Speaker 1: District nine. My motion carries.
Speaker 0: Thank you. Moving on to item number 15, please.
Speaker 1: Report from Technology and Innovation recommendation to approve the City Smart City Initiative Strategy and Data Privacy Guidelines Citywide.
Speaker 0: I have a motion by Vice Mayor Richardson. Can I get a second, please?
Speaker 3: Yes, ma'am. It's not a motion. I'm going to I'm going to go ahead and had an abundance of caution. I work in the fiber optics space on an abundance of caution to log off or recuse myself here. Thank you.
Speaker 0: Got it. I have a motion by Councilwoman Mongo and a second by Councilmember Ringa, I. Let's do. Let's go ahead and go. I do we have a short presentation, Mr. Modica?
Speaker 6: Yes, we do. This is a strategic plan that the Council asks us to put together back in October of 2019. So we'd like to walk through what that effort has been. And I will turn it over to Leah ERICKSEN to walk us through the presentation.
Speaker 4: Good evening, Mayor. And members of the City Council, the Technology and Innovation Department is pleased to.
Speaker 2: Provide an overview.
Speaker 4: Of the proposed Smart City Initiative Strategy and data privacy guidelines for your overview and discussion.
Speaker 2: Go to the next slide.
Speaker 4: To provide background and context. In October 2019, McCarthy and the one page council directed city staff to develop a smart city strategic.
Speaker 2: Initiative to create a coordinated, coordinated approach to using technology to solve city challenges. We defined.
Speaker 4: A smart city as one that uses.
Speaker 2: Emerging technology and data to enhance city operations, improve the quality of life for our residents.
Speaker 4: And protect residents privacy. The city manager tasked to coordinate this directive. We recognize.
Speaker 1: That the city has.
Speaker 2: Already completed many projects.
Speaker 4: Using new and smart technology over the last several years, such as our automated utility meters and our E-SCOOTER program. So the intent of the Smart for the initiative is to engage in a collaborative effort to build our foundations that are already in place, expand our capacity and use resources efficiently. I will now turn the presentation over to Ryan Kurtzman, who is our Smart Cities program manager, to continue the presentations.
Speaker 3: Thank you, Leah, and good evening, Mayor, and members of the City Council. I will provide additional context for the Smart City Initiative and discuss the proposed vision, guiding principles, strategies and objectives. Next slide, please. From day one. I'd idealism to the Long Beach community members and local stakeholders to inform the Smart City strategy. We held 13 community meetings in addition to workshops, interviews and online outreach. We approach this unique lens and intentionally uplifted the voices of community groups that represent individuals left behind by the digital divide. We also spoke with technology, industry partners and city staff and launched a multilingual paper and online survey. We acknowledge that reach was not exhaustive and was limited due to the COVID 19 pandemic and the inequities associated with the digital divide. Many community groups that we reached out to let us know that they did not have the capacity to participate due to other priorities during the pandemic. However, we are committed to continuing community engagement citywide every step of this initiatives. Throughout this process, TIME collaborated closely with the Technology and Innovation Commission. On January 27th of this year, the Commission voted unanimously to approve the Smart City Initiative strategy and recommended bringing it to the full City Council for approval today. Exide. Before we present to you the proposed Smart City strategy, we must acknowledge that smart city technologies, if not regulated, have the potential to infringe upon residents personal privacy. In our community survey, we heard that although residents believe smart tools are essential, they are strongly concerned that this could mean less personal privacy. This is why city staff is proposing data privacy guidelines. In addition to the Smart City initiative for your review and approval this evening, the data privacy guidelines are contained in attachment to the staff report and address transparency and accountability. Participatory feedback channels, digital equity, ethics and nondiscrimination. Next slide. What follows is an overview of the Long Beach Smart City Initiative, vision, guiding principles and objectives. The Smart City Initiative advances solutions to civic challenges next time. By engaging the community staff and the private sector. Next slide. To explore and implement emerging technology. Next slide. It is important to note that this vision is rooted in collaboration and meeting real city challenges. The Smart City Initiative will strive to provide solutions to the needs already identified in the city's framework for racial reconciliation. Digital Inclusion Initiative, 2030 Strategic Vision and the recently proposed Long Beach Recovery Act. Next slide. Next, the Smart City Initiative proposes four guiding principles that will provide a framework to align the city's portfolio of technology projects. These principles have been adapted to address challenges following the COVID 19 pandemic and echo what we heard from the Long Beach community, which can be found in Appendix A of the final Smart City Initiative report. The first principle is to design for equity. Smart city technologies must