Quick Hit News
Virginiaʼs Oculus Rail app utilizes solar-powered sensors to alert drivers of
blocked railroad crossings, aiming to reduce traffic congestion and enhance safety. Already downloaded by thousands, itʼs being positioned as the “Waze of railroad crossings,ˮ with plans to integrate into Google Maps and Waze.
Baton Rouge Police are using DOJ-funded VR training with LSU to practice de-escalation in realistic scenarios. The system records actions for feedback, aiming to reduce use-of-force incidents and build community trust.
Cook County, Ill., is using AidKitʼs tech platform to streamline $1,000 property tax relief grants, automating eligibility checks and reducing paperwork to quickly deliver funds to homeowners facing steep tax hikes.
Community Spotlight
Mayor Kate Gallego, City of Phoenix: Heat, Innovation, and a “Smart Regionˮ Vision
Mayor Kate Gallego leads Phoenix with a blend of climate urgency and data-driven optimism, shaped by an early awareness of air quality and a background in environmental science from Harvard and an MBA from Wharton. As Phoenixʼs second woman mayor and one of the youngest leaders of a major U.S. city, sheʼs positioned the fifth-largest city as both a climate frontline community and a testbed for practical innovation.
On heat, Gallego has become one of the most visible big-city voices in the world. Under her leadership, Phoenix adopted a C40-aligned Climate Action Plan and is now publishing detailed progress reports that track emissions, resilience, and neighborhood-level heat risk. Sheʼs championed an aggressive heat response agenda, combining tree planting, shade structures, cool-surface pilots, and specialized training for first responders, to help residents survive record-breaking summers where temperatures have topped 118°F. At global mayoral gatherings, sheʼs framed extreme heat not as an abstract issue but as a daily public-health and equity challenge for her city.
Inside City Hall, innovation is treated as infrastructure, and the Office of Innovation uses data, pilots, and resident input to tackle practical problems, from performance dashboards to “smart cityˮ projects. One flagship effort, the Chilled Drinking Water in Public Spaces Initiative, just won a 2025 IDC Smart Cities North America Award for deploying sensor-enabled, heat-resilient water stations along key pedestrian and transit corridors downtown. For Gallego, the project is as much about dignity and zero-waste hydration as it is about technology.
Regionally, sheʼs a consistent evangelist for “smart region, not just smart city.ˮ Gallego regularly convenes neighboring cities, tribal nations, universities, and the private sector around shared platforms and joint investments in AI, digital twins, and mobility. At recent Smart Region Summit, she highlighted Phoenixʼs role as a semiconductor and autonomous-vehicle hub and tied that growth to inclusive job training, improved transit, and better digital equity.
Looking ahead, Kate Gallegoʼs north star is to use innovation to make a hot, fast- growing desert city safer, fairer, and more livable. From climate action and shade hackathons to accessibility upgrades at Sky Harbor and region-wide AI experiments, her administration treats technology as a civic tool.
Resources & Events
📅 Higher Education IT Strategy Leadership Summit 2025 (New York City, NY - December 11, 2025)
This invitation-only summit will bring together higher education CIOs and IT leaders to discuss modernization, workforce transformation, cloud migration, and AI integration. Sessions will focus on balancing technical debt, driving change management, and positioning IT as a strategic partner. Details →
This live webinar will bring together government and industry leaders to discuss evolving cloud security and compliance standards. Key sessions will highlight modernization efforts, state-level adaptations, and the role of technology partners in advancing secure, compliant cloud adoption. Details →
📊Report Spotlight: 3 Cornerstones of Constituent Engagement (GovTech)
The report stresses that governments can build trust by focusing on transparency, accessibility, and responsiveness. Digital platforms and data-driven tools simplify services, improve communication, and speed up responses, but true engagement also requires a cultural shift toward openness and proactive service delivery. Read →
Insight of the Week
Emergency management works like layered software, with local governments as the foundation, states as middleware, and the federal government as the application layer. And strong local preparedness, communication, and independent response capacity are critical to preventing cascading failures and ensuring national resilience.
For the Commute
State of Jax: Data as a Civic Compass (News4JAX)
Mayor Donna Deegan and Chief of Analytics Dr. Parvez Ahmed introduce State of Jax, a public-private data partnership designed to “sharpen the axeˮ of local decision-making. They walk through new dashboards that benchmark Jacksonville against peer cities, drill down to the neighborhood level on issues like life expectancy, pediatrician access, rent burden, and education, and translate those gaps into concrete economic impact.
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