Smart City PDX

Portland, OR | 2023

Since 2021, the City of Portland’s Smart City PDX (SCPDX) program and the Office of Equity and Human Rights have been partnering with Portland communities to make the city a place where data and technology are used to improve people’s lives, particularly in underserved communities. “Defining an inclusive and effective governance structure for the use of surveillance technologies” was identified by community members as a top priority to address. The SCPDX team brought Cascadia Partners on to help design and implement a public engagement, communications, and facilitation strategy to engage the Portland community in discussions about this topic.

From Fall 2021 - Spring 2022 Cascadia Partners and the SCPDX team worked with the Portland community to co-design a surveillance technology policy in a series of public engagement events and workshops. As a result, Portland City Council unanimously passed a Surveillance Technologies resolution that directs the creation of a Citywide inventory of surveillance technologies and the implementation of impact and risk assessments for new ones. In 2023, the team returned to the community for guidance on the implementation of this policy, with Cascadia Partners leading the community engagement strategy and facilitation for these discussions, as well as helping to design a citywide survey which informed the way Portland’s surveillance technology policy would be implemented.

As part of this project, Cascadia Partners created an informational zine, to educate the public about surveillance technology, digital rights, and the policy making process.