City of Kalamazoo November 2021

CITY OF KALAMAZOO

Dedicated to Serving its Residents IN ASSOCIATION WITH:

CITY OF KALAMAZOO

DEDICATED TO SERVING ITS RESIDENTS

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Tim Dubois, CIO for the City of Kalamazoo discusses the city’s digital transformation strategy to continuously improve and better serve its residents

T

he City of Kalamazoo started out as a small village in Southwest Michigan.

As the city began to grow following its founding in 1831, it became a city of many firsts. “ We built the first outdoor pedestrian mall in America in 1959, Checker Taxi, a dominant taxi cab company started here, and so did Gibson Guitars. We've continued to grow. Today, we have Western Michigan University, as well as Kalamazoo College and Kalamazoo Valley Community College.

We have a young population here with the university and colleges,” says Tim Dubois, CIO for the City of Kalamazoo.

Since joining the city as CIO, Dubois has seen Kalamazoo continuously evolve. “It's continued to evolve from trying to recover from a lot of the tight budgets placed on us and the running costs and maintenance of infrastructure over the past 10 years. We are currently working towards expanding further into digital transformation across the city. We’ve started some initiatives in the smart city area, going beyond just repairing people's computers and taking care of the servers, and moving more into technology and putting that technology into the hands of our departments and the rest of the city.“ Delving deeper into the city’s digital transformation, Dubois explains that Kalamazoo’s strategy has been a bit of a start-stop one. “We’ve come up against issues and problems, and when looking for a solution we intend to find a digital one that can be implemented. But our overall strategy is to move towards a digital government. kalamazoocity.org

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City of Kalamazoo: Dedicated to Serving its Residents

"A core issue in the city is does depend largely “I KEEP MENTIONING that poverty is a big part on our residents. If they THAT WE'VE MOVED of our community. We can’t embrace a digital realise that not everyone future then we are not SOME STUFF ONLINE. can afford to move to providing a very good WE COULDN'T DO digital services, so we government service by also have to keep our THAT WITHOUT CLOUD moving everything if our manual processes going. residents are unable to BEING AVAILABLE” We are working to bridge operate it.” the gap, helping not only Being responsible TIM DUBOIS our own transformation for the entire IT CIO, to go digital but to help infrastructure and CITY OF KALAMAZOO our residents move that projects, working with way as well. This is what we are starting to departments to implement technologyincorporate into our thinking: 'How do we based solutions, Dubois explains that the improve things so that everyone can be a city is looking at various technologies to help part of the journey and not just the people it to move online. “One of the things we've that can afford it? done is incorporate a 3-1-1 call centre. So it's “We have moved some things to online a ‘one call to city hall’ type of situation where forums already, and we are continuing to our ambassadors can help with almost move in that direction. I foresee that we everything that residents want to do from will continue in this direction until we are the perspective of the city. If you need to pay fully online in the future. This again really a utility bill, pay taxes or report a pothole, 6

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our ambassadors are available to help. The technology provides the capability to access all of our different systems across the city from one spot. 90% of calls to the 3-1-1 call centre can be handled without having to be sent to another department, which is a big focus. We are also updating our website and we are hoping to go live later this year, which will help us to move everything online.”

One technology that has been critical to making all this possible is the cloud. “I keep mentioning that we've moved some stuff online. We couldn't do that without the cloud being available. Currently, we are looking into moving our operations and priority infrastructure to the cloud. But as we look for solutions to interact with and serve our residents, a key component for us is to be able to put the information into the cloud and provide residents with the ability to access it.”

When it comes to the use of IoT, 5G and other advanced technologies, Dubois explains that, “I think 5G is going to be critical to us in the future. When we look at autonomous vehicles and their capabilities across AI and machine learning I foresee it will be a great benefit to us. We've not implemented this yet.

We're currently building the foundation so we can do it in the future.

TITLE: CIO INDUSTRY: GOVERNMENT AGENCY LOCATION: KALAMAZOO, MICHIGAN Tim Dubois is the CIO for the City of Kalamazoo, Michigan since 2017, where he is responsible for ensuring the modernisation of IT to serve and support a 21st century local government. Prior to coming to the city, Tim has worked in IT for over 20 years with a variety of industries, including healthcare, manufacturing, and the military. Tim is a graduate of the US Coast Guard Academy, where he earned his Computer Science degree, and of Western Michigan University with his M.B.A. He has held several certifications, including MCSE, CCNA, and currently PMP.

