At a time when governments around the world are becoming deeply involved in managing their economies, Fredericton owes its place as an Intelligent Community to decisions to reduce the role of government in the local economy.

In colonial days, Fredericton served as the anchor of a vibrant regional economy based on trade with America's New England states. But over time, economic power gradually concentrated in the nation's geographic center, leaving the eastern provinces to become "branch office economies" dependent on decisions made elsewhere. It became so common for people to move west in search of economic opportunity that Frederictonians called it "goin' down the road."

Fredericton is the capital of the province of New Brunswick and public-sector employment shielded the community for many years from economic decline. Then in the mid-1980s, the Canadian Federal government began running large deficits and responded by offloading public costs onto provincial and municipal governments. By the 1990s, Fredericton found itself with a government that was too large, a private sector too anemic to support it, and a doubtful future.

Building a Knowledge Economy

Local government responded in 1992 with an economic development strategy called Vision 2000. It called on Fredericton to build an economy based on its unique human and economic assets, and to stop looking to others to save the day. The study itself was probably less important than the people who participated in developing it. They included city officials, university leaders, the Chamber of Commerce, real estate developers, the region's telecom firms, the hydro-electric utility and a representative of a small group of software investors.

The universities had long played a major role in Fredericton's economy and culture. The University of New Brunswick (UNB) is Canada's oldest English-language university and the first to create a computer science faculty and offer forest engineering programs. Saint Thomas University is Canada's only university focusing exclusively on teaching the liberal arts. The Maritime College of Forestry Technology is a business-government co-op that supports excellence in the management of one of Canada's most important natural resources. Through Vision 2000, the university sector began to engage in serious ways with both local government and the private sector. In 1994, UNB partnered with the city to develop the Knowledge Park, offering office space for knowledge-based businesses. The project plan emphasized quality of life with, in addition to office space, wooded areas, walking trails, and both daycare and pre-school facilities onsite. By 2007, the Park held three completed buildings totaling 90,000 square feet (8,360 m²) with a fourth 90,000 sf building under construction, and tenants included tech companies such as CGI, SkillSoft and Q1 Labs as well as the Wyndham hotel chain and the owner of the University of Phoenix, the Apollo Group. Since then, the Park has attracted more than $80M in infrastructure investment and is a primary career location for hundreds of UNB graduates. And Fredericton's innovation district as a whole hosts more than 60 R&D organizations.

To continue this trend, in 2014, Ignite Fredericton, Planet Hatch and UNB established an MOU for experiential learning. The program aims to provide students with as much practical and real-world experience as possible during their studies. Since creating the MOU, UNB has been acknowledged as Canada's most entrepreneurial university. In 2021, UNB faculty and Ignite Fredericton collaborated under the MOU to create a new MBA course in Applied Integrative Studies. The course pairs MBA students with local businesses that are suffering from a variety of challenges, including financial, marketing, HR and more. The students work throughout the course to create solutions to their paired businesses' troubles, gaining a first-hand look at the business world as part of their coursework and providing a valuable service to their partners in the process.

It was the small group of software investors, however, who probably had the biggest impact. They saw Vision 2000 as an opportunity and used the government's clear show of support to form the first informal executive network in the community. Their timing was good. As provincial and local government froze hiring and began to downsize, the best and brightest civil servants left to start "knowledge sector" businesses in technology and services. They found support both from private investors and programs introduced by the provincial and Federal governments, including the Atlantic Innovation Fund, the BREAKTHRU Business Plan Competition and the Industrial Research Assistance Program. This transformation continued over the next decades all the way to the 2020s, in which 75% of Fredericton's newly created jobs were in technology.

The Vision 2000 plan was updated in 2001 and then every three years after that. It began to target development in specific sectors such as e-learning, aerospace training, health, network security and multimedia games. The 2004 plan included a bold statement of purpose: that economic development should focus first and foremost on supporting locally owned firms and give second place to business attraction. That commitment was no doubt made easier by a track record of success. In 2005, the knowledge sector employed more people than did the provincial government for the first time in history.

