2020 Impact Report
By: Nyc Mayor'S Office Of The Chief Technology Officer
Tags: Civictech, 2020, NYC, Nycgov, Year In Review

As the pandemic hit New York, the City focused its internet connectivity efforts on vulnerable communities to ensure that they have access to important information and essential services, and can stay connected with family and friends. Realizing that low-income older adults are more likely to suffer negative health impacts, in greater need of key resources, and less likely to have broadband, NYC CTO partnered with the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) to provide 10,000 internet-connected tablets to older New Yorkers who live in public housing developments. Critically, the new devices were accompanied by custom-built online tutorials and person-to-person telephone coaching and free online classes from non-profit Older Adult Technology Services (OATS).

60%

Internet adoption rate in target neighborhoods is 10–20% below the city’s average

288

NYCHA Developments delivered to, across all 5 boroughs

“When I got the tablet I didn’t realize how lonesome I was, without visits from my children. It’s like a connection to the outside, without the fear of catching the virus. I was so afraid that if I went outside I’d get sick. The tablet brings you closer to people, without physical contact.”

- NYCHA Resident & Tablet Recipient

For more information, see nyc.gov/assets/cto/#/project/connected-nycha-older-adults

Modernizing Digital Services

As millions of New Yorkers began living, learning, and working from home, demand grew for government services online and trustworthy, easy-to-find information.

NYC[x] Digital Service

Instilling digital technology capabilities inside government agencies

The NYC Digital Service was established in 2020, responding immediately to a range of urgent needs raised by the pandemic. After the success of the PPE Dashboard to track existing and projected inventories of lifesaving PPE and medical equipment, the NYC[x] Digital Service, together with volunteers from the non-profit U.S. Digital Response, rolled out an Isolation Hotels Tracker, a logistics coordination tool to support quarantined patients, medical personnel, and others in need of isolated residence. In addition, the team developed a Test & Trace Staffing Prototype, an overview of training progress for onboarding thousands of newly-hired contact tracers. The NYC[x] Digital Service also collaborated with volunteers from the U.S. Digital Response to create the open-source CDC FAQ API, an application programming interface for the Centers for Disease Control’s official frequently asked questions in order to facilitate easy access to updates to CDC guidance on the coronavirus pandemic.

NYC[x] Innovation Fellows

Embedding pro-bono tech talent in government

Building on the success of the NYC[x] Digital Service’s partnership with the U.S. Digital Response on early COVID response projects, NYC CTO launched the award-winning NYC[x] Innovation Fellows program. The NYC[x] Innovation Fellows program embeds three-to-five-person technologist teams in City agencies to rapidly solve challenges through the use of lean, agile, and user-centered methodologies, which are common in many of the country’s leading startups. The first cohort of Innovation Fellows worked through a multi-month sprint to develop three high-priority projects, each resulting in a usable technology product that offered immediate value to partner agencies, and the populations they serve.

The first cohort of Innovation Fellows launched in the summer of 2020, with each team driving forward one of three key projects:

ELSA (Easy Localization System Access)

Broadband Asset Map

Anti Bias Dashboard

The second cohort started in November of 2020, and will be completed in February, 2021. Cohort 2 partners are the Department of Finance, Small Business Services, and the Department for the Aging.

“The innovation fellowship was amazing, and easily one of the most meaningful things I’ve ever worked on.”

- NYC[x] Innovation Fellow, Cohort 1

For more information on the fellowship, these partnerships, and how to get involved, see nyc.gov/assets/cto/#/project/nyc-x-innovation-fellows

ELSA

Streamlining the process of translating the City’s digital content with an open-source translation pipeline.

As City services moved online due to COVID-19, there has been increased need to quickly and cost-effectively translate content for the nearly one million New Yorkers who do not speak English as a first language. ELSA automatically determines the portion of a website’s updated content that needs to be translated, uses translation memory to store and reuse previously translated content, and pushes back updated content once it is translated, via either machine translation or human translation. This process will reduce overhead and staff time used for management, and ensure that services and information are available to millions of New Yorkers.

Partner: Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs

For more information, see nyc.gov/assets/cto/#/project/elsa

Anti-Bias Dashboard

Fighting hate crimes by tracking bias and discrimination incidents across New York City.

