Making Technology Accessible for All in Bay Harbor Islands, Florida
On this episode of Bridging the Digital Divide, we chat to Bridget Anne Morin, the Director of Communications in Bay Harbor Islands, Florida and she is no stranger to a challenge. With her intriguing career journey and positive attitude, she continues to work hard to connect all residents with useful information and technology to help them day to day.
In our conversation with Bridget, we talk about the importance of accessible technology, social media influence, and more. Listen in to hear how Bay Harbor Islands is creating powerful connections in their community one day at a time.
Read full transcript below:
Bridget Anne Morin: If you are going to expect the people that you work with to embrace a particular type of technology, that you need to take responsibility for it, to make sure that it works and first do your research and make sure that what you're pushing is actually a good thing.
Ally Peters: Welcome to Bridging the Digital Divide, a Smart City Podcast from Soofa, where we explore the places where urban landscapes are intertwined with technology to see how connectivity thrives, innovation sparks, and sustainability grows.
Kiel Hauck: Welcome to Bridging the Digital Divide, a Smart City podcast from Soofa. I'm Kiel Hauck, and I am joined, as always, by my colleague, Ally Peters. Ally, welcome.
Ally Peters: Hello. Hello. Happy to be here.
Kiel Hauck: Very excited for today's conversation. We are joined by Bridget Anne Morin. She's the Director of Communications and Causeway Programs in Bay Harbor Islands, Florida, which, until, I had worked at Soofa. I hadn't heard of Bay Harbor Islands, but it's located in Miami-Dade County in the sort of Miami DMA. It's a town of 6,000 people, but it's really cool. You should look it up on the map, look at photos. It's kind of these islands that face on the Atlantic side of the state of Florida.
And it's one of those places that kind of feels like paradise if you like beach life. But, I don't know about you, Ally, but when I thought about it, or when I first started kind of looking into Bay Harbor Islands, it was really cool to see kind of how the town is made up. But then also really interesting from some of our conversations to start learning about how Bridget and others are making Bay Harbor Islands a smart city.
Ally Peters: Yeah, absolutely. Bridget is such an interesting person to chat to, and so I hope everyone enjoys our conversation today. She has definitely a really interesting background and she's doing so much for the city, so I'm excited for people to hear.
Kiel Hauck: Yeah, Bridget's passion for the work that she does and the people of Bay Harbor Islands definitely comes through. I think you're really going to enjoy the conversation. So, without further ado, let's jump into it. Here's our conversation with Bridget Anne Morin, Director of Communications and Causeway Programs in Bay Harbor Islands.
Kiel Hauck: So Bridget, we're so excited to have you join us again today. Thank you for taking the time.
Bridget Anne Morin: No, thank you for asking me. I'm super excited to share, what we're doing in town to make, communication and everything, more technology friendly and to basically embrace the technology in every way that we possibly can.
Ally Peters: What are some of the biggest lessons that you've learned from working almost a decade in government?
Bridget Anne Morin: Actually, I just hit twelve years.
Ally Peters: Oh, wow.
Bridget Anne Morin: For a job that I do not even recall applying for. But I would say the biggest challenges I have had is people's preconceived notion about different segments of the population and their willingness to embrace technology. Like I said, I'm 64 years old. I've had a PC since 1982. Even if you didn't start off with that, anybody who's been a professional person has an email address. They know how to use a computer. Because PCs became widespread in the late eighties and early 90s where everyone learned how to do it. So people have a preconceived notion that if you're over a certain age, like, oh, they're not going to understand how to that's not true.
And older people, because of social media and the fact that their grandkids and their children are on social media, they have learned how to use computers because they want to be able to see the pictures that their kids are posting and that their grandkids are posting. And it's a great way for them to stay connected. And so that has been my biggest challenge is just making people, basically forcing people within my same organization to understand that people know about computers, people understand how to use email, people can use technology, you just have to make it available to them.
Kiel Hauck: Yeah, well, to that point, I mean, it sounds like you've got some objections to overcome. How do you approach that? For all the success that you've had rolling out technology in Bay Harbor Islands, what has been the key for you to kind of unlock people's willingness to embrace that?
Bridget Anne Morin: I forced them to do it, kind of. But I think that, it's all about putting the platform in place and taking responsibility for the fact that you are, okay, I am going to roll this out, please let me do it, and I will take responsibility for its success or its failure. Because you have to stand behind the project that you're putting out there.