The Broadband Barrier

As demand for Internet connectivity rose across Canada, Fredericton found itself a "have not" community. Carriers focused investment in the same geographic center that had so long dominated the Canadian economy and showed no interest in upgrading dial-up service in the "outer provinces." After lobbying proved unsuccessful, Fredericton decided to form its own telecommunications company. e-Novations was established as a co-op. It obtained funding commitments from 12 founding members – including the city, the universities, business users and the region's largest Internet Service Provider – and used it to build a fiber ring connecting to their facilities. It then pooled their demand and purchased broadband capacity in bulk. Each member paid for a minimum guaranteed bandwidth, but had the ability to tap any unused bandwidth in the system on demand. Because networks tend to have substantial idle capacity, e-Novations immediately reduced the members' cost and established a new competitive price point in the region. By mid-2002, e-Novations had a stable fiber ring and positive cash flow but struggled with how to meet demand from new prospective members outside the downtown core. The answer proved to be point-to-point microwave links to such facilities as the local airport, which could be set up quickly and at lower cost than fiber to the premises. When commercial carriers became members of e-Novations in order to resell broadband to their small business and residential customers, it was clear that the community network model was a success.

In 2003, Fredericton took the next step. Using its fiber ring as a backbone, the city deployed almost 300 WiFi access points throughout downtown and the business corridor, in public facilities and retail malls. Rejecting the idea of hot-spots, Fredericton sought to blanket the area with overlapping coverage zones. It branded the result the GoFred Zone: an area covering 100% of the city in which access to broadband wireless is absolutely free. The city maintains this level of WiFi access to this day, with major hotspots in the Fredericton mall, Kings Place, parks and arenas, hotels and convention centers and the airport. As Fredericton's Mayor Brad Woodside puts it, "We don't charge you to walk on our sidewalks. Why would we charge you for broadband?"

Fredericton's Partnership in Innovation with F6 Networks (now Explorenet) has also led to a network spanning over 1,500 km across New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. The city continued seeking new partnerships and established one with the Maine Fiber Company to create the first open-access dark fiber border crossing in Atlantic Canada. This network provides the lowest latency terrestrial route between Halifax, Nova Scotia and Boston, Massachusetts. Dark fiber allows customers in the city to light and manage their own dedicated fiber strands with electronics they supply. With GoFred Dark Fibre, customers can access city-wide ultra secure, ultra fast and 100% dedicated fiber optics offered on an annual rental basis or on a long term IRU (irrevocable right of use) lease. In 2020, the city partnered with Rogers Communications to make Rogers' 5G network available in Fredericton. Rogers also partnered with Ignite Fredericton to provide 5G to its the Innovation Lab at the Cyber Centre in the Knowledge Park, which will be run by CyberNB. 

Fredericton's rich broadband offerings have created a growing culture of use for broadband and IT in daily life. The city Web site offers an online database of city services, and allows residents to register for recreation and meeting space online. Parents view school announcements and homework assignments over the Internet and can participate remotely in meetings of the school board. They access the FredKid.com online portal, created entirely by Fredericton families, to learn about programs and services available to support them. The Harvest Jazz and Blues festival, one of the largest music events in eastern Canada, attracts over 80,000 fans to Fredericton each year. It takes more than 800 volunteers to produce it, and they rely on a Web-based volunteer management system to make it happen. Fredericton is also home to the National Adult Literacy Database, a nonprofit that provides Internet-based literacy and core skills training to five million users a year.

Imagine Fredericton

Fredericton continues to grow and is predicted to increase its population by 30% over the next 25 years. To ensure the growth process goes well for everyone, the city launched the Imagine Fredericton initiative in 2016. Imagine Fredericton was a multifaceted initiative that directly engaged the community to determine how to manage residential and employment growth in the coming years and what areas are of particular value to the public. The initiative included many different engagement opportunities from open houses and a variety of online tools to a three-day City Summit, one-on-one conversations and an “Imagination Station.” These activities aimed to provide citizens with an understanding of how Fredericton has grown to date, its existing assets, and the key challenges and opportunities it faces.
Imagine Fredericton resulted in a list of nine community goals for the city:

• Sustainable and Efficient
• Green and Healthy
• Welcoming and Supportive
• Strong and Diverse Economy
• Culturally Rich and Diverse
• Vibrant Downtown and Riverfront
• Complete Neighborhoods and Distinctive Places
• Complete Transportation System
• Safe and Inviting Public Realm

