How local and state government bodies can drive better outcomes for their citizens and employees?

24 October 2024

According to Research and Markets, the global smart cities market size is expected to reach a whopping USD 6,965.02 billion by 2030. Various technologies can help enable longer-term decision making, deliver critical services, and essentially manage everything from traffic flows to water and air quality, but to embrace their full potential, local and state government bodies should put an emphasis on creating the right network foundation.

Today's fast-paced lifestyle makes convenience essential, and innovative technology like smart devices and virtual assistants have become integral to daily life. Whether it's asking Alexa for a weather update or applying for a permit via smartphone, citizens have embraced the speed and ease of digital interactions.

Driven by urbanization, sustainability goals and lessons from the pandemic, local and state government bodies are increasingly investing in technology to meet the residents' growing demands for digital services in healthcare, education, public transportation, utilities and other areas, while at the same time improving their own operational efficiency, conforming to fiscal responsibilities.

Advanced technologies allow municipalities to drive better outcomes, e.g.:

Education: distribute resources more widely for students and their families.
Transportation: improve efficiency in bus, subway, and rail systems, reducing delays and disruptions.
Safety: deliver timely notifications on crime and severe weather to help citizens stay safe.
Prosperity: create new employment opportunities, supporting economic stability for residents.
Service: achieve greater transparency and streamlined processes in public services.
Protection: enhance communication among police, fire, and EMS for more effective emergency responses.
Conservation: optimize the consumption of electricity, gas, oil, and water for greater efficiency.

Network, the foundation of a smart community

The incremental pace of technological advancement has made the innovation ecosystem smaller and faster, but at the same time more varied and complex. As state and local governments embark on exploring new and innovative ways to improve the lives of their citizens, they require a comprehensive, reliable and powerful network foundation. One that doesn’t just enable connectivity, but unlocks the full potential of the emerging technologies.

Everyone wants to reduce mundane tasks and focus on what matters most. To address the issues of growing complexity of the IT environment, workforce shortages and evolving cybersecurity threats, public organizations need their networks to be as simple and intuitive to use, manage, and maintain as possible. A secure, flexible, and agile solution can simplify daily operations and bring peace of mind to any community, big or small.

Real-life examples of how Extreme Networks supports smart communities

By leveraging insights from advanced cloud analytics, The City of Breda in the Netherlands is better informed and can make educated choices regarding their IT initiatives and future self-service and automated processes, as the city expands. Building the new data center infrastructure on an industry-leasing, inherently secure and resilient fabric solution has helped the local government meet the growing demands of residents. Additionally, the reduced IT workload has relieved staff, allowing them to focus on new projects aimed at transforming digital government services.

“Network is more than just connectivity, it’s about what it means for the people and organizations of Breda”

The city of Breda in the Netherlands aims to be a frontrunner in digital government in order to transform the way it interacts with its residents and business. At the center of this vision lies high quality connectivity based on Extreme’s modern wired and wireless networ...

By tapping into the new, scalable and reliable network built on the Shortest Path Bridging (SPB) technology, the Belgian government managed to digitize its justice system securely and at speed. Today, a robust and high-performing network with increased bandwidth allows The Federal Public Service Justice in Belgium to provide its 20,000+ employees and thousands of users (citizens, the police, and other agencies) with a secure and seamless access to critical applications, such as a central file management application for the court and prison systems, or high-performing video conferencing for court hearings or detainee visits. Furthermore, thanks to the logical separation of consumer IoT devices from the justice system’s corporate technologies, as well as the ability to set and forget the network core during updates, the risk of a network breach or outage is significantly reduced.

FPS Justice advances its network with Orange Cyberdefence and Extreme!

According to an old saying, the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceedingly fine. But what if God had a super-fast, efficient and easy-to-manage Wi-Fi? We don’t know about that. But we do know that such setup serves the Belgium’s Federal Justice Service very w...

Borås Stad sets a shining example of how the right solution can streamline virtually all network operations while unlocking new technologies and services. For example, thanks to the new, high-performing network in place, this Swedish municipality successfully deployed Wi-Fi connected medical wristbands for the elderly citizens, allowing them to go to the park without being afraid of not being able to call for help. The cloud-managed solution not only enabled Borås Stad to increase network performance, but also reduced the maintenance costs and complexity of the network, addressing the typical challenges of limited budgets and IT staffing. Today, many of the city’s departments and institutions can count on a reliable, secure, and cost-effective connectivity for smooth operation and data exchange. Despite the exponential growth of access points and connected devices, the network is still managed by a small team of three engineers.

A smart city is a cost-efficient city

In 2021 Borås Stad, the seat of Borås municipality in Sweden, turns 400 years old. Due to the ongoing pandemic situation, the local authorities could probably ask for a better year to celebrate. But every cloud has a silver lining, as many of the city’s departments can c...

Today, with the new fabric-to-the-edge networking solution in place, Sporveien AS, the largest provider of public transport in Norway, is enjoying much faster and far more easier onboarding of new equipment, applications, services, and users. A flexibility that comes with an inherent security allows the company’s IT team to connect existing, traditional networks through one fabric and extend it to partner locations, e.g. the bus transportation sub-contractors. The risk of network downtime related to the integration of equipment is significantly reduced across the entire infrastructure, enabling seamless access to key services.

A smart Fabric-to-the-Edge network that drives efficiencies and mitigates risks

Sporveien AS is a municipal company that has been operating the public transportation in Oslo for nearly 150 years. Today, the characteristic light-blue trams are an integral part of both the city's rich history and its sustainable, cost-efficient future. To support the ...

On a daily basis, the Crisis Management and Security Department in the city of Poznań, Poland, operator of a multi-service metropolitan network spanning more than 300 kilometers of optical fiber, depends on the stability and reliability of their network. The new fabric solution allowed the IT team to build a fully resilient infrastructure – a potential failure of a single fiber connection does not impact the availability of critical services, as the latter are automatically rerouted through the shortest-path to other devices in the fabric network.

A metropolitan area network without compromise

In case of public operator networks, every network failure can pose danger to both the city and its citizens. See how the new solution provided by Integrale IT and Extreme Networks ensures reliable communication between key systems and devices, making life easier in the ...

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