reduce historic inequities, be accessible to all, and improve the quality of life for underserved communities. Second, the city's use of emerging technologies must build public trust by championing excellence in data privacy and transparency. Third, the Smart City Initiative will cultivate local expertize by promoting economic inclusion, supporting local businesses, improving workforce job readiness, and strengthening local partnership networks. And finally, our smart city technologies must build civic resilience. We must prioritize new technologies that improve our ability to meet resident needs and respond to the most pressing civic challenges. Next slide. The Smart City Initiative proposes four interconnected strategies and 11 objectives that align with these guiding principles and together create a roadmap through FY 2022. Guide staff will continue to lead this work in collaboration with other city departments, local stakeholders and community members. To start, the city needs to lay a strong foundation. While smart city projects will take many different forms, much of their underlying infrastructure must be shared across departments. The first strategy is for the city to assess the needed infrastructure for smart city projects. This includes conducting an inventory of physical infrastructure such as our fiber network and streetlights, and also our policy infrastructure, such as our purchasing guidelines and data sharing agreements. Upon evaluating the infrastructure, we will develop a high level public facing road map for smart city priorities. This will again align with the Framework for Racial Reconciliation, Digital Inclusion Initiative, 2030 Strategic Vision and proposed Long Beach Recovery Plan, and will continually be assessed based on what's working and what isn't. Next slide. To ensure the Smart City Initiative uplifts diverse Long Beach perspectives. The second strategy is to build a broad stakeholder network connecting industry experts, community members and city staff. We will invite collaboration from tech industry leaders to generate ideas and identify viable partnership opportunities. We will also work to create opportunities for Long Beach residents and other local stakeholders to co-design city technology solutions with a particular emphasis on including low income communities and communities of color who stand to benefit the most from gains in digital literacy and participation in the smart city economy. Next slide. The third strategy is focus on developing a lean operating model so that the Smart City Initiative can succeed with limited resources in the near term, while also setting a vision for what a more robust organization may look like in the future. In the short term, it will utilize its currently assigned 1.5 FTE to manage the Smart City Initiative and will leverage available city department funds based on department interest in technology projects in order to fund longer term or cross-departmental smart city technology projects. We will also seek outside funding sources, including philanthropic grants and revenue sharing models with private partners. Next slide. The fourth and final strategy is to develop flexible pilot models, to advance smart city technology projects that originate from three different sources the private sector, city staff and Long Beach residents and businesses. The unsolicited private pilot model would provide a framework for funneling unsolicited vendor proposals from tech companies to a single point of contact. Evaluating them with with a transparent criteria and implementing those that offer promising solutions to legitimate city needs. The city solicited. The model would prioritize challenges developed by city departments and issue a call for solutions to solicit private partners. And lastly, through the community led pilot model, the city would engage community members and solicit solicit their neighborhood specific ideas and concerns. Community members would have the power to define pilot goals and objectives, propose a prototype and select potential solutions, test and evaluate implemented solutions and make recommendations for scaling the project beyond the initial pilot phase. Next slide. I will now turn it back over to Lia to finish the presentation.
Speaker 4: Thank you, Brian. If the Smart City Initiative strategy is approved by the City Council, it will work with city staff from other departments, local stakeholders and community members to implement the strategies, objectives and pilot.
Speaker 2: Project models discussed in the previous.
Speaker 4: Slides. We will provide regular updates to the Long Beach community and will leverage the Smart City website to report on progress in meeting the key objectives. To protect residents privacy. City staff will also develop a work plan to.
Speaker 2: Operationalize the data privacy.
Speaker 4: Guidelines within city policies.
Speaker 2: Educational campaigns and procedures as appropriate.
Speaker 4: Finally, we will continue to advocate only for smart city solutions that meet city challenges, medical needs, and the priorities of the mayor and the Long Beach City Council. Next slide. With that, we conclude our staff report and we are available for any questions or feedback that you may have on the Smart City Strategic Initiative.
Speaker 2: Or the Data Privacy Guidelines.
Speaker 0: Thank you for that. Why don't we. Public comment. I think we've got two members of the public and then we'll go back to the council.
Speaker 5: Yes, we have three speakers. The first speaker is Dave Shukla.