These goals will provide a roadmap for the city’s upcoming Growth Strategy and the new Municipal Plan in coming years. Since establishing them, the city has already designed three distinct growth scenarios for public discussion and analysis. These scenarios were presented for community feedback, which showed a clear preference for growing the city in a more compact, efficient way than before, balancing growth on the north and south sides of the Saint John River and maximizing growth in the Urban Core, where an estimated 8,000 more residents can be housed. With this feedback, Fredericton can focus on providing the best path forward for its citizens based on their preferences and future needs. As of 2019, the city added a 5-year immigration strategy to the plan in partnership with the MultiCultural Association of Fredericton and was awarded silver status by IEDC for its population growth strategy.

Connecting the Community Through Digital Projects

Beginning in 2018, Fredericton has implemented several core projects to engage with the local community and enhance quality of life. Digital Fredericton is the city’s 5-year strategic transformation plan to become more flexible, efficient, transparent and responsive government. The plan includes moving core government systems to the cloud for easier, more efficient access and usage and establishing more e-Government services and research programs to identify community needs and improve the overall experience. Digital Fredericton also includes establishment of an Open Data Portal to allow citizens to access up-to-date information and local entrepreneurs to develop e-service applications for citizens.

To collect data for public use in the Open Data Portal, the city has partnered with eleven-x to deploy Internet of Things (IoT) sensors throughout Fredericton. These sensors monitor occupancy and utilization of wheelchair accessible parking throughout the city, air and noise pollution levels in multiple areas and water consumption, and all of this data is made available to the public through the Open Data Portal. Sensors are also in place to monitor the water level of the Saint John River to help respond to flood conditions in as timely a manner as possible. Other current and planned uses of the IoT sensors parking spot occupancy status using real-time connected sensors for easier parking, quality-of-life applications for air and noise pollution, water consumption sensors in three major areas and field moisture sensors to monitor the condition of sports fields.

Fredericton also developed Fred E-Hack, a boutique-style 12-hour hackathon designed to gather ideas on potential use cases and viable products to make use of the IoT sensors. This hackathon will open up the network to entrepreneurs and innovators looking to develop new applications and business opportunities by providing access to the Fredericton Open Data Portal & API (application program interface), tech and
connectivity expertise from eleven-x and the City,  ST Microelectronics Development Kits for Proof of Concept using sensor technology, one-month free access to qwiklabs.com learning platform compliments of GDG (Google Developer Group) and Cloud Fredericton.

A Remarkable Transformation

The combination of smart strategy, hard-working private entrepreneurship and cooperative public investment in information and communications technology have completely transformed the economy of Fredericton over the past fifteen years. More than 70% of New Brunswick's knowledge industries call Fredericton home and, on a per capita basis, the city hosts the largest engineering cluster in North America. The population of Fredericton grew 14.5% since 1992 but the labor force grew 22% over the same period and average household income has jumped 13.5% since 2003. The community has added 12,200 new jobs in the past decade, and seen two of its companies win the nation's top innovation award.

And being a political capital still doesn't hurt. Fredericton's aerospace training cluster serves Canada's largest military training base, located near Fredericton. After a nationwide search, Canada's National Research Council Institute for Information Technology established the first headquarters facility outside Ottawa in Fredericton, where its e-business facility offers local companies access to cutting-edge skills from more than 50 researchers and technicians. Sixteen companies in its incubator have attracted more than C$25 million in venture capital. What distinguishes Fredericton is its success in streamlining government and stimulating a robust private sector without sacrificing the advantages that come with its political position.

In the News
Read the latest updates about Fredericton.

Population: 64,812

Labor Force: 31,505

Website: www.fredericton.ca

Smart21 2006 | 2008 | 2009 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024

Top7 2008 | 2009 | 2022 | 2024

In the life of a community, too much of a good thing can be as bad as too little. The city of Edmonton lies close to one of the largest oil deposits on Earth, which has created a foundation for prosperity but saddled the community with major challenges as well. The resource boom has swelled Edmonton into the youngest major city in Canada with the most diverse population. It has also created housing shortages, homelessness and a range of social ills. And when oil boom turns to oil bust, the challenges mount higher. To create a new economy on top of the oil-driven present, Edmonton has built the infrastructure of the new century and engaged its institutions in translating that infrastructure into a new source of prosperity.

