Catawba, Wake, Durham honored as pioneering digital counties

Catawba County placed number one in its population category, Wake County ranked 4 and Durham County 10 in the 2015 Digital Counties Survey by the Center for Digital Government. The 13th annual survey recognized 54 U.S. counties as “adaptive IT leaders, collaborators and arbiters of the public trust.”

The Center for Digital Government, sister organization to Government Technology, has found 54 of the most innovative and pioneering counties in the nation in 2015. Wake County rose four places from its rank last year and was cited for its open data portal and regional collaboration on E911 services. Durham was noted for its IT governance, open-data collaboration, and coming use of cloud tech via Microsoft 365. Many counties are slow in moving to the cloud, the report says. Still, more than half moved up to 10 percent of there systems to the cloud, while 25 percent managed between 10 and 20 percent.

Fairfax, VA, a stone’s throw from DC, ranked first in teh 250,000-499,000 population category that includes Wake.

In the 150,000-249,000 category that includes Durham County, Chesterfield County, VA, nabbed the top spot, while Forsyth County in NC topped Durham, coming in at number 4.

The report recognizes Catawba for: “its social engagement initiative, centralized GIS website, performance metrics, open data efforts, shared services initiative, and commitment to the environment. Catawba County ranked first in North Carolina for total public recycling per capita.”

County CIO Rick Plato is quoted noting that social media and social engagement are crucial elements of the country’s operations, helping the County direct citizens to the services and information they want.

Catawba County was also recognized by judges for its Life, Well Run campaign, which showcases work the government has been doing. The program’s Web portal is an instance of leading by doing, Pilato said in the report.

Social engagement can be challenging, Pilato said, but they key is not to give up.

“You can create a Facebook page and only get 100 people on there,” he added, “but if you’re putting information on there that folks are really interested in, that number’s going to organically grow and sometimes you’ve got to give it time.”

He also said data needs to be presented to the public in many different forms. The data that government publishes, he said, should be easily understandable and easily manipulated by the citizenry.

“Counties are continually becoming more sophisticated in their approach to technology-based service delivery,” said Todd Sander, executive director of the Center for Digital Government in a statement. “We see this not only through the investment choices they are making in systems and tools, but also in their adding professional staff with specific expertise in security, data management and innovation.

This year’s survey also revealed trends that span the nation. Respondents reported which technologies and innovations they believed would see more of next year, and the top 10 were: