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Citi Perspectives for the Public Sector
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2015 – 2016
33
cost of higher education. As importantly, it
serves as a window to the opportunities that
are potentially open to kindergarten students
regardless of the start they have in life.
Putting digitization at the heart of cities
Technology has revolutionized most people’s
working and personal lives in the past
decade. Smartphones and tablets are now
ubiquitous and citizens expect greater access
to information and more control: when people
purchase something online, they expect to be
able to track the courier delivering the item,
for example. Given their scale and lack of
resources, many cities have been slow to adopt
new technologies. In some instances, there
has also been a reluctance to change working
practices or bring in outside expertise.
However, digitization is essential if access
to services is to be widened and inclusivity
— a crucial element of well-being in a city
— increased. By adopting cutting-edge
technologies, governments can empower their
citizens and build a city where individuals want
to live and work. Specifically, digital services
can enable citizens to pay for city services
anywhere, anytime using mobile phones or
touch screen payment terminals. Parking,
congestion zone, bridge and tunnel tolls, and
transit charges can be made easier for citizens
to pay — and cheaper for cities to collect.
Technology can also improve citizens’ access to
information, improving transport efficiency and
reducing frustration.
New York City’s Department of Finance collects
and safeguards more than $40 billion in taxes,
fees and various other payments through
a network of 33 public agencies that are
responsible for everything from parking tickets
to property taxes. In partnership with the City
of New York, Citi re-engineered and modernized
the department’s collection processes across
agencies, which helps the City manage its
finances more efficiently.
The solution, which centralized collections
for the 33 public agencies in one shared
services center, creates significant
efficiencies by standardizing, streamlining
and automating what were previously multiple
receivables processes. In addition to lowering
administration and other costs it enhances
data security. For citizens, the solution
delivers multiple benefits: the time taken to
get a building permit, for example, has been
dramatically reduced while citizens no longer
need to navigate dozens of different payment
processes for different City departments.
Instead, all departments can be paid using a
single process (but with a choice of methods,
including smartphone, which improves
convenience). Other cities in the US are
currently evaluating the solution.
Leveraging outside perspectives
While cities around the world face real
challenges — both in the short- and long-term —
there are signs that many are taking a proactive
approach. Indeed, accelerating globalization is
resulting in increased competition among cities,
which are the main sources of economic growth
around the world. This is prompting growing
openness to new ideas as city governments
race to improve the livability of cities and
attract new businesses.
As a result, urban centers are now seen
as proving grounds for innovative ideas,
and collaboration across sectors is gaining
ground, enabling the best skills and ideas
to contribute to new solutions. As hubs that
attract leadership and innovators from across
the business, academic and non-profit fields,
local governments are increasingly recognizing
that they can leverage outside perspectives to
generate new ideas, and implement services
that they might not be able to do on their own.
Citi is committed to doing its part to develop
next-generation solutions to meet the toughest
urban challenges, and to make sure the financial
capacity exists to turn those concepts into
reality. By working with the public sector to
develop creative strategies, Citi is helping cities
to modernize and operate more efficiently and
inclusively so that the dream that draws so
many citizens to cities around the world can
be realized.