Closing the Digital Divide

In Edmonton, as in many cities around the world, broadband speed and coverage were driven solely by telecommunications providers, leaving underserve pockets and creating a digital divide. To combat this issue, the city created the Open Access Initiative, which commits Edmonton to partner with providers through partnerships to spread broadband access throughout the city.

As of 2016, the city is working with Shaw to install Shaw Go WiFi service in city facilities and libraries for public use, with 37 facilities and 17 libraries already completed. Edmonton also provides wireless access points around the city for citizens to use free of charge as part of the Open City Wi-Fi service, with 83 access points currently installed. Fifteen of these access points have been installed on LRT platforms, including the entire Capital Line, to ensure that citizens have access to wireless networks.

Edmonton is also working to expand fiber-optic access by supporting TELUS in its $1 billion network expansion within the city. The first phase of the expansion was completed in 2015, making fiber connections available to more than 25,000 locations. TELUS also worked with the city and the Edmonton Eskimo Football Club to install equipment and infrastructure for publicly accessible WiFi at Commonwealth Stadium. Beyond the city’s cooperation with TELUS, Edmonton has partnered with Cybera (a not-for-profit technical agency) to build a fiber optic network utilizing space in the new LRT tunnels under the city.

Borrowing Books and Wi-Fi

While the city works to spread permanent broadband and Wi-Fi access to all of its citizens, the Edmonton Public Library (EPL) is loaning access to fill the gaps. The library began in July 2016 to loan portable Wi-Fi hotspots with unlimited data to adult library cardholders as part of a two-year pilot program. These 40 hotspots enable cardholders to access the Internet anywhere they take the device. “We know many Edmontonians don’t have home Internet access, and EPL is committed to providing people the skills and support they need to participate in the digital world,” said Pilar Martinez, EPL’s Chief Executive Officer. “This innovative program will provide a key tool for access to learning and information for those who need it most.” EPL cardholders logged nearly 1.4 million public Internet hours in 2015.

Preparing the Future Workforce

Another Edmonton institution, the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology (NAIT), is training its future workforce. NAIT has created numerous programs designed to give students the skills most needed by regional employers, including classes to address climate change and to help the region make its cities smarter and its industry more efficient. These programs aim to diversify Alberta’s economy for the future and to assist urban and rural businesses in the region with distance learning. Starting in 2004, NAIT has commanded a fleet of mobile semi-tractor-trailer education units known as NIMs (NAIT in Motion) that bring state-of-the-art equipment directly to communities in need of training.

Edmonton is encouraging an energy transition among its residents and businesses to avoid the worst outcomes of global warming. To help with this transition, NAIT has invested heavily in its Alternative Energy Technology program, which provides training and research in energy technology such as solar, geothermal, wind, and biofuels. The program often partners with the city of Edmonton, including a venture in which NAIT and Edmonton jointly installed solar panels on the institute’s campus to test the effects of solar panel angle and snow cover on energy capture efficiency. The data collected by this project is streamed to Edmonton’s Open Data Catalogue, while the energy gathered by the panels is used onsite.

The Alternative Energy Technology program has met with great success over the past few years, with a 92% employment rate for graduates of its full time programs within nine months of leaving the school. NAIT also offers 13,800 apprenticeship seats and is one of the largest apprenticeship trainers in Canada with 33 distinct registered trades programs.

The EndPovertyEdmonton Strategy

While Edmonton has grown far more quickly in the new millennium than most Canadian cities, the most recent data from 2012 finds that one in eight residents live in poverty. To combat this, the city turned to the people themselves for recommendations and ideas. The EndPovertyEdmonton Strategy began in September 2014 with 200 Edmonton residents from diverse backgrounds and sectors divided into seven working groups to analyze poverty issues and develop recommendations for action. In autumn of 2015, EndPovertyEdmonton sought input from thousands of Edmontonians through in-person engagement sessions and an online survey to refine the recommendations from the Working Groups.

