Tech-related efforts in the city of Austin have not gone unnoticed. The city was ranked fifth in the population category of 500,000 or more on a list of the top-ranked tech-savvy digital cities in the U.S. by the Center for Digital Government and the Digital Communities program. The city of Austin has embarked on a few projects to increase transparency and community engagement, and in the past few years several neighborhoods have gained access to gigabit internet such as Google Fiber. The annual survey is now in its 15th year. The city of Austin highlighted several projects in the survey, including these three initiatives: 1. Making data digestible. The city revamped its Open Data portal in 2016, city of Austin spokesperson Bryce Bencivengo said. The tool provides access to information about city government as well as data such as local fire station locations, city permits and off-leash dog areas. “We rolled out the new look of the Open Data portal, which breaks down data into a different way,” he said. “Now things are in buckets—transportation, health, neighborhoods—and you can view it by the most recently updated data, the most popular data, and you can see more useful visualizations of data much more easily.” 2. Following the money. One city effort, Austin Finance Online, provides the public with an eCheckbook that lists all financial transactions of city government. Visitors to the site can view payment register reports by week and for the fiscal year. 3. Helping Austinites speak up online. Another engagement portal for the city is SpeakUpAustin discussion forums, through which Austinites can share their feedback with the city on topics ranging from expedited permitting to , Bencivengo said. Some ideas, such as the cell phone waiting lot at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport and bike-sharing, were initially proposed using SpeakUpAustin and have since come to fruition. SpeakUpAustin has also been a useful avenue for gaining input about issues such as affordability, mobility and environmental issues as they relate to CodeNEXT, the city’s effort to rewrite its land development code, CodeNEXT spokesperson Alina Carnahan said. The CodeNEXT team has also answered Reddit users’ Ask Me Anything questions, she said. The goal of these web-based initiatives is to capture input from residents who cannot or do not attend meetings in person, she said. “If you live in Northwest Austin, you’re not going to want to drive down to City Hall just to look at a map if you can look at it online in five minutes,” she said. “We’re definitely continuing to take that into consideration. We want to make sure we get to the broader population and get a good cross-section of what Austin looks like.” Once the draft code comes out in January the city will conduct both in-person and online events, she said. “We know we need to take a step and go the extra mile to reach people where they are,” she said.