Software AG has acknowledged the multiple awards received by Medellin, Colombia’s second largest city, in regenerating the municipality, and the role IT played in driving economic growth and social inclusion.
Amongst other awards, Medellin was acknowledged as “Innovative City of the Year” by the Urban Land Institute and received the United Nations sustainable transport award.
Medellin has introduced many infrastructure improvements as part of its vision of being a model city by 2030 including a flexible and citizen focused IT infrastructure. Aligned with the Colombian Government’s online citizen services programme, Medellin now offers its citizens an integrated requests, complaints and claims service.
The service provides personal, online or mobile citizen interfaces and has resulted in an increase in the number of requests processed from ten thousand to nearly ninety thousand per year.
“In the government sector the transition to a digital enterprise must be staged and gradually introduced, maintaining focus on not just the needs of the citizen but also on state employees and acknowledging the political dimension”,
says Gabriel Werner Brandt, director of Planning for Information Technology at the Municipality of Medellin.
“For this we needed a flexible IT infrastructure that can leverage the many investments we have made over the years. We needed an infrastructure that is easy and quick to implement and adapt, with a clear return on investment, for which the city is willing to pay. Software AG provided that“
In conjunction with the Wall Street Journal and Citi, the Urban Land Institute recognized Medellin as the world’s most innovative urban centre implementing innovative solutions to problems such as mobility and environmental sustainability The Urban Land Institute, an independent global non-profit research and education organisation, provides leadership in the responsible use of land and in creating and sustaining thriving communities worldwide.
Medellin has also been recognized by the United Nations for the multiple transport options now offered to citizens. Its new urban transport infrastructure has opened jobs and schools to the previously isolated communities living in outlaying mountainside areas with travel times for the majority of its citizens being cut from more than two hours to just a few minutes.
The principal of including all citizens in the city’s economic revival through an innovative physical infrastructure is mirrored in its IT infrastructure through its digital citizen service platform. The platform gives all citizens a voice in city hall enabling them to make petitions, claims and complaints to the municipality either online, through mobile devices or face-to-face, and follow the progress of each request to its conclusion.
The requests can concern any aspect of the citizen’s legal rights, the behaviour or service provided by state employees, including the police, or improvement needs to the city’s infrastructure.
Medellin implemented Software AG’s webMethods process automation and integration suite to link the new citizen service interfaces with automated and integrated processes. It also integrated existing IT systems and geographically validated information from the city’s Georeference system. Completed in 2011, the new infrastructure has allowed for an almost tenfold increase in the number of processed requests with the possibility of easy further expansion.
The Medellin City Hall has successfully integrated 46 different local government procedures on the single requests platform, all within two years, and is reviewing further new business cases to create new programs offering better services to its citizens.
Says Philippe La Fornara, Software AG Extended Board member responsible for Latam: “We are delighted to have supported Medellin in creating a better quality of life for the municipality. Medellin provides a great example of how the innovative use of software can make a huge difference in providing economic growth and equal opportunities and services for everyone.
“With over 7 500 requests per month being processed, the benefits of the new services have been rapidly recognized by the citizens of Medellin, the ultimate sign of the success of this project.”