The EndPovertyEdmonton Strategy was unanimously approved by the Edmonton City Council in December 2015. Shortly after its approval, the organization developed an Implementation Road Map to provide specific direction for combating poverty over the next five years, including making all Edmontonians aware of the realities of poverty in the city and what steps they can take to help in the immediate future and in the long term. The EndPovertyEdmonton Strategy also partnered with the Canadian Mental Health Association-Edmonton Region and BetaCityYeg (the region’s volunteer civic technology meetup) to create the LinkYEG web app. LinkYeg.ca provides real time information on nearby community resources, allowing users to search for available clothing and essentials, health and medical assistance, legal help, and family services.

No matter what price the world puts on a barrel of oil, Edmonton fears no bust. The city has built the infrastructure of the future and, as part of the process, tapped a more valuable resource than oil could ever be: its people.

Population: 899,447

Website: www.edmonton.ca

Smart21 2008 | 2009 | 2015 | 2017

Top7 2017

A successful technology cluster with ample broadband assets, Burlington seeks to remain a competitive place for businesses to grow. In consultation with citizens and businesses, local government is developing new clusters, creating education and training projects, e-government platforms, and subsidized broadband access programs.

Population: 173,811

Website: www.burlington.ca

Smart21 2006 | 2007

Free trade zone and regional business hub for information technology companies.

Population: 5,500

Website: www.dic.ae

Smart21 2006

Despite an increase in output since 1999, oil reserves will be depleted by 2020. In anticipation of this, Doha, the national capitol, has committed nearly 3% of GDP to science and technology initiatives, including Education City, which are beginning to build a society driven by knowledge work.

Population: 400,051

Website: www.gov.qa

Smart21 2008

The second largest city in Israel, Tel Aviv is also its richest, home to the nation’s stock exchange. Newsweek magazine called it one of the ten most technologically influential cities in the world, because of its concentration of venture capital, research institutes and technology firms. Other industries include chemical processing, textiles and food. By the end of 2000, the city contained 86% of Israel’s high-tech companies but is also a center for the creative industries and home to Tel Aviv University, the country’s largest academic institution. Fixed broadband passes 99% of homes and penetration is well above 60%. The Great Recession has hit Tel Aviv’s tech sector hard, particularly venture capitalists used to a 25% annual return, but pharmaceuticals, biotechnology and solar technologies continue to grow.

Population: 384,400

Website: www.tel-aviv.gov.il/english

Smart21 2010

Using funds from development agencies and the US government, this war-torn capital of Afghanistan has built a telecom-based foundation for government by linking ministries with district offices and military bases throughout the country while expanding mobile service nationwide from 0.01% to 6% in three years.

Population: 2,500,000

Website: km.gov.af/en

Smart21 2007

ICF welcomes the city of Sunderland to the Top Seven for an unprecedented fourth time this year. The largest city in the Northeast of England, Sunderland has quite literally risen from the ashes of the Industrial Age to create a globally competitive city prospering in the Broadband Economy. This transformation was due to neither luck nor location, but to visionary leadership, good planning and unrelenting commitment.

In the 1980s, this former shipbuilding and mining center on the North Sea, which at one time launched more ships than any other port in Europe, had a peak unemployment rate of 22%. As the last shipyard closed in 1988 and the last coal mine followed in 1994, Sunderland fell into the bottom 10% of Britain's "depressed districts." The legacy of heavy industry was a large unemployed group of low-skilled workers, many with chronic health problems. With so little local opportunity, young people fled the city, leaving behind a shrinking and aging population.

Partnership Strategy

Sunderland's government responded in a way that would become a much-copied strategy for success. In 1991, it organized a volunteer group called the Sunderland Partnership, comprised of members from government, local universities, the chamber of commerce and citizen leaders representing important constituencies. The Partnership developed a vision for a new economy based on what Europeans called "telematics" - the union of telecommunications and computers. While City Council staff labored to translate this vision into measurable goals and meaningful programs, the Partnership focused on politics. Members educated their organizations and constituents about the crisis into which Sunderland had fallen, the challenges to recovery, and their vision for the future. This was to prove essential to Sunderland's success, because it created the political will and integration needed to embrace change.

The Telematics Strategy was published in 1996 to cover a 5-year period through 2001. It included training programs in call center and other Digital Age skills for the unemployed, public-access Internet kiosks and "electronic village halls" with Internet access, business incubation programs and an initial, government-funded high-speed network for a metropolitan area possessing no more than basic telephone infrastructure.