EXECUTIVE BIO

Transforming the City of Kalamazoo into a Smart City Becoming a smart city goes back to the philosophy of serving residents and how the city can become a better government. “A smart city incorporates technology in order to improve and better itself. To become a smart city we have added the 3-1-1 call centre, and also incorporate some different technologies to allow us to improve when it comes to utilities. We’re putting out smart water metres, we're working with

TIM DUBOIS

CITY OF KALAMAZOO

the Metro bus system in Kalamazoo and the Foundation for Excellence to allow high school students to ride the buses for free with their student IDs. This reduces any barrier for them to get to after school activities, to jobs or wherever they need to get to within the city. It helps us to serve our residents a little bit better and make their lives better,” says Dubois.

The Importance of Connectivity and Cybersecurity for a Smart City With the pandemic highlighting the need for connectivity among the residents of Kalamazoo, the city has been working with the school systems, public libraries and other organisations to enable students to be connected so that they can school remotely during the lockdown.

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“ I foresee that we will continue to go digital until we are fully online in the future, but that again depends largely on our residents if they can’t do that then we are not doing a very good government service by moving to a place where they can’t operate” TIM DUBOIS

CIO, CITY OF KALAMAZOO

“We want to transfer this outside of schools, as adult learners and people with jobs may also need to work remotely.

The pandemic has accelerated our need for technology and the online world. It has highlighted how important it will be for the future. We need to support our residents and get them online. We're looking at different ways that we can do this, but the process is not as simple as it should be. If we want to move to a digital government, and a digital world, we have to bring our people along with us and help them to get them to where we want them to be,” says Dubois. kalamazoocity.org

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Alongside connectivity, data is another programme that the city started to look at a couple of years ago. “We’ve laid the foundations down for promoting data use, reports, and analysis. So far, what we have done has enabled us to connect all of our systems on the backend to the databases so that we have one data lake. Having one spot where we have all the data helps us to analyse and find connections that we may not have noticed before. Our data strategy to make better decisions and implement policies starts here. I am hoping to reach near real time data reports in the future so that the public can see the information,” adds Dubois.

“We’ve really laid the foundations for promoting data use, reports, and analysis” TIM DUBOIS

CIO, CITY OF KALAMAZOO

Being a global hot topic, cybersecurity is an important element for Kalamazoo: “I don't think you can be a smart city and not be strong on the cybersecurity side of it.

Our strategy has really been to fill the holes that we knew were already there a couple of years ago, and for the most part, we have. So now it’s about being a little more advanced and really continuing to protect our assets, the city, and the city’s infrastructure. Again, this is all tied to what we do as a government to serve our residents. If we were to get hit by a ransomware attack or a virus, and we weren't able to serve our residents, then we're not doing our jobs. There’s so much kalamazoocity.org

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KEY PARTNERSHIPS

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“ We really can't say enough when it comes to our partners. We can call them up and we know that they're going to give us the service that we're asking for, as well as help us find the right solution” TIM DUBOIS

CIO, CITY OF KALAMAZOO

THE CITY OF KALAMAZOO AND ITS PARTNERSHIPS Critical to the success of the city, Dubois explains that, “for us to continue to improve and continue to get where we are, Dewpoint has been a fantastic partner for us. They have really helped us with the 3-1-1 call centre, which we did fairly quickly. Dewpoint did a lot of work for us on the backend to make that happen, and they have supported our ambassadors and our system.”

Other critical partners for Kalamazoo have included Trace3 and Moss. “Both are great partners to work with on the network side.

Trace3 helped us to improve and redesign our networks so that we can be more secure, more efficient, and more reliable.

Moss has been really helpful with our local projects. The company has helped with our

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chambers to establish hybrid meetings for our city commission, and they have also been helping with other local projects on the network side.

“CDW-G has also been a truly reliable and critical partner for us, particularly for the more traditional stuff - licences, software and equipment. They have been a great partner to get what we need and to help us to understand what it is that we need and what we are getting.

“We really can't say enough about our partners. We can call them up and we know that they're going to give us the service that we're asking for, as well as help us find the right solution. They are just a call away, they have always been there for us since we've started partnering with them.”

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“ The pandemic has shown the acceleration of technology and of the online world, and how important it will be for the future. So we need to help our residents get there” TIM DUBOIS

CIO, CITY OF KALAMAZOO

to its internal ones that they are already doing. “So it's just continuing to grow and evolve into a bigger programme than before.

Future plans include partnering with not only cybersecurity companies but with other local governments - which we have already started to do. There is certainly potential for partnering with local businesses and running educational classes for local residents and businesses as well as help everyone improve in the area.

“If one person gets hit somebody else is going to get hit as well. So we want to partner together and improve everybody's cybersecurity that way,” concludes Dubois.

that goes on when it comes to cybersecurity, and it's a never-ending battle that so far we've been able to do well.”

Looking to the future, Dubois explains that the city plans to add external assessments kalamazoocity.org

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