Grace Simrall, Chief of Civic Innovation and Technology at Louisville Metro Government and Chris Seidt, Director of IT Focus: Own incremental, continuous improvements and breakthrough innovations through technology, and encourage others to do the same Innovation: Smoothly supported a transition to distributed teams and the city’s strategic priorities by accelerating the paper-free by 2023 initiative “We were already thinking about how we’d shift the work out of the office and into people’s homes.” – Grace Simrall
The pandemic exposed many things. In Louisville, it illuminated the impacts of just-in-time innovation and continuous improvements in new ways. “Prior to the pandemic, we had set some pretty ambitious goals for IT... to push initiatives that we felt would benefit the entire metro government and, ultimately, our citizens,” Seidt said. “One of our big goals was our paper-free by 2023 initiative.” By next July, the city aims to reduce 40% of its paper consumption, an effort the pandemic accelerated. Having already invested in electronic document signing and other tools to facilitate paperless operations, Seidt and Simrall had strategically aligned this goal with priorities that mattered most to the city. As important was preparing for future unknowns. Lessons From State & Local Innovators on the Ground
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