The Smart Cities Council and federal government kicked off Smart Cities Week, which ran September 27 to 29, 2016, with announcements of $80 million dollars in new investments to help cities leverage smart cities technologies. CompTIA is playing an integral role in these investments, offering a host of products and services through the Smart Cities Council Challenge Grants. As part of the White House smart cities initiative, the Smart Cities Council commits to award five Smart Cities Council Challenge Grants to help five American cities apply smart technologies to improve urban livability, workability and sustainability. For each of the five winning cities, the Council will deliver a tailored one-day Readiness Program during the 2017 calendar year.
We feel strongly that the smart growth of cities will help drive economic growth, innovation and opportunity for our citizens. As such, we commit to offering the following to the five award winning cities:
- Fifty complementary certification vouchers for their staff to improve workforce education. With more than 250,000 credential holders, CompTIA's Security+ is a well-respected, vendor-neutral security certification. Security+ credential holders are recognized as possessing superior technical skills, broad knowledge and expertise in multiple security-related disciplines.
- CompTIA CyberSecure licenses for each city. CompTIA CyberSecure is a self-paced training course that teaches employees how to follow security practices vital to protecting a business. The 60-minute training focuses on situations relevant to everyone from the receptionist to the CEO … not just the IT department.
- Keynote panel session involving the five cities at either the CompTIA Annual Members Meeting or ChannelCon. Each event is regularly attended by over a 1,000 key IT stakeholders.
- City specific focus in next year’s Cyberstates report in which we would spotlight the five winning entrants. Cyberstates quantifies the size and scope of the tech sector and workforce across multiple vectors and is an important reference for key decision makers on both the federal and state level.
- Guest blog post in our bi-weekly advocacy and quarterly The CompTIA State & Local Government and Education (SLED) Council newsletters.
- Opportunity for city officials to meet with our SLED Council at one of their meetings.
- Premier membership and access to all CompTIA research and materials online -- up to one year of access.
As part of the Smart Cities Week conference, CompTIA EVP Liz Hyman participated in a panel session titled “Reinventing Processes and Systems: Planning for the Smart City of the Future.” Liz focused her remarks on CompTIA VP Research Tim Herbert’s recently released report Building Smarter Cities.
Finally, as part of a stronger focus on emerging technology within the smart city environment, the Smart Cities Council established a Smart Water Technology Committee. CompTIA Senior Director David Logsdon has been nominated as the Committee’s Policy Chair.
