Welcome to the Smart City Initiative Newsletter, the central hub for news and updates on pilot programs, partnership opportunities, events, and upcoming challenges! 

Every day we interact with technologies at home and on the go, but how often do we stop to consider the personal data collected by them? Data privacy is more than just a buzzword, it’s about safeguarding your personal information and keeping you informed about what happens to it. 

Read on to learn how you can protect your data and better understand the steps the City takes to keep your data safe.

Join us for a community workshop on protecting your data privacy! 👩🏽‍💻🌐

The workshops will inform the public about our approach to data privacy, enhance visibility and engagement with the City's data privacy products, and develop practical skills to protect data while navigating the ever-changing landscape of our digital world. 

Register for one of our data privacy community workshops.

📍 T 9/17/24 @ 6pm – Houghton Park 

📍 W 9/18/24 @ 6pm – Veteran's Park

📍 Th 9/19/24 @ 6pm – Silverado Park

Food and refreshments will be provided. For interpretation requests please send your request in advance to best accommodate. 

For questions or accommodations please contact Omar Moncayo, Data Privacy Analyst, omar.moncayo@longbeach.gov 

Check out our data privacy work featured in the LA Times this month! 📰

Aug. 1, 2024

"Rain was falling steadily as the group huddled underneath umbrellas outside the Mark Twain Neighborhood Library in Long Beach in early March, equipped with their smartphones and a mission.

Their goal: take a “data walk” around a few blocks of the city to see various technologies — security cameras, public Wi-Fi hotspots, the library self-checkout kiosk — with signs explaining how the city collects residents’ data, how it stores that information, and why.

How much does your city know about you? A lot, it turns out." - By Hannah Fry, Staff Writer 

Keep up with our data privacy policy efforts! 📶

We are pleased to share that the Long Beach data privacy policy is in the final stages of review. Over the past few months, we’ve convened an internal workgroup comprised of staff from 18 City Departments to support the development of this policy.

This policy aims to ensure the protection of personal data across all City services and products by establishing a process to evaluate the risk associated with a technology. This risk-based approach will allow us to communicate with the public about each technology's benefits and risks, and also inform what additional privacy policies will need to be created to support the responsible use of a given technology. Thank you for your continued support and engagement with these critical initiatives. We plan to finalize the policy and begin our city staff education strategy later this year.

For any questions on our data privacy efforts please contact Omar Moncayo, Data Privacy Analyst at omar.moncayo@longbeach.gov