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The Future of Miami-Dade County Is Data

Data initiatives in Florida will optimize transportation, safety and communication.

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Jimmy is a writer and editor who publishes a weekly newsletter. You can find him on Twitter.

Miami-Dade County’s tech initiatives are heating up. Led by CIO Angel Petisco, the county plans to center the future of its technology operations on data. The county will use the data to improve transportation and public safety, in addition to several other public services. The county also plans to make its data as open as possible, giving municipalities access to county data.

Here is a look at several parts of the plan:

Water management: Through the use of predictive analytics and smart metering, Miami-Dade will conserve water by monitoring consumption and identifying water leaks across the Parks, Recreation and Open Spaces Department. With the updated technologies, the county is expected to reduce water consumption by 20 percent and achieve cost savings of $1 million annually.

Intelligent policing: Using technology for intelligence analysis, lead generation and criminal identification and investigation, the Miami-Dade Police Department is expected to solve cases quicker and share information more easily across other law enforcement agencies.

Transparency: The county also plans to consolidate data analytics pertaining to finance, human resources, budgeting and planning. Through the use of a cloud-based system, users can access the government's financial information online.

Transportation efficiency: With new mobile apps, residents will have the ability to access public transportation-related updates. To better track traffic patterns and public transportation ridership, analytics will be applied to make necessary improvements.

Read IBM and Miami-Dade County Partner for Smarter Cities Initiative on Government Technology.

Perhaps most significant to Miami-Dade County is the data-sharing strategy. As Petisco outlines, a lack of communication creates duplicative services and inefficiency. It also has the potential to create silos within the county, since each municipality is looking to protect its own jobs and citizens. Open data is a plausible solution to these problems:

One challenge for a large IT project is that the county has 20 cities, six towns, and nine villages, each with its own government. Bringing them onto a shared county services is going to take some persuasion. With the smart policing effort, said Petisco, the county plans to build a model and then offer to share it with other law enforcement agencies.

“It makes no sense to have a municipal cop in one corner and a county cop two blocks down the road.”

Read Miami-Dade's IBM Smarter Cities Program - Great Promise For The Future on Forbes.