Doxford International

Meanwhile, the economic development staff succeeded in persuading a real estate developer to build the first speculative building of what is now Doxford International, an award-winning office park. During the 1990s, it filled and expanded, filled again and expanded again as the European headquarters of Nike and Verisign, and home to such companies as Barclays, CitiFinancial, EDF Energy and T-Mobile. These companies were attracted by the high-quality facilities in a city with attractive wage costs, a strong incentive program, and the availability of freshly-trained labor. The same team won public-sector funding from the national government and European Commission and invested it in rebuilding the derelict waterfront into a new home for the University of Sunderland, a former technical institute that had gained university status in 1992.

By 2000, Sunderland had created 9,000 new jobs. A second Telematics strategy, covering the 1999-2003 period, focused on using ICT to promote social inclusion and ensure that everyone benefited from the city's transformation into an Intelligent Community. It set new goals, including development of a publicly-owned ISP and e-government hub called the Sunderland Host, expansion of the high-speed network to businesses and community centers, and creation of a one-stop Sunderland Portal for citizens, business and government users. There was no let-up, however, in economic development efforts. In 2002, EDS opened its first data center in the North of England in Sunderland. During the three years from 2002 to 2004, Sunderland secured 72% of the new jobs entering the region, despite having just 11% of the North's population.

The latest plan, called The Sunderland Strategy (2004-07) has focused on exploiting the city's global connectivity and growing knowledge workforce to attract even more inward investment and encourage the formation and growth of small and midsize companies. For the past five years, the number of net new jobs has increased 4.87% compared with the UK average of 3.17%. Sunderland has also seen a measurable improvement in the quality of those jobs, with growth primarily in financial and customer services that offer good pay and prospects for advancement. From 2004 to 2005, gross weekly pay in Sunderland rose at three times the national average, and the average salary for full-time employees is almost double the national minimum wage.

Working Together

Sunderland's transformation from industrial has-been to Intelligent Community illustrates the power of making many separate elements work in concert. For example, the city's activism about deploying broadband, and willingness to create joint ventures where necessary to reduce risks to the private sector, convinced carriers including NTL-Telewest, BT and Tiscali to provide broadband at competitive costs for speeds up to 10 Mbps. Broadband penetration has leaped from 25% two years ago to 75% today. The City Council has taken advantage of this connectivity to create an e-government portal that delivers a wide range of services to about 30,000 visitors per month. Broadband is also the medium for a Virtual Learning Environment created by the City of Sunderland College that is used by more than 20,000 students for training in information technology.

The "electronic village halls" created by the first Telematics Strategy are being expanded into multi-agency centers, which provide healthcare, housing, welfare rights, police, job-finder and other services as well youth and sports facilities. Video-conferencing links people using the centers to support staff. These are supplemented by kiosks distributed throughout the city. Sunderland has also identified and trained Community e-Champions to broaden digital inclusion at the neighborhood level, as part of a "peoplefirst" strategy that also equips social service workers with wireless PDAs from which they can instantly check databases and record service requests.

Following on the success of Doxford International, Sunderland has attracted major investment in technology office parks and incubators. The Business & Innovation Center at the Sunderland Science Park offers 200,00 sq. ft. (18,580 m2)of high-tech workspace housing 165 companies employing 1,100 people. The Rainton Bridge Business Park currently houses 150,000 sq. ft. (13,935 m2) of incubators and technology facilities and will become the site of a 400,000 sq. ft. development by Northern Rock that will put the site on course to exceed the original target of 4,000 new jobs.

The University of Sunderland, with 250 full time R&D staff, has become an innovation hub that makes business formation a priority. A Digital Media Center created with support from Sony is the most advanced facility of its kind in the UK, with 50,000 sq. ft. (4,645 m2) of film, TV and radio studios, and includes an incubation space for students setting up their own businesses. A New Ventures project facilitates the spin-out of new businesses from University research, while the University continues to expand incubator facilities and develop venture financing in collaboration with government and the private sector. A recent survey revealed that 10% of Sunderland's labor force is now self-employed - inspired perhaps by the success of local entrepreneurs like Paul Callaghan, who founded Leighton Group at the Business & Innovation Center in 1997. It is now a global business serving customers including British Airways, Lloyds TSB and Microsoft.