Speaker 3: I agree with the. I'd like to speak in support of the data privacy guidelines as currently drafted by city staff. These guidelines are best understood as a public living kind of document that can and will be updated as technologies and opportunities emerge and mature. As you consider the Smart Cities initiative, I urge the City Council and city staff to adopt privacy by design principles and practice privacy by design refers to specific measures that can be taken so that smart city initiatives don't devolve into surveillance or data mining program. These measures include setting contractor or California Consumer Privacy Act compliance, refusing to grant contracts to vendors who reserve the right to change or alter their terms of use or data collection policies. Also, working with municipal purchasing and procurement at all stages of product development or data utilization by a third party to implement privacy safeguard into these technologies . Another privacy by design practice would be for the City of Long Beach to continue what it's doing, building an in-house capacity, staff capacity for a lot of the privacy and data protection issues that arise from a lot of smart city infrastructure kind of development deployment. We must recognize that private companies, for instance, digital solutions, don't have the same privacy or data protection goals as. No Roadmap for Smart City Initiative in Long Beach should proceed without first recognizing that the city, in this instance and in many other, find a contract with a vendor with a defined field for data collection. In this instance, license plate reading that. Actually it loads tremendous potential abuse and particularly when combined with other routine data, location data, time of use data can be used to build behavioral profiles of people and those behavioral profile can be sold third party vendors. So having stronger, first of all, having defined policies at all, that's a good first step. But having stronger policies specifically defined and how the city relates to vendors in these contracts is. Something I hope you all support and consider implementing some of these practices, specifically privacy by design that other things are already kind of.
Speaker 5: Do you think your next speaker is Gwen SCHIEFFER?
Speaker 2: Good evening. They are garcia and members of City Council. My name is Gwen Schaefer. I'm on faculty at Cal State Long Beach and I chair the city of Long Beach Technology and Innovation Commission. As Leah mentioned, in October 2019, Mayor Garcia directed staff to develop a smart city strategic initiative and guiding priorities. Clearly, Mayor Garcia recognizes the potential for technology to spur economic development, to make Long Beach safer, to develop a resilient workforce, and generally to improve quality of life. But you could not create a smart city without data collection and artificial intelligence. A majority of Americans responding to a recent Pew Research poll reported that they are, quote, concerned, confused and feel a lack of control over their personal information. Even so, Congress has failed to enact a comprehensive privacy law to combat the data aggregation, profiling and selective targeting that dominate our online activities. While the CFPA went into effect more than a year ago, municipal governments are exempt from complying, even though nearly 80% of Americans responding to that same Pew Research survey reported feeling very or somewhat concerned about how companies and the government use their personal data. Between November 2019 and April 2020, Ryan and I co facilitated focus group discussions with 82 Long Beach residents from all across the city ranging ranging in age from teens to seniors. We presented them with three specific smart technologies currently deployed in Long Beach. The first scenario centered around the passport parking mobile app used for beach plots owned by the city. The second scenario presented study participants told them about ring security cameras, which collect surveillance footage that residents may voluntarily share with the police department. Finally, we asked study participants about their attitudes towards Internet connected water meters that capture usage in real time. The findings reveal that privacy concerns transcend data collection practices. In fact, Long Beach residents are equally concerned about which government agencies or corporations collect their personal information and how it may be used in the future. Furthermore, through agreements for third party vendors, data generated by smart city technologies may end up serving private interests and leaving residents feeling exploited and distrustful. This underscores the need for the city of Long Beach to incorporate data privacy language into third party vendor contracts that explicitly prohibits partners from reselling personal data or using it for non stated purposes. This evening I urge City Council to approve both the Smart City Initiative and the data privacy guidelines developed by the Department of Technology and Innovation. Without such protections, Long Beach residents may ultimately determine that compromised privacy is simply too high a price to pay for the privacy.
Speaker 5: Your next speaker is Myron Rolle Wallen.
Speaker 3: Thank you, Mayor.
Speaker 2: Garcia.
Speaker 3: And members of the.
Speaker 2: City.
Speaker 3: Council. I am Myron Walden, president of the Long Beach Gray Panthers. The Gray Panthers.
Speaker 2: Are in favor of the Smart City initiative that aims to explore.
Speaker 3: And implement emerging technology. It is a notable goal in this current era, and Long Beach seniors are in dire need of a new technology. We were one.
