The City of Edmonton has been gradually expanding its presence in the world of social media. We’ve been tweeting, participating in the Connect2Edmonton forums, updating our fans in Facebook, sharing videos on YouTube and now we’re ready to launch a new blogging pilot project to share stories about how we are working on transforming the City into the community described in our long-term vision. We’re not here to repost news releases, we’re here to share information about City programs and projects in new and exciting ways and listen and respond to your comments and feedback. We want to start conversations about our community’s priorities and the actions that deliver on your priorities.
This blog is called Transforming Edmonton after our City Vision, a creative description of our future that will help to set direction, guide decisions and align the priorities of the City of Edmonton. It paints a picture of how we imagine our city will look in 2040.
Transforming Edmonton is the way the City’s administration will initiate change and focus our services and infrastructure investments on improving our quality of life. We want to show how various projects contribute to the City’s six 10-year Goals.
Our goal is to give meaning to the principles that underpin the City of Edmonton Strategic Plan. Of the four principles, one is Innovation:
a planning approach and operational culture which encourages and enables continuous improvement and the exploration and adoption of new techniques, technologies, products and ways of operating in order to improve results and lead progressive change.
This blog project is an example of the City’s commitment to Innovation. We’re recognizing the active and engaged citizenry online and working to provide information that is meaningful and supports the other three principles of integration, sustainability and livability.
It is important that this process of transformation does not take place behind a velvet curtain, only to be pulled back when a final product is ready to be showcased. This is counter-intuitive to the whole process and would make it seem that we considered the transformation of our city to be a sort of mystical process rather than something that is only possible through collaboration and engagement.
We’ll be posting regularly, so check back or subscribe via RSS to stay tuned for more stories about how we’re bringing our City Vision to life.