This week the City of Vancouver approved its first-ever digital strategy, continuing City Hall’s work to support the local digital economy and improve service delivery for citizens. Here’s some of the reaction from the press and on social media:
READ MORE
Statement from Mayor Robertson on TED Conference coming to Vancouver:
The world-renowned TED Conference moving to Vancouver is great news for our tourism industry and validation of our work to make our city a world leader in sustainability and innovation.
TED talks are known around the world for being a source of inspiration, innovation and an opportunity to rethink some of our most pressing challenges. Millions of people watch the talks in person and online. Having the TED organizers choose Vancouver as their new home is a big vote of confidence in the creative entrepreneurs, social innovators and community leaders who make Vancouver a leading-edge city.
The City is proud to have excellent partners in the Canadian Tourism Commission, Tourism Vancouver and the Vancouver Convention Centre that worked hard to support the TED Conference coming to Vancouver. We will work with TED and our sponsors to ensure the conference is a success and that we enable a variety of spin-off events to capitalize on being the host city. We look forward to welcoming TED here in 2014 and showing them everything Vancouver has to offer.
READ MORE
Mayor Gregor Robertson will be supporting a Council motion next week to develop a mobile ‘City App,’ which would increase access to city services and information for Vancouver residents and businesses.
“Vancouver is continuing to demonstrate leadership on how digital innovation can make a city more open, accessible and accountable to its citizens,” says Mayor Gregor Robertson. “A new mobile ‘City App’ would make the City’s key services accessible both quickly and more conveniently.”
READ MORE
Mayor Gregor Robertson joined representatives from local start-ups Growlab and Ayoudo at the closing of the Cities Summit to launch ‘Made in Vancouver,’ a community resource for local start-ups to show their pride in Vancouver’s burgeoning start-up community.
In just 24 hours since Made in Vancouver launched, over 50 local start-ups have already signed on to take part.
“The battle for cities to become digital start-up centres is competitive, and Vancouver is competing with international talent in the US, Europe, Asia, and around the world,” said Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson. “‘Made in Vancouver’ is all about fostering a stronger digital community in Vancouver, providing connections and resources for budding entrepreneurs and building tomorrow’s tech leaders.”
READ MORE
“…Our experts were unanimous in their view that the city’s open-data initiative – which aims to make the city’s vast trove of data publicly available online – is a true breakthrough.”
~BC Business Online
BC Business has awarded the City of Vancouver 2011′s B.C’s Most Innovative Organization, calling them “a hands-down favourite among this year’s panel of experts as one of the province’s leading innovators” .
The Open Data Initiative, proposed by Councillor Andrea Reimer and embraced by City staff, was launched in May 2009 and developed to ensure that citizens and businesses have access to the information that their tax dollars helped to create.
The catalogue now features over 125 data sets, including current business licenses in the city, food vendor locations, public art locations, and complete rapid transit routes – volumes of information applicable to creating everything from digital art installations, City Engineering geotracking or even the next big tourism app for enterprising social media companies.
This marks the first time a government organization has won this award that is most often associated with leading private sector companies.
To read about the city’s award, click here.
Tweet to @VanMayorsOffice