Speaker 2: Of the groups that participated.
Speaker 3: In the community.
Speaker 2: Engagement outreach efforts.
Speaker 3: At the Long.
Speaker 2: Beach Technology and Innovation Department. We participated in two focus.
Speaker 3: Groups selected surveys from low income residents and encouraged.
Speaker 2: Our members and partners to complete the digital.
Speaker 3: Survey. The Long Beach Gray Panthers applaud the Smarts.
Speaker 2: Initiative.
Speaker 3: For including older adults as one of the.
Speaker 2: Groups that.
Speaker 3: Need help with today's new technology. During the pandemic, older.
Speaker 2: Adults have been isolated at home with little social contact. They would like to contact their family, their grandchildren, their friends. They have been depressed.
Speaker 3: We are grateful.
Speaker 2: With the city's limited ability to.
Speaker 3: Provide hardware.
Speaker 2: We have participated in distributing.
Speaker 3: This to worthy older adults in Long Beach.
Speaker 2: Then they need to learn how to use them.
Speaker 3: We have partnered with Long.
Speaker 2: Beach City.
Speaker 3: College to provide the instruction for this. In addition.
Speaker 2: We have received a grant from Spectrum.
Speaker 3: To set up a computer lab.
Speaker 2: In the Fourth Street Senior Center. The 20 or so computers just set up this month have already been used to help seniors fill out their income tax.
Speaker 3: Which has been a big hit. See, we are all well aware of how the digital revolution is a necessity for us.
Speaker 2: As older adults are frequent targets for scammers and criminals. They must be kept safe in their online privacy, protected as they.
Speaker 3: Learn to bank.
Speaker 2: Shop, pay.
Speaker 3: Bills, visit remotely to prevent.
Speaker 2: Social isolation with.
Speaker 3: Friends and family and if remote.
Speaker 2: Doctor visits.
Speaker 3: It is important.
Speaker 2: That city policy consider the needs.
Speaker 3: Of older adults and.
Speaker 2: Ensure.
Speaker 3: They have all have.
Speaker 2: Access to technology and the equipment and education.
Speaker 3: To use it effectively, as well as keep current and new technology. We need more hardware.
Speaker 2: Learning instruction, access.
Speaker 3: To the Internet. We applaud.
Speaker 2: The efforts of the city to help provide access to the Internet in some high rise.
Speaker 3: Buildings with the technology from a private company.
Speaker 2: Sorry. This needs to be expanded to more buildings.
Speaker 3: Free public Wi-Fi and wide areas.
Speaker 2: In town and.
Speaker 3: On Long Beach is also a necessity. We look forward to the implementation of the Smart Cities Initiative. We urge you to support this initiative. Thank you.
Speaker 5: Thank you. That concludes public comment for this item.
Speaker 0: Thank you. I have a motion in a second by councilman mango and Councilman Ringa. Councilman Mongo.
Speaker 4: Thank you. I'm so pleased that we're moving in this direction. This is the second time I got to see this excellent presentation and thank you to the community and the commission for all their work. And thank you to the staff in I.T. for your great leadership. I look forward to this. I'm leading us through many exciting projects ahead, including the Long Beach Passport or whatever we'll call it, to link all residents up and break the digital divide so they can access city resources from the palm of their hand 24 hours a day. Thank you.
Speaker 0: Thank you. From Ringa.
Speaker 3: I too have very supportive of this item. I think it's important that we all detect our personal data and information in the smart cities. This is a long time coming. It's been basically adopted in many cities throughout the country. And Long Beach is now going to be one of those smart cities. So be included in that to appreciate everyone's forward thinking.
Speaker 0: Thank you, Councilman Allen.
Speaker 4: Thank you, Emir. I'm also happy to see this report tonight from Director Ericsson, and I'm very supportive. I've heard from many of my constituents about the importance of this item tonight. New technologies present existing possibilities. And I absolutely love that we are engaging the private sector and the community to help harness this emerging tech. I look forward to seeing how it's built out and continue in your work with our commissioners and the community. I do have a quick question for you, Director Ericsson. What is the one high potential emerging technology that you are most excited about? I thank you, Councilwoman Allen. In addition to what Councilwoman Mongo was mentioning, our password initiative.
Speaker 2: That.
