Rochester was chosen one of 16 areas worldwide for the IBM Smarter Cities Challenge.
A team from the company has been here for three weeks studying the city's poverty crisis, and today, they presented their findings and recommendations.
The teams says they found there is a misalignment of agency services here, unrealized potential within the community, inconsistent approach to data and a reactive, not proactive response to the issue.
The IBM team has 13 recommendations in three general areas: elevating the community, coordinating services and leveraging data.
IBM's senior program manager is Martin Laird, a native of Monroe County.
"What we aimed to do is find things that are not already being done and change that to a new level, so we're pointing to different ways of evaluating things through metrics, in ways we think will be more effective."
Rochester Mayor Lovely Warren thanked the group for their expertise.
"We'll take your recommendations and review them over the next couple of weeks, we'll work with the anti-poverty initiative, to figure out a way to implement them, as well as with our community agencies and our foundations and funders and government."
Laird adds the team will provide officials with a complete "recipe book" on how to act and what the team suggests.
A detailed report is expected in the next few weeks.
