Development, Data & Technology

Due to monopoly control of broadband technology, millions of Americans do not have internet access because it is not available or affordable. To circumvent this problem, the city of Wilson began building a citywide Fiber-to-the-Home (FTTH) network called Greenlight in 2008, after...

Tracking Body Camera Implementation

Type Fact Sheet or Infographic

Year 2015

Level City or Town

State(s) All States

Source Campaign Zero

Policy Areas Public Safety, Data & Technology

Body cameras are rapidly becoming the norm in communities across the country. Campaign Zero reviewed available police department body camera policies from the largest 30 cities in America to determine whether this new technology is being implemented in ways that ensure accountability...

Artificial Intelligence and Copyright Survey

Type Policy Brief or Report

Year 2020

Level National

State(s) All States

Source Journal of Science Policy & Governance

Policy Areas Data & Technology

The rapid developments in Artificial Intelligence (AI) present a serious challenge to the American copyright system and future advancements in the AI industry. These industries rely on intellectual property protections to maintain equilibrium between productivity, remuneration, and...

No More Shackles: Ten Arguments Against Pretrial Electronic Monitoring

Type Policy Brief or Report

Year 2020

Level City or Town, County, State

State(s) All States

Source Media Justice

Policy Areas Data & Technology, Public Safety

This report outlines ten arguments against the use of pretrial electronic monitoring. It describes how monitoring restricts a person's ability to earn income; reduces access to legal resources and due process; limits participation in parenting and caregiving, increases the risk of...

The Data Transit Riders Want: A Shared Agenda for Public Agencies and Transit Application Developers

Type Policy Brief or Report

Year 2018

Level City or Town

State(s) All States

Source Transit Center

Policy Areas Transportation & Mobility, Data & Technology

High quality transit IT provides real-time displays schedules, route networks, vehicle locations, fare structures, and ridership patterns makes life easier for transit riders, public agencies, and application developers. Oftentimes, however, agencies release low-quality data that...

City of Madison IT Strategic Plan

Type Policy Brief or Report

Year 2021

Level City or Town

State(s) Wisconsin

Source City of Madison IT

Policy Areas Data & Technology

Madison's technology needs and challenges are changing rapidly, requiring an expansion in Information Technology Services and Support. This municipal strategic plan outlines improvements to cities digital toolset, connecting the public with the City government, and prioritizing customer...

Madison Network Security Policies and Procedures

Type Policy Brief or Report

Year 2022

Level City or Town

State(s) Wisconsin

Source City of Madison

Policy Areas Data & Technology, Democracy & Governance

Data de-identification is the process of modifying or removing personally identifiable information from datasets in a way that minimizes the risk of unintended disclosure of individuals' identities. This report outlines the fundamentals of data de-identification within the educational...

What Works Cities Brief: The City Hall Data Gap

Type Policy Brief or Report

Year -

Level City or Town

State(s) All States

Source What Works Cities

Policy Areas Data & Technology, Democracy & Governance

There is a gap between cities' need to adopt data-driven decision-making processes, their ability to do so, and the expectations of their constituents. This report provides a framework for local governments' data and technology usage, and provides examples of how cities innovate to...

The Perpetual Line-Up: Unregulated Police Face Recognition in America

Type Policy Brief or Report

Year 2016

Level City or Town, State, National

State(s) All States

Source Center on Privacy & Technology

Policy Areas Civil Rights, Public Safety, Data & Technology

Face recognition is the automated process of comparing two images of faces to determine whether they represent the same individual. Across the country, law enforcement performs face identification to identify individuals who refuse to identify themselves, compare mugshots against...

Cities and the Innovation Economy: Perceptions of Local Leaders

Type Policy Brief or Report

Year 2017

Level City or Town

State(s) All States

Source National League of Cities

Policy Areas Data & Technology

This report outlines the results of the National League of Cities' (NLC's) "Local Economic Conditions" survey, which examines cities' relationships with "sharing economy" companies (i.e. Uber, Lyft, Airbnb), their level of support for these companies, the benefits and concerns associated...

Crisis, Experimentation, and Prosperity: A Year of Policy Advocacy

Type Policy Brief or Report

Year 2024

Level Other

State(s) All States

Source ProGov21

Policy Areas -

This publication compiles all the policy analysis conducted and published by ProGov21 for the year of 2023. It includes policy roadmaps for local public officials addressing issues of equity, reproductive health, immigration, land use, public finance, regional coordination, housing,...

