Originally published in Western City in January 2020:
Local government is in transition. Public trust in government has declined, and there is no shortage of high expectations. According to a 2016 survey, 85 percent of Americans expect the same or higher quality from government digital services as they would get from a private company. In other words, residents want to order government services in much the same way they buy a birthday present online. But local governments weren’t designed to be nimble and flexible enough to meet the demands of today’s changing technologies and community expectations. The traditional government model of bureaucratic silos filled with experts now seems archaic and irrelevant.