Speaker 4: Makes services easier to access. There's there's actually quite a few interesting things that we're looking at, including extremely excited by the use of AI and chat fonts to make city hall services more accessible, less bureaucratic. We're using sensors on trash trucks to detect graffiti dumped.
Speaker 2: Items of trouble.
Speaker 4: But, you know, as some of our residents mentioned, we also really need to make sure that we are also focusing on the digital divide, that that the technology investments that we're making are accessible to all. So I look forward to.
Speaker 2: Approval of.
Speaker 4: This item today. Thank you.
Speaker 0: Thank you, Councilwoman Pryce.
Speaker 4: Thank you. I want to thank staff for the report tonight as well. And I'm excited about the possibilities. I will say, although it was not directly on point, I can't really let this item tonight go without reminding somebody. I hope somebody out there is listening. But I have brought a couple of different items to explore how we can utilize technology in our city currently to advance some of our goals. And unfortunately, we've really not heard too much about those technologies that other cities are using. One of them was the street sweeping app. When we brought that item, we asked whether we had the technology for our because we have GPS on the street streets, we bring vehicles to alert residents when the truck had passed their home so that for parking impacted areas, they could go ahead and park on the side of the street once the street sweeping truck has passed. That is a technology that's been utilized in other cities. I'd love to see that incorporated in the city of Long Beach. I think we brought that item maybe a year and a half ago or so, maybe to another item that we brought probably maybe three years ago was the app for homelessness, and it's the real time bed availability app that would allow first responders to see what beds are available in the region in terms of detox beds, mental health beds, substance abuse beds or co-occurring disorder facilities. So that if we do have an individual who wants to accept a service seven days a week, our first responders would be able to take them to a facility that would be willing and available to receive them. So those are two technologies that I know other cities have been utilizing, and I feel like we can't really call ourselves a smart city until we are at least using some of the technology that's already out there being used by others. And then we can build upon that. But I think our technology team is fantastic and I know that those items that I brought, we did not bring specifically to the technology team. We we brought them as general items. So I'm not sure where they ended up, but those are examples of technologies that I hope that in the future we're able to utilize because there are cities and municipalities that are using both of those technologies that I mentioned and probably a whole bunch of others that I did to advance their goals. And I'm certainly hoping that we can use it. And then I do also want to say that until we're at the place where we have closed the digital divide, our libraries are doing a tremendous job in providing digital access. And certainly they do not have sufficient resources to be able to serve all the residents. So I think that's really important and I think this report is very positive. And the possibilities in terms of where the city can go, in my opinion, are endless. And until then, we have institutions like our libraries around to help everyone have access. So thank you for that.
Speaker 0: Is in the house.
Speaker 4: Thank you. I'm very excited about this item coming before us. This is very near and dear to my heart as well, especially because it will affect a lot of a lot of seniors, people with disabilities. It will affect the Latino community and our neighborhoods here on the west side and central Long Beach in in ways of accessing technology. I know that during COVID, we have we have realized that there is a huge digital divide. And I'm just so happy to see something like this moving forward. I encourage us to look at would my colleague just stated these technologies that Councilmember Price stated and that we look into that and that we start looking in that direction. I think that would be very, very helpful for our city. And also, I wanted to say a big congratulations to our Great Panthers, who got a big a big grant from Spectrum, a $25,000 grant to provide our seniors who had been affected by the digital divide throughout our city and to provide them with with tablets. And I think that that's a huge, huge thing. And I'm so happy that so many seniors are were able to take advantage of that. And so I'm just really excited to see us moving in this direction. Congratulations, Mr. Erikson, for this great work to to the commission. Thank you. Keep up the good work. And I'm looking forward to seeing what else you bring to us in the future.
Speaker 0: Thank you. Great work. Roll Call the.
Speaker 1: District one.
Speaker 4: And.
Speaker 1: District two.
Speaker 4: I.
Speaker 1: District three.
Speaker 4: I. II.
Speaker 1: District four.
Speaker 3: By.
Speaker 1: District five.
Speaker 4: I.
Speaker 1: District six. I. District seven. By District eight.
Speaker 3: All right.
Speaker 1: Motion carries.
Recommendation to approve the City’s Smart City Initiative Strategy and Data Privacy Guidelines to enable the City of Long Beach to use emerging technology and data to expand its capacity to enhance City operations, improve the daily lives of Long Beach residents, and protect residents’ personal privacy and digital rights.  (Citywide)