Building Community to Make Life Better

Change can be daunting and smart city achievements are complex. Where does one even begin? Sometimes, it needs to be as simple as just getting started.

Earlier this summer, alongside 28,000 excited Cisco Live attendees, the City of Las Vegas proudly announced teaming up with networking giant Cisco to become a smart city. With the reality of unprecedented technology evolution and shifting urban dynamics settling in, new challenges present themselves each day. For Las Vegas, the foundational stepping stone on our journey to becoming a smart city was first, to identify the most pressing matters that needed to be solved for. And by seeking out the right alliances, like that with Cisco, the collective smart and digital agenda can help reach our desired outcomes. For the City of Las Vegas, collaboration with Cisco means creative technology solutions to help solve even the most difficult challenges. For our smart city goals, this amounts to data insights like never before.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0ry02Toiag

IT departments have tons of priorities. Some that may be more pressing than others on any given day, with each line item always competing to get on the agenda. For Las Vegas, the Internet of Things (IoT) is a major priority. IoT is and will continue to be a game changer, one that is creating new opportunities for investment and the local economy, for public service and for the community at large. For us, this will mean greater economic prosperity and an enviable community experience whether you live, work or visit the city.

Still, the City of Las Vegas, just like governments across the globe, must solve for security. As these networks of connected devices, things, people and processes grow, companies like Cisco help us deploy solutions that will enable us to roll out different technologies safely and confidently into the community. Our smart city approach considers security as embedded and an integral part of the business process.

In the digital world, we consider data as the key commodity, or the new oil so to speak. The City of Las Vegas not only needed to solve for the collection and management of the wealth of new data, we wanted to use that data to make our community a better place. Data continues to reveal how we can make better decisions on directing traffic, keeping people safe and maintaining an environmentally sustainable city. Las Vegas is proudly considered a leader in open data. The ability to also use data as an open resource can enable the community to make better decisions and drive new opportunities for economic prosperity.

Looking ahead, I am confident that these tremendous leaps will help Las Vegas build its smart city ecosystem, technology environment and economic growth that will effect change today and for decades to come.