Business Chief USA October 2019

CITY OF AURORA
ALETA JEFFRESS, CHIEF
INFORMATION AND DIGITAL
OFFICER AT THE CITY OF
AURORA, COLORADO, DETAILS
THE DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION
AND SMART CITY MEASURES
BEING PUT INTO PLACE
128
A
leta Jeffress is Chief Information and Digital
Officer at the City of Aurora, Colorado.
“There’s a lot of growth in Aurora, and we
happen to be in the fortunate position of having
land, so our footprint can continue to expand,” says
Jeffress. “There’s a lot of development east of the
city, and with that comes a lot of different challenges.
Infrastructure for instance – how do we ensure
access to water? How do we ensure that public
safety is covered as the city continues to grow,
and then what do we need to do internally to ensure
everything is working well?”
Jeffress, and the IT department which she heads,
have embarked on a program of digital transformation
in order to better meet the challenges that
growth presents. When Jeffress joined five years
ago, she began to implement a series of structural
changes. “One of the first steps in ensuring that
what we did and how we did it was repeatable was
the creation of a project management office in the
OCTOBER 2019