South Bend built a digital services division over a decade by banking early wins for political capital

According to the piece, South Bend's Division of Digital Services formally launched in 2024, but city officials began cultivating the conditions for it more than a decade earlier — starting with an entrepreneurial IT culture fostered under then-Mayor Pete Buttigieg and partnerships with organizations like Code for America. Director Lucy Macfarlane tells Route Fifty that the team deliberately sought early, visible wins to build a reputation inside city government, using that credibility to accrue political will and budget support for larger projects. The reporting notes that only about 36 digital service organizations exist across all levels of US government, making South Bend's path — especially for a mid-size Midwestern city — a useful case study for peers eyeing similar reforms.