While the process may seem to simply add additional bureaucracy to procurement in government, it is a key step in protecting resident privacy as municipalities continue to engage in more advanced technologies. In Syracuse alone we have implemented technology to listen and pinpoint the location of gunshots as they go off, drones to map out fire-prone vacant buildings, and built a mesh network into our streetlamps. These are all cutting edge technologies that will help our city grow in the new economy. Policies such as these, however, are an integral piece to the puzzle that ensures we remain safe, private, and autonomous as individuals as we contribute to Syracuse’s growth. Surveillance technologies without privacy protection can lead to invasive policing, community monitoring, and potential misuse of personal data. As city employees, we are after all here to serve Syracuse residents.
December 1, 2020, Mayor Ben Walsh of the City of Syracuse passed Executive Order 2 outlining a new surveillance technology policy for the City. The goal of this policy is to create greater transparency for residents of Syracuse while also developing checks and balances for the implementation of technologies that meet the threshold of surveillance. Departments will be submitting data collection technologies to a working group to determine whether a technology meets that threshold, the working group will be submitting anything deemed surveillance to the public for comment, and the Mayor will be making final decisions around the efficacy, fairness, and need of that technology before implementation.
This policy will engage the public in selecting what technologies are used throughout the city, but it will also help us grow our technology use in general, and create a cleaner more cohesive technology inventory. By requiring solutions to go through this process, departments can decrease redundancy while working cross-departmentally to build enterprise solutions. An audit of current technologies will allow employees to better understand our municipality’s capabilities and use them to the full extent. Consolidation of the data from these technologies will allow for greater analysis and insight as the data is used for decision making. And best practices centered around the collection, storage, and use of that data will allow the information to be shared securely with partners and the public in an anonymized way.
As cities continue to grow in their technological capabilities, greater governance around information and privacy will be necessary to keep residents safe. Engaging those residents in the process is key for building a cohesive and sustainable data governance policy. Ensuring the support from the highest levels of your municipality is key to the internal practice of the policy. Building required best practices into these policies is key to the equitable use of the resulting information. These are the tenants API and the City of Syracuse used while creating Executive Order 2, Surveillance Technology Policy, and will continue to use as we build out our data governance portfolio.
