Dakota County Intelligent Community
Dakota Future has been leading the effort in Dakota County to apply to the Intelligent Community Forum as a Smart Community. It has been an opportunity to track success and gather stories. In fact, we’ve made the Smart21! In preparation for the next stages of the Intelligent Community Forum process, Dakota Future has worked with Robert Bell on our Dakota Future Community Metrics and Dakota Future Accelerator.
Dakota County’s economic development planning has been successful in bringing an economic development perspective to work traditionally done by the county.
Transportation, housing, workforce development and land use now include economic development considerations as investments are planned and prioritized. The county sees value in working on projects that have countywide impact; communities can be more certain about when and how the county government will become engaged in economic development programs.
In transportation, the county leadership has aggressively pursued funding for projects for transit stations, park and rides and bus rapid transit. One of these projects is fully funded and programmed for construction; the other is moving forward with building blocks towards the future.
Workforce efforts in Dakota County are our most successful and most consistent economic development initiative.
One Story of Success
The Strategic Information Technology and Security Center of Excellence at Inver Hills Community College is active in promoting skills and use in information technology from youth to the business community. The rapidly evolving capability of information and communication technology requires an equally rapid evolution of knowledge and skills. The Center for Strategic Information Technology and Security collaborates with businesses and other organizations to create and deliver information technology expertise for business success and offers resources for student networking, internships and career enhancement. Institutional partners include Metropolitan State University and Minneapolis Community and Technical College.
In partnership with Cisco and to meet the demand for Computer Technology workers with computer schools, Inver Hills Community College started a new program offering Advanced Computer Technology classes after school for high school students. The classes are offered at four locations within a ten-minute drive from their high school. Course work transfers into the two-year college degree at Inver Hills Community College. In addition, Inver Hills hosted a Best Buy Geek Squad Summer Academy. Each year, the Geek Squad conducts about a dozen academies across the country. At Inver Hills, June 10-12 was set aside for middle school students and June 17-19 for high school students. The teenagers explored technology through engaging classes and activities such as computer assembly, web technology, multimedia, green technology, Nintendo Wii, and geocaching.
This outreach to youth takes on several forms - College and High School Teacher Collaboration - 11 teacher teams with over 600 students impacted; Middle School Technology Outreach - 89 students participating; High School Readines Program - over 200 students participating with 88-95% success; Summer Program with 55 students participating; programming for 1st year college students to improve their success - 643 students participating; assisting 75 students make the move to 4 year schools and working with 50 families to increase their support of education.