When we first started using social media, for example, it was ridiculous to me that they didn't want to have, they were afraid of, well what if somebody posts a bad comment or what if.. and I said, I will monitor it, I will make sure and I will make sure we do the right thing. And I did. And at first, literally, I would get notifications in the middle of the night and I would wake up and check to see if somebody, I learned later that it wasn't really all that important to do that.
And I've continued to educate myself on those things. And I think that's the most important thing that if you are going to expect the people that you work with to embrace a particular type of technology, that you need to take responsibility for it to make sure that it works and first do your research and make sure that what you're pushing is actually a good thing.
Ally Peters: Yeah, absolutely. And based off of this conversation so far, and also our other conversation, earlier on too, you were mentioning just how tight knit Bay Harbor Islands is. And it seems like you said, people are messaging you in the middle of the night or telling you that something is missing on the Soofa Sign, or things like, so how can a city keep or get their citizens involved in decision making? And is it important to have the public always involved with decision making?
Bridget Anne Morin: I would say, well, first of all, it's about engaging them. You have to keep them informed. You don't want people and you have to always be fighting a rumor mill because it's like telephone. So if you put the information out there, you need to control your own narrative. And that's one thing that's so important in communications, is that if there's something going on, you need to make sure that you have the facts, the figures, and everything available to people for everything that you're putting out there. Because if not, someone else will tell that story for you.
And you never want that because depending on someone else's, you don't know. People have ulterior motives. And so you want your motivation, because our motive is to make the city the best we possibly can. From day one, I said what I want is to make people happy and do a good job. That's always been my primary motivation. And if I can make more money while I'm doing it, all the better. But those are the things and that should be to me. No matter what job you do, you should want to do that because then you have a better life, too. By better communicating with people, regardless of their age or their access to technology, you should try to make sure that you're at least putting the information out there for them to have. Whether or not they actually bother to read it, is on them.
Kiel Hauck: Yeah, that makes sense. I want to talk, specifically about some of the projects that you've rolled out during your time in Bay Harbor Islands. And if my memory serves me correctly, you were involved or are involved with an emergency communication system in Bay Harbor Islands. Could you talk a little bit about what that looks like?
Bridget Anne Morin: Well, with us, we work with Ensolve Code Red. So, when we have, we use Code Red messaging to reach our residents and also we have a toll system in our town so people can purchase a pass to, flat rate pass for the toll. So if there's going to be something that's going to affect someone's commute, that's one thing that we want to make sure that's like non-emergency stuff. But sometimes if you have a true emergency, like, you may be familiar with the Surfside Building collapse a couple of years ago, Champlain Towers. So in a case like that, I got a call at one in the morning that this building had collapsed and that we were going to have to start sending out communications regarding the building collapse because it was going to deeply impact traffic in our area.
And Bay Harbor Islands is two islands between the mainland and the barrier islands to the east of us. And our toll road that we have there, is the only means of ingress and egress for our residents from the mainland and then most of the people east of us also, if there's like, it's an evacuation route. So there's a lot of things and 1,200 cars an hour go eastbound and about 1,000 cars go westbound. I guess some people just never go home again once they go east, not going back. So there's a great deal of traffic for such a small community. We're only like, I think, like a mile and a half long or something like so in a case like that, we try to use every means possible to communicate with everyone.
So besides just the Code Red system, we use social media, we use Twitter and Instagram or X or whatever it's called now, and Facebook. And then we have a Civic Plus website. We use that. But, with Code Red through Ensolved, it's probably our number one communication method, because people sign up for it and then they also can get notifications through the FEMA and stuff like that. But anyway, what we try to do is have one message that is the same.
It's not different from depending on which platform you're using. And so we try to get it out there visually. We have road signs, those flushing things. I get to program those. But we try to use those and now we have the Soofa Sign as well. So we try to have the same message in as many places as possible so that you can't help. When someone says, I didn't know about that, I personally tell them that they are nuts or they're a liar, because if you put the message out there to everyone, how can they help but miss it? And it's especially important in Hurricane Alley, Florida, that people are aware of things and even in just the preparation phases. And like right now I'm big on the heat wave and how it can hurt dog's feet and things. There's a lot of things, but emergency communications of course, is our number one thing, but it's also about preparation in advance of an emergency.
