The latest Municipal Interface might be our most informative yet, and I’m not just typing that because I wrote most of it.
Released Thursday, the June 2018 issue of the Municipal Information Systems Association (MISA)/ASIM Canada’s official magazine is all about digital transformation through mobility, whether it’s choosing vendors to collaborate with (SAP Concur and SHI Canada are mentioned), ideas for creative hardware applications (check out the City of Winnipeg’s use of driving app Waze’s traffic monitoring platform), or case studies in mobility as a smart cities platform: In a magazine-exclusive feature, yours truly takes an in-depth look at the city of Airdrie, Alberta’s mobile building inspection system.
The various MISA chapters across the country have been keeping themselves busy too, with both MISA Prairies and MISA Ontario recently wrapping up their respective conferences – and if you didn’t make one or both of them, we have you covered.
Smart city aficionados, meanwhile, will enjoy reading Municipal Interface columnist and former Peel Region CTO Roy Wiseman’s take on the Smart City Challenge submissions from which 20 finalists were recently selected. We also have a case study about the city of Lethbridge, Alberta’s application, which regrettably was not among the finalists.
A modest proposal
Two factors distinguish the June issue of Municipal Interface from its predecessors: The volume of content prepared by ITWC staff (that is, me) for the magazine, and the lack of content from MISA members themselves.
While the majority of stories in this issue first appeared on either IT World Canada or sister site ITBusiness.ca (or both), all except for the City of Winnipeg case study involving Waze’s traffic monitoring platform and the MISA Prairies CIO panel were collected with Municipal Interface in mind.
Though editing and writing for Municipal Interface is both a pleasure and a privilege, the magazine is intended to be written by and for the members of MISA, so that they may learn best practices from each other.
That is why, before encouraging you to read the latest Municipal Interface (to be clear, you absolutely should), I would like to end this particular announcement with a plea: If you’re a member of MISA, or working in the municipal government space, and contributing to a technology-driven project – or if you’re not in government but participating in, contributing to, or collaborating with a smart cities project – please consider submitting an article for the next issue of Municipal Interface to editorial@itwc.ca. The next issue comes out in September: That’s three months to plan, write, and edit a few pearls of wisdom and share them with your peers. Not a writer? We’re happy to help! Previous issues have included user-submitted case studies such as a City of Edmonton project to measure city air quality using smart light bulbs and a City of Calgary initiative that added chatbots to the city’s services portfolio.
We hope to hear from you soon. Meanwhile, you can check out the June 2018 issue of Municipal Interface here.