The City of Mississauga Goes Digital The City of Mississauga, a Toronto suburb, is Canadassixth-largest city and
Question:
The City of Mississauga Goes Digital
The City of Mississauga, a Toronto suburb, is Canada’ssixth-largest city and a leading user of digital technology toimprove its operations and services. It tries to integratetechnology into its operations and strategic and business planning,with technology roadmaps for each municipal service defined inbusiness plans and budgets.
Mississauga has a vibrant multicultural population and athriving central business district, with many Canadian andmultinational corporations headquartered there. Since 1970,however, the Greater Toronto Area, including Mississauga, hasexperienced a noticeable increase in low-income families and asimilar decrease in middle-income families. Mississauga developed aSmart City Master Plan to provide a vision and framework to guidethe city’s adoption of digital technology. The city’s leadersbelieve that digital technology should be available for everyoneand provide opportunities to startups, schools, and households atrisk.
Mississauga has been a leader in technology initiatives such associal media and “bring your own device” (BYOD), which allowsemployees to use their own mobile devices for their jobs.Mississauga’s website and online services are hosted in remotecloud computing centers accessible via the Internet. (Chapter 5 ofthis text provides a detailed discussion of these technologies.) Indeploying these technologies, the city tries to focus on usability,a high-quality customer experience, and making informationtechnology and technology services available to residents of allincome and educational levels.
Mississauga is trying as much as possible to go paperless, withmeetings and collaboration via videoconferencing where participantscan “attend” meetings and share documents remotely. These effortshave significantly reduced paper use and the need to travel via caror airplane to meetings.
Mobile tools have made it possible for city staff, includingtransit operators and work operations staff in the field, whopreviously lacked computers, to access employee information andoperational data to support real-time operations and decisionmaking. Working with cellular provider Rogers Wireless, Mississaugaconnected over 600 buses that are collecting information about busoperations and routes, so that the public has real-time informationabout bus locations. The bus data collected also are used fortiming maintenance, warranty, and mileage routines so that busescan be removed from service at optimal times to minimize serviceinterruption.
Mississauga has additionally connected 700 city vehicles such asfire trucks and vehicles for snow, public works, and parksoperations, and facility maintenance to provide real-timelocation-based information. For example, connected snow vehiclesprovide real-time snow plow information to the public as well asthe expected level of service for snow removal. Onboard sensorstrack when snow blades are active, where and when salt or sand isapplied, and the rate at which these materials are applied.Mississauga recently implemented an Advanced Traffic ManagementSystem (ATMS), which connected over 700 traffic intersections usingits own high-capacity fiber optic and wireless Wi-Fi networks (seeChapter 7) along with the Rogers cellular network.
A City Hall pilot project created individual workspaces andcollaboration units on the fifth floor so that staff can choosewhere they want to sit and work. Over 90 percent of the staff onthat floor have no defined desk or desk phone, but they do havemobile technology to connect anywhere. A mobile working environmenthas helped the city attract younger employees, and it hastransformed the way top management works as well. The city manager,commissioners, and directors are trading desktops for mobiledevices.
Partnering with three other municipalities, Mississauga builtits own high-speed fiber optic network known as the Public SectorNetwork (PSN). It is the largest municipally owned fiber opticnetwork in Canada. This supports a citywide high-speed fibernetwork for transmitting large quantities of data and a wirelessWi-Fi network that supplies wireless connectivity to the public formany city services. Enterprise networking giant Cisco Canada helpedthe city build an extensive Wi-Fi network for all its communitycenters, libraries, arenas, and many outdoor locations such asparks and small business areas. This free Wi-Fi network isavailable as a “virtual campus” to college and university studentsaround the world. In 2018 over 8 million hours of free public Wi-Fiwere used across the City. Providing public Wi-Fi access in so manylocations across the city is one way for Mississauga to level the“digital divide” between residents who are technology “haves” andthose who are technology “have-nots.”
Mississauga is working with the United Way, Region of Peel,University of Toronto at Mississauga, Sheridan College, and itsBusiness Improvement Areas (BOAs) to build a mobile-friendlyecosystem across the city that can deliver services and digitaltechnology to the entire community. The plan divides Mississaugainto 23 defined communities, with one Hub center and 500 mobilitykits to residents enrolled in social support programs percommunity. Each mobility kit consists of a connected laptop. Hubswill be developed jointly with several of the large technologyfirms with Canadian headquarters in Mississauga and they willprovide coworking spaces where their employees can do their work.Eventually the city will have 100 Hubs. The city is also planningto build 500 “Connects” across its 23 communities that will provideindoor and outdoor spaces with voice-supported digital screens andfree Wi-Fi access. A “Connect” could be in a park, beside a busstop, or inside a mall, and there citizens will find free Wi-Fi, aplace to sit, and access to services and programs.
Sources: “SMRTCTY Master Plan,” smartcity.mississauga.ca,accessed February 9, 2020; Sophie Chapman, “Inside the City ofMississauga’s Technology Transformation Journey,” Gigabit, February18, 2019; and Eric Emin Wood, “How the City of Mississauga UsesMobile Technology to Engage Workers and Citizens Alike,” IT WorldCanada, May 7, 2018.
Case Study Questions
Describe the problems the City of Mississauga hoped to addressusing digital technology.
What technologies did Mississauga employ for a solution?Describe each of these technologies and the role each played in asolution.
What management, organization, and technology issues did theCity of Mississauga have to address in developing asolution?
How did the technologies in this case improve operations anddecision making at the City of Mississauga?
Operations Management
ISBN: 978-0132687584
1st Canadian Edition
Authors: Jay Heizer, Barry Render, Paul Griffin