A CIO’s roadmap to fix America’s least connected city

Brownsville knew it had a major technology problem. The city’s data center infrastructure was outdated, there were no technology-related workflows or policies, and city staff and citizens were hamstrung by constant downtime and connectivity issues. Not only did this create a performance problem, it also created security problems, says Jorge Cardenas, the southern city’s CIO. “Everything was running like a very small shop, but for a city of this size, there should be more formality and structure,” he says.

If a citizen visited the city secretary’s office to get a birth or a death certificate, for example, systems were often down, so they’d have to wait up to three hours for it to get back up and running, or they could complete a paper-based application that staff would then scan and upload manually once everything was back online. “But doing things this way is time consuming, and when you can only help two customers an hour instead of 10, you’re costing the city money,” he adds.

Hit the ground running

When Cardenas arrived in Brownsville three years ago, he created a roadmap outlining his plans to move the city forward and ensure that digital infrastructure successfully supported the city’s future growth. His overhaul of Brownsville’s digital environment began from the bottom up by stabilizing the network, implementing proper security protocols, standards and guidelines, and slowly replacing old and outdated equipment. This was important, he says, because any new system you bring in won’t work properly if your foundations are falling apart.

“I was hired to modernize the city, so the first question I asked when I got here was what does modernizing mean to you, and then where do you want Brownsville to be in five years,” he says. “They told me that they wanted to become a smart city.” So he made it clear they needed to start at the bottom and work their way up.

With each successful delivery, he gained trust and built strong relationships he could leverage with the city manager to secure funds and execute next plans. As part of this foundation phase, Cardenas was intentional about communicating his vision to everyone involved. “You can’t just tell people what you’re going to do,” he says. “You have to tell them why you’re doing it, unpacking the reasons for making the change and highlighting benefits.”

Smart city transformation

As part of the modernization project, the city built an extensive fiber network, but Cardenas and his team quickly realized they needed another connectivity solution to make Brownsville a truly smart city. So they went the wireless route, deploying a private 5G network from NTT Data. “We wanted to enhance the quality of life for the people living and working here by connecting different public spaces like parks and libraries, and also by deploying sensors to better monitor and manage key sites and resources across the city,” he says.

An international border town, Brownsville has an extensive camera network to ensure public safety, aid traffic management, and enhance city monitoring. “We knew that laying fiber cables across our network of over 300 cameras would be too expensive, which is why we opted for a private 5G network,” he adds. The network was deployed in August last year. At present, around 175 cameras have been connected, as well as various IoT sensors. Free public Wi-Fi is also available across parks and other sporting facilities.

Using these cameras, Brownsville law enforcement can quickly pick up incidents like people illegally dumping trash, which is a big city-wide issue, and capture license plate numbers so law enforcement can respond. Similarly, if someone is speeding or climbs over a fence into a restricted area, the cameras will immediately report the activity. “A strong use case for this technology is around crowd monitoring,” Cardenas says. “We’re leveraging AI to identify if someone in a crowd is carrying a weapon, for example. This allows us to be proactive in our response.” So far, this analytics capability has reduced the amount of time police were spending reviewing video footage by about 24 hours per week.

For Cardenas, in order to move from legacy to modern infrastructure, you have to understand how everything fits together and know how one change affects something else. “You must have a clear plan for every change and every movement, because it’s all connected,” he says. “Before you can become a smart city, you have to become a connected city, and while I don’t know where we currently rank in terms of the US’s smartest cities, what I can say is that in becoming a more connected city, we’ve made Brownsville a much better place to live.”