Ally Peters: Besides using technology to communicate with residents and keep them informed, what other initiatives or technology has been helpful for Bay Harbor Island residents? Is there any transit, technology or anything like that?
Bridget Anne Morin: One of the things that I hate to put it this way, but one of the positive things, I guess that came out of COVID. I've always been a big advocate for having things online, methods of payments online, applications online, and having less people come to town hall because we are a small staff. So if more is done by the actual resident or customer, if they can pay for things online, if they can do there's less traffic coming into town hall. So then the employees are able to actually do the things that they need to do once the person makes a payment or things like because we are a small staff and all the things in my department, because they manage the causeway, for example, things that people have to pay for that. I put that online years ago.
We're trying to make our office completely paperless so that if everything is online, people and it's on the same platform, residents can go to the same place to pay their water bill, to pay their business tax license, to do their condo registration, to sign up for notifications. And then it's better for them and it's better for us because we know that we are getting the information faster and they're getting the results that they want faster. We do have Freebee, it's like a shuttle, an on demand car service, so there's an app for that. And so people are using that now. So we're seeing people and this is really because during COVID we closed our town hall, so people had to do things online. And we were already set to go with that, with mostly everything.
And during COVID I wrote payment apps for payment applications, not the apps themselves, for pretty much everything that we have. So if you go to our website, we're trying to make it so that people, anything they want to apply for that, they can do it through the website.
And it saves them time, it saves us time and it's also better for record keeping. For me, having more services available online has been my biggest project that I'm determined to have possibly everything, and it's better like that. And it's also, again, any data is power when it comes to that. The more things that people do online, the better we can communicate with them.
Ally Peters: Yeah, so, I'm just curious because with our last conversation, you said that Bay Harbor Islands has a bit of an older population. So I'm curious, how has the transition been into people using more online platforms and things like that? Have people overall been receptive to it?
Bridget Anne Morin: Overall, yes. Initially, no. But as time has gone by, we've noticed that our older residents, they have realized that it's empowering for them to be able to do things on their own. So we keep a tablet at our town hall. So when someone has to fill out an application for the first time, they can come into town hall and someone there will show them how easy it is to use their smartphone or to use the tablet that we keep there for them to do any sort of application. If they have to have documentation, they can take photo with their cell phone or tablet.
They're able to do it themselves. And people do like that because it makes them feel more independent as well. And having email as well, they're learning how even if they never ever used a computer before, they're learning how to do it, and they're doing it because they want to do it now. So, overall, it's been great.
Ally Peters: Oh, good. It's cool to hear that you guys are providing really good resources for everybody in the population. So I'm glad that people are receptive to, you know, as we've been talking here, you've mentioned a variety of different projects that Bay Harbor Islands has put out and different technology and things like that. So I'm curious, what is Bay Harbor Islands main goal when considering more tech or more initiatives for the community? Does it vary by project or by need?
Bridget Anne Morin: I would say it definitely does, but I would say our one big push right now, is unfortunately with all if anyone who's worked in government before, there are too many products and too many platforms that are already in use by different departments. So the building department is on one kind of platform for doing online permits. The code enforcement is using a different one, the corporate office is using a different one. So the problem with that is that people have to re-input data in multiple platforms. And the ideal environment would be if you had one place to log in and you could pay your water bill, sign up for recreation programs request.
It would be better if all of the information was available. It's like if you have an iPad and you can use Apple Pay to pay for everything. It's just better to have everything centrally located in one platform. And then for us, it would be better because then we could pull up one record and see that this person has a permit. This person they have a business in town. This is where it would just be better to have one platform.
But unfortunately, there's not really one platform out there where everything is consolidated. And I would say that is a big thing for me, that if we could somehow do that to better serve our residents, so, in lieu of a common platform, my push is to have everything mobile friendly so that everything should be able to be done on a cell phone, because your cell phone saves the information better for forms so that it makes it faster than them, and then people find it to be more convenient.
Kiel Hauck: Yeah, that makes sense. As we come towards a close to the conversation here, I'm interested to hear, have there been other communities that have inspired yourself or others in Bay Harbor Islands to make technological advancements or changes in the community?