So successful have been its efforts to develop a knowledge-based economy that Sunderland has begun branding itself as the "Software City." It is remarkable to think that, in a single generation, the people of Sunderland have moved from slag heaps, slums and stagnation into a future built on turning knowledge into prosperity.

Population: 283,700

Labor Force: 126,100

Website: www.sunderland.gov.uk

Smart21 2007

Top7 2002 | 2004 | 2005 | 2007

Manchester is the hub of a Greater Manchester urban area of some 2.6 million people. It has a vibrant economy where, according to The Times of London, 60 international banks and 80 of the UK's top 100 companies have offices. In 2002, it hosted the 2002 Commonwealth Games, the world's second largest sporting event, and the Sportscity development created for the Games has become a valued asset.

But it is also a city of sharp contrasts. The district of East Manchester – once the hub of Britain's world-leading cotton industry – was decimated by the recessions of the 1970s and 1980s. It suffered a 60% employment loss between 1975 and 1985, when 52% of households were receiving state benefits. In 1998, two of East Manchester's electoral districts were among the top twenty on the UK government's National Index of Deprivation. As the rest of the metropolitan area has risen to the challenges of the Broadband Economy, the failure of East Manchester has become more glaring. But it has also planted the seeds of hope for regeneration.

The Eastserve Project

New East Manchester Limited is a partnership between Manchester City Council, national government agencies and the local community. It is responsible for developing and implementing a strategy to revitalize East Manchester's economy, increase employment, improve education and create more and higher-quality housing. One of its projects, Eastserve, is recognized by ICF for deploying an IT-based solution that addresses these goals while strengthening the social bonds of the community.

At first glance, Eastserve is a Web portal (www.eastserve.com), little different from government or neighborhood sites in thousands of communities. What sets it apart is the way in which it was implemented and the skills of the developers in meeting so many different goals.

Begun in 2000, the Eastserve project began by surveying residents on their needs for information and their ability to access it. Residents identified four priorities: employment and training, housing, policing and street-based services. As a result, the portal design included a virtual police station with anonymous crime reporting, a home-finder system for public housing, and online job searches and resume preparation system, among many other features.

The surveys also revealed that only 19% of residents had access to a computer. In response, Eastserve tapped a UK Government program that distributed recycled computers in deprived areas in order to launch a 2001 pilot project involving 450 households. Each household received a recycled PC or set-top box at a subsidized price, plus free dial-up Internet access for the first three months. The project also placed PCs at public access locations including police stations, housing offices and youth clubs. The pilot was successful enough to lead to a second phase that targeted 4,500 households to receive new or recycled computers, added new content to the Web portal, tied the project into IT training programs for schools funded by the e-Learning Foundation, and tackled the problems of financial exclusion.

Firing On All Cylinders

In Phase Two, Eastserve began firing on all cylinders, thanks to the down-to-earth advice offered by a Residents Panel of volunteers and volunteer Project Board. With 25% of East Manchester residents lacking any access to broadband, the project created a wireless Eastserve Broadband network that now links 1,700 households, six community centers and 14 schools and is being extended to adjoining neighborhoods. Its work with residents convinced Eastserve that they rapidly outgrew the capabilities of recycled PCs and set-top TV systems. In response, it began offering new fully-configured PCs at a higher price (£200) compared with £50 for a recycled system. Uptake was so strong that the cost of the subsidies made it necessary to scale the pilot back to 3,500 households. All residents who purchased the subsidized systems were required to attend a three-hour training course at local community centers, online centers or the local college. Eastserve also took the opportunity created by the sale of systems to involve the East Manchester Credit Union in handling all cash for the program and offering low-interest loans to residents. The loans made it possible for many more people to participate and also connected many of them for the first time to a financial institution other than loan sharks or check-cashing services.

This small-scale success is likely to set a pattern for greater progress in the future. According to Eastserve's leadership, the project has helped Manchester's City Council to understand both the potential of technology-based economic development and the need to invest in creating demand for e-government programs. With strong support from governmental leaders, the future of East Manchester looks brighter than it has in years.

Population: 430,000

Website: www.manchester.gov.uk

Smart21 2006 | 2009

Top7 2006

Capital of Great Britain and of the UK government's digital growth strategy.

Population: 7,500,000

Website: www.london.gov.uk

Smart21 2006