Estimating Parking Utilization in Multi-Family Residential Buildings in Washington, D.C.

Type Policy Brief or Report

Year 2015

Level City or Town

State(s) -

Source Center for Neighborhood Technology

Policy Areas Transportation & Mobility, Community Development, Public Spaces, Data & Technology

The District Department of Transportation and the District of Columbia Office of Planning led an effort to develop an empirical model for parking utilization in Washington, D.C, and to apply that model to an interactive, web-based tool utilizing the model named ParkRight DC, to support...

Asset Mapping in Androscoggin County: A Case Study

Type Policy Brief or Report

Year 2020

Level County

State(s) Maine

Source University of Southern Maine

Policy Areas Community Development, Data & Technology

The Place Matters Project seeks to understand the impact that living environments have on the transition from childhood to adulthood, focusing particularly on those with criminal records or other obstacles. The project, based at the University of Southern Maine, aims to redesign Maine's...

COVID-19: Release People From Prisons and Jails Without Electronic Monitoring

Type Policy Brief or Report

Year 2020

Level City or Town, County, State

State(s) All States

Source Media Justice

Policy Areas Data & Technology, Public Safety

This brief outlines six arguments opposing electronic monitors for people released from prisons and jails during the pandemic. The use of electronic monitoring violates social distancing, increases costs, misdirects resources, impacts access to healthcare, increases barriers to movement,...

How Data-Driven Learning is Changing Education

Type Article

Year 2014

Level State

State(s) All States, Georgia, Rhode Island, Texas

Source Government Technology

Policy Areas Data & Technology, Education

The implementation of data-driven learning in education, particularly through the use of aggregated historical datasets, can improve teachers' understanding of student needs and performance. Chief Innovation Offices can improve education policy outcomes by leveraging aggregated student...

How Telecom Monopolies are Blocking Better Internet Access, and What We Can Do About It

Type Policy Brief or Report

Year 2021

Level City or Town, County, State

State(s) All States

Source Institute for Local Self-Reliance

Policy Areas Data & Technology

Monopoly control of broadband technology is leaving many Americans unable to access high-speed internet. In particular, the market power of the biggest cable companies allows them to lock customers into overpriced, underperforming Internet service contracts for which they don’t have...

Making Smart Decisions About Smart Cities

Type Policy Brief or Report

Year 2017

Level City or Town

State(s) California

Source American Civil Liberties Union of California

Policy Areas Finance & Procurement, Data & Technology

“Smart city” products are often touted as cost-efficient solutions to providing government services and addressing societal challenges, but in reality these technologies are no more intelligent than the data and algorithms behind them. Like other tools, their effectiveness depends...

Preventing Surveillance Cities: Developing a Set of Fundamental Privacy Provisions

Type Policy Brief or Report

Year 2019

Level City or Town, State

State(s) All States

Source Journal of Science Policy & Governance

Policy Areas Public Safety, Data & Technology

This report explores five privacy provisions to mitigate the harms associated with exploiting smart city-data. The policy proposals include differentiating personally identifiable smart city data from de-identified data, creating a warrant requirement for personally identifiable smart...

Austin’s Big Secret: How Big Tech and Surveillance Are Increasing Policing

Type Policy Brief or Report

Year 2020

Level City or Town

State(s) Texas

Source Mijente

Policy Areas Civil Rights, Data & Technology

This brief examines the relationship between tech companies, city projects, and increases in policing and surveillance of Austin residents. It begins by analyzing local policing initiatives like the Austin Regional Intelligence Center and noting contracts held by local law enforcement...

Balancing Privacy and Innovation in Smart Cities and Communities

Type Policy Brief or Report

Year 2023

Level City or Town, County, State

State(s) All States

Source Information Technology & Innovation Foundation

Policy Areas Data & Technology, Democracy & Governance

While smart city technologies hold promise for improving public services and residents' quality of life, they also raise legitimate concerns about data collection and privacy. This report stresses the need to monitor cybersecurity risks, the commercial use of data, and potential government...

ProGov21 Policy Library

Remove Entry

There was an error communicating with the server.

There was an error while saving your data.

Error

Update Page Content

You are leaving the page