MIS Case Study

The City of Mississauga Goes Digital

The City of Mississauga, a Toronto suburb, is Canada’s sixth-largest city and a leading user of digital

technology to improve its operations and services. It tries to integrate technology into its operations and

strategic and business planning, with technology roadmaps for each municipal service defined in

business plans and budgets.

Mississauga has a vibrant multicultural population and a thriving central business district, with many

Canadian and multinational corporations headquartered there. Since 1970, however, the Greater

Toronto Area, including Mississauga, has experienced a noticeable increase in low-income families and a

similar decrease in middle-income families. Mississauga developed a Smart City Master Plan to provide a

vision and framework to guide the city’s adoption of digital technology. The city’s leaders believe that

digital technology should be available for everyone and provide opportunities to startups, schools, and

households at risk.

Mississauga has been a leader in technology initiatives such as social media and “bring your own device”

(BYOD), which allows employees to use their own mobile devices for their jobs. Mississauga’s website

and online services are hosted in remote cloud computing centers accessible via the Internet. In

deploying these technologies, the city tries to focus on usability, a high-quality customer experience,

and making information technology and technology services available to residents of all income and

educational levels.

Mississauga is trying as much as possible to go paperless, with meetings and collaboration via

videoconferencing where participants can “attend” meetings and share documents remotely. These

efforts have significantly reduced paper use and the need to travel via car or airplane to meetings.

Mobile tools have made it possible for city staff, including transit operators and work operations staff in

the field, who previously lacked computers, to access employee information and operational data to

support real-time operations and decision making. Working with cellular provider Rogers Wireless,

Mississauga connected over 600 buses that are collecting information about bus operations and routes,

so that the public has real-time information about bus locations. The bus data collected also are used for

timing maintenance, warranty, and mileage routines so that buses can be removed from service at

optimal times to minimize service interruption.

Mississauga has additionally connected 700 city vehicles such as fire trucks and vehicles for snow, public

works, and parks operations, and facility maintenance to provide real-time location-based information.

For example, connected snow vehicles provide real-time snow plow information to the public as well as

the expected level of service for snow removal. Onboard sensors track when snow blades are active,

where and when salt or sand is applied, and the rate at which these materials are applied. Mississauga

recently implemented an Advanced Traffic Management System (ATMS), which connected over 700

traffic intersections using its own high-capacity fiber optic and wireless Wi-Fi networks (see Chapter 7)

along with the Rogers cellular network.

A City Hall pilot project created individual workspaces and collaboration units on the fifth floor so that

staff can choose where they want to sit and work. Over 90 percent of the staff on that floor have no

defined desk or desk phone, but they do have mobile technology to connect anywhere. A mobile

working environment has helped the city attract younger employees, and it has transformed the way

top management works as well. The city manager, commissioners, and directors are trading desktops for

mobile devices.

Partnering with three other municipalities, Mississauga built its own high-speed fiber optic network

known as the Public Sector Network (PSN). It is the largest municipally owned fiber optic network in

Canada. This supports a citywide high-speed fiber network for transmitting large quantities of data and a

wireless Wi-Fi network that supplies wireless connectivity to the public for many city services. Enterprise

networking giant Cisco Canada helped the city build an extensive Wi-Fi network for all its community

centers, libraries, arenas, and many outdoor locations such as parks and small business areas. This free

Wi-Fi network is available as a “virtual campus” to college and university students around the world. In

2018 over 8 million hours of free public Wi-Fi were used across the City. Providing public Wi-Fi access in

so many locations across the city is one way for Mississauga to level the “digital divide” between

residents who are technology “haves” and those who are technology “have-nots.”

Mississauga is working with the United Way, Region of Peel, University of Toronto at Mississauga,

Sheridan College, and its Business Improvement Areas (BOAs) to build a mobile-friendly ecosystem

across the city that can deliver services and digital technology to the entire community. The plan divides

Mississauga into 23 defined communities, with one Hub center and 500 mobility kits to residents

enrolled in social support programs per community. Each mobility kit consists of a connected laptop.

Hubs will be developed jointly with several of the large technology firms with Canadian headquarters in

Mississauga and they will provide coworking spaces where their employees can do their work.

Eventually the city will have 100 Hubs. The city is also planning to build 500 “Connects” across its 23

communities that will provide indoor and outdoor spaces with voice-supported digital screens and free

Wi-Fi access. A “Connect” could be in a park, beside a bus stop, or inside a mall, and there citizens will

find free Wi-Fi, a place to sit, and access to services and programs.