Bias incidents and hate crimes increased dramatically in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, in stark contrast to a 30% decrease in other crimes. As public health measures such as mask-wearing became politicized, a wider range of individuals have been victim to bias attacks. The Dashboard helps the City understand the range of hate incidents in order to serve and protect those most at risk.

Partner: Mayor’s Office for Criminal Justice

Broadband Asset Map

Driving digital equity by mapping existing and potential broadband service-supporting assets.

As the City moves to close the digital divide, agency decision-makers need a means to visualize and track where assets can be deployed, their proximity to existing infrastructure, and context about a neighborhood and its communities. The Broadband Asset Map combines data sets from eighteen agencies to visualize where existing broadband infrastructure is located and the characteristics of both existing and potential assets. The Broadband Asset Map makes it possible to quickly identify where gaps in coverage exist and which types of equipment could be deployed to those areas, thereby enabling the City to steer resources and affordable service to the areas where they are most needed.

Accelerating Broadband for All

Too many people lack the combination of home and mobile broadband connections that have become essential. Recognizing the digital redlining and decades-long underinvestment that has led to a yawning digital divide, New York City has chosen to lead the way with widely-praised, pioneering efforts to promote digital equity.

Queensbridge Connected

Extending free broadband for North America’s largest public housing development

In April, NYC CTO extended the nationally recognized Queensbridge Connected program for three more years. Launched in 2016, the initiative has demonstrated that internet adoption rates for public housing residents can be on par with rates of the highest-income neighborhoods in the City if cost is removed as a barrier. Queensbridge Connected brings free, high-speed broadband to the 7,000 residents of NYCHA’s Queensbridge Houses, the largest public housing development in North America. In addition, the program offers onsite technical support, a community computer center for seniors, and a tech lab operated by the Queens Public Library, which provides a wide range of digital skills training to the community.

For more information, see nyc.gov/assets/cto/#/project/queensbridge-connected

Rapid Response for NYCHA

Quickly connecting those most in need

NYC CTO released a Request for Expressions of Interest: Rapid Response for Connectivity at NYCHA, soliciting ideas to bring new free or reduced-cost service options to public housing communities. The City received thirty responses offering innovative, quick-to-deploy, high-quality, low-cost or free internet service for NYCHA residents, from companies including minority and women-owned businesses and others new to the New York City market.

In July the Mayor announced a historic $157 million investment in ending digital redlining and providing high-speed internet. This investment will extend new internet service options to hundreds of thousands of underserved New Yorkers, including NYCHA residents in 2021.

For more information, see nyc.gov/assets/cto/#/project/usb-nycha

“Our mission to deliver affordable, high-quality internet service has never felt more urgent. COVID-19 has further exposed the inequalities in internet access while changing the way New Yorkers work, learn, and live.”

- Mayor Bill de Blasio

Philanthropic Partnerships

NYC CTO and our partner agencies developed philanthropic partnerships to use technology to improve the lives of New Yorkers.

With support from the Ford Foundation and Mastercard for three new key staffing roles, NYC CTO is increasing the City’s capacity to accelerate implementation of the NYC Internet Master Plan. With support from Bank of New York Mellon, youth in Inwood / Washington Heights will be provided with critical STEAM training and job readiness skills. With support from the Rockefeller Foundation, Education SuperHighway, Zoom, and The Information Technology Disaster Relief Center, more students at the City’s Learning Bridges sites will have high-performance internet to do their schoolwork.

Piloting Emerging Technologies

New and emerging technologies hold promise for the City to serve people more quickly and efficiently, making life better for New Yorkers, so long as they are tested for safety and effectiveness through the appropriate strategic frameworks, pilots, and measurement and evaluation.

City Scanner

Adding environmental sensors to fleet vehicles

NYC CTO worked with the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, the Department of Citywide Administrative Services, and MIT’s Senseable City Lab to launch City Scanner.

Project partners attached solar-powered sensor nodes — capturing data on air quality, temperature, humidity, and road conditions — on the roofs of City vehicles to inexpensively collect more hyper-local data than traditional fixed-position sensors in order to identify areas that have particularly elevated emission levels, known as “hotspots.”

