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[ MUSIC ]
We know that workforce development and workforce training and changes
to those systems are critical to the future of Philadelphia.
And so I am very, very excited about the forward thinking that IBM has given us
and has created a pathway for us to change systems and improve lives.
[ MUSIC ]
So the Mayor, in the first three years in his office, spent a lot of time
on revamping our workforce development system, establishing an education office that would work
with the school district to help students graduate from high school
and then potentially go on to college.
But there's a huge segment of the population for whom the school system
for whatever reason has failed it.
So they're out of school age and they need the skills to get a good job.
There are some things we had to do with traditional schools and traditional teachers,
but we also needed to think outside of the box and think
about how do we make learning something that can be accessed by anyone, anytime, anywhere.
So sort of anytime, anywhere learning was a big part of what we were thinking about.
Well, I think what's really unique about the relationship we've been able to strike
with IBM is that they're coming in the very beginning of an idea
and helping us conceptualize it and really begin to operationalize it.
And so I feel like this kind of support from a team of people who have really done this kind
of system building work before, we certainly could not have purchased
and we would not have been able to afford to purchase.
This is really a question, as the Mayor has defined it, of increasing capacity:
how can we go from serving about 125-odd thousand people a year
to serving nearly four times that many?
We don't have a lot of access in the city, so we've got...but almost all
of our folks have something in their hand that they communicate with.
So how do we make that their on ramp?
How does that become their key?
Because a lot of youth nowadays and adults, they're in their cell phones,
they're in the computers all the time but they don't use it for like the things that we need
to do like finishing off school or getting the training that we need.
It's much better for us because we're going at our own pace.
What we've learned about Philadelphia is that when it comes to low literacy,
low digital literacy and development for the workforce, they have hundreds
of organizations that actually work on this.
They all have their own silos of data and none of them are talking to each other.
So one of the things we're actually working on is building an aggregated view of the citizen.
And through the Smarter Cities Challenge in Philadelphia,
we're actually bringing all those sectors together with the idea of,
if we build this technology platform we will be able to provide that vehicle in all
of these sectors, not only the adult literacy community but also in the K
through 12 both potentially during the school day and extended time.
That's really unprecedented.
I am worried about Philadelphia becoming a city
of two communities, the have's and the have not's.
This gives me a chance to say to people at dinner, I think that we have something
that we might be able to use that is ultimately going to close that divide.
And if we work together, if we stay together on this effort, not just in this administration
but over a longer period of time, I believe that we have the possibility of closing that divide
and making sure that education and jobs are going to be available for everybody in our city.
NUTTER: The Smarter Cities initiative or the Smarter Cities Challenge is really
about putting Philadelphia and cities all across the country and around the world in a position
to truly create the 21st century workforce of the future, take an individual
from where they are and prepare them not just for a job but for a career.
And that's what Smarter Cities are all about.
[ MUSIC ]