Bridget Anne Morin: I would say yes. I used to live in Hollywood, Florida, and I live in Fort Lauderdale now, and I try to take the lessons that I'm learning from how well they communicate with me, and try to bring it home to Bay Harbor. We still have a lot of work to do with some things like Hollywood's great at, I get notifications about, what roads are going to be closed and what things projects are coming up, what events and stuff like that. when there was a hurricane, I didn't get one single message from them when there's an emergency or anything. And I'm signed up for everything, and in Fort Lauderdale, they're very good about with notifying the residents about things. So I try to look and see, I'll go and look at other cities' websites and see how they have things laid out. I always say communication really is everything internally and externally, every single part of your life. It's about communicating.
And so for us to be a better town and to better engage our residents, because it is a very close knit city and people walk a lot and people are out there. We want to make sure that they know that there's a great concert happening this weekend, no matter whether they're checking their email or not, in lieu of flying a seaplane over their house. which I've thought about. It's important that we as a community use every resource available to us to keep people engaged and to keep people in the know. And so I do go and look at other cities, particular cities. I would say no. I would say I try to take lessons from all the cities, and try to do what we can with our small staff and limited resources to make things work.
Kiel Hauck: Yeah. Well, Bridget, this has been a great conversation and really inspiring to hear. Even as a small community, even with limited resources, the steps that you all are taking, to affect the lives of the people that live in Bay Harbor Islands. And, we really appreciate you taking time. And, just yeah, thank you for sharing your story.
Bridget Anne Morin: Thank you. And, I appreciate both of you, and I look forward to more communication.
Ally Peters: Yes, absolutely.
Bridget Anne Morin: Thank you.
Kiel Hauck: All right. Thanks again to Bridget for joining us on the podcast. Ally I thought that was a really great conversation, and you noted it as we were opening the show. Bridget's background is so fascinating when you think about her journey to where she is today, working in local government in Bay Harbor Islands. And it's almost perfect how her background, her skill set, her strengths, kind of helped her into this role that is specifically impacting some really key needs in the community. And you just hear that story laid out, and it feels so serendipitous. But, it's almost hard not to imagine someone like Bridget holding a role like she does with the passion that she has for the people of Bay Harbor Islands.
Ally Peters: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, just given her background, too, she has obviously been in many different fields, doing many different things, and I feel like that's absolutely carried over into her role. Now she's in charge of a lot of different aspects of technology and just community connection for Bay Harbor Islands. And I agree. I definitely think that she is very well suited for this job. Yeah, and another point, too. I was really fascinated with how Bridget's work is directly impacting all kinds of people in Bay Harbor Islands. And we were talking about some of the older population of Bay Harbor Islands that may not be as well versed in all these technology updates and things. So it's cool to know. And it's important, I think, for all cities to know that, or just follow Bridget's example of taking care of all kinds of people in the community in different ways.
Kiel Hauck: Yeah, she's clearly got a really solid, feel on the pulse of the city and how different groups within the city are going to interact with the technology that they're rolling out and the ways that they're thinking of implementing these things to make life easier for everyone, no matter your age, no matter your background. And I think that's a really great way to approach it. And you think of Bay Harbor Islands being a small city. Well, it's made up of a lot of different people that all have their own abilities and history with technology. And Bridget is clearly thinking about it the right way, and it's exciting to hear some of the things that are happening in Bay Harbor Islands. So, again, thank you to Bridget for being on the show.
We hope you enjoyed the conversation. If you'd like to learn more about Bridget's story, you can find that at our website, soofadigital.com. Just navigate to our blog section. and of course, check out the different solutions that we provide, both for smart cities looking for digital signage options and for brands that are seeking a more sustainable and planet friendly way to advertise their business in some of the smartest cities in America.
Kiel Hauck: That's going to do it for today's show. Ally, thanks again. It's always a blast.
Ally Peters: Of course. Yeah.
Kiel Hauck: And, we will be back next time. Until then, follow us on your favorite social media platform, leave us a review and we'll catch you next time.
Thanks for listening to Bridging the Digital Divide. If you enjoyed today's show, make sure to subscribe to our podcast and leave us a review on your favorite podcast platform.
Ally Peters: Platform and then come visit us at soofadigital.com to see how we're pursuing a mission to make every city smart, social and sustainable.