For more information, see nyc.gov/assets/cto/#/project/city-scanner

Floodnet.nyc

Better resiliency through flood monitoring sensors

NYC CTO partnered with the Mayor’s Office of Resiliency (MOR), the City University of New York, and New York University to co-develop a first-of-its-kind, real-time flood monitoring system for parts of Brooklyn and Queens. Funded by a grant from the Empire State Development Corporation, as well as university contributions, the project deploys internet-connected sensors in flood-prone neighborhoods. FloodNet.NYC tests a newly-created software tool for monitoring of flood-related data, the efficacy of the LoRaWAN-based “The Things Network,” and new IoT transparency signage developed for the project — all toward potential broader use in City projects.

Rapid IoT

Low-cost, low-risk proof-of-concepts

NYC CTO also collaborated with MOR to deploy a “Rapid IoT” proof-of-concept, aimed at testing scalability of short-term, low-cost Internet of Things deployments, in this case with a focus on resiliency. During a four-week sprint, NYC CTO designed and fabricated sensors and established data communications and a dashboard for monitoring and analyzing incoming temperature data. Based on its success, the Rapid IoT model will be replicated to support low-cost, low-risk, speedy experimentation with IoT technology.

Enhancing Civic Engagement

People are at the core of everything we do. By engaging with a range of communities, collaborating deeply, and keeping an open mind toward innovative approaches, NYC CTO has shown an ability to solve problems faster, better, and cheaper.

NYC[x] Co-Labs

Co-creating technology solutions to local problems

NYC CTO, the New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC), the NYC Department of Housing Preservation and Development, and the Mayor’s Office to Protect Tenants announced the launch of the NYC[x] Co-Labs Housing Rights Challenge to help the City provide more strategic, targeted, and tailored information to tenants in the Inwood and Washington Heights neighborhood about housing rights, and to enable residents to take protective action.

NYC CTO, NYCEDC and the Mayor’s Office of ThriveNYC also released the NYC[x] Co-Labs Accessible Mental Health Challenge to improve mental health among Latinx youth through tools and technologies that improve vulnerable youths’ awareness of and access to resources.

For more information, see nyc.gov/assets/cto/#/project/inwood-co-lab

Virtual Senior Centers

Moving connections to digital spaces

Senior centers across the city face a radically changed landscape under the COVID-19 pandemic. As brick-and-mortar locations shuttered to protect public health, center providers were faced with quickly and dramatically shifting program and service delivery models to meet seniors’ needs. NYC CTO partnered with the Department for the Aging to launch a design research effort toward supporting senior center virtual programming and service delivery. Via a multi-month engagement, NYC CTO conducted interviews and workshops with City administrators, senior center providers, and older adults across the city to understand the needs of and barriers faced by each stakeholder group, in order to design solutions that address them.

“What would we do without senior centers? It’s incredible. Now after COVID I got more involved because there are programs online.”

- Research Participant

NYC[x] Moonshots

Engaging with industry to test bold new approaches

NYC CTO, NYC Cyber Command, and NYCEDC together announced three winners for the NYC[x] Cybersecurity Moonshot Challenge, launched to help the hundreds of thousands of small businesses in the five boroughs improve their data security practices and strengthen New York City as a leading hub for cybersecurity. These three awardees emerged out of 169 applicants from 77 cities in 18 countries on five different continents.

For more information, see nyc.gov/assets/cto/#/project/cybersecurity-challenge

Neighborhood Challenge

Aiding small businesses hit hard by COVID-19

NYC CTO worked with NYCEDC and the NYC Department of Small Business Services (SBS) to re-launch the Neighborhood Challenge: Tech Forward initiative, an open innovation platform designed to crowdsource solutions to support the city’s commercial districts and small storefront businesses that are facing severe impacts due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Protecting Digital Rights

Fostering a global coalition of cities

Since 2018, when New York City joined Barcelona and Amsterdam to found the Cities Coalition for Digital Rights, a network of 50+ municipalities and multilateral organizations has grown, dedicated to protecting human rights online and in the digital age. NYC CTO took a broad range of actions in 2020 toward advancing these principles for New York City, including influencing policy making, testifying before City Council and State Legislature on key issues, advancing digital rights legislation, working with experts in the field, speaking globally, and convening City agencies to address emerging challenges to digital rights.

For more information, see nyc.gov/assets/cto/#/project/cities-coalition-for-digital-rights

Global Partnerships

NYC CTO engaged with governments across the world in 2020, advancing its digital rights agenda and exchanging best practices on a wide array of topics — from universal broadband to digital transformation to COVID response.