At Public Spend Forum, we are passionate about the power of civic Technology to improve government programs and the lives of the citizens they serve. We were proud to feature several GovTech startups at our recentProcurement Technology Symposiumin LA, where we listened to inspirational leaders describe their goals for positively disrupting government service delivery and the procurement process.
It got us thinking about the impact of technology on government, and motivated us to explore other civic tech trends and feature just a few of the many startups that are looking to make an impact in the year ahead. Here are seven emerging government technology contractors whose technology solutions hold great promise for improving the way we live, work, and engage within the public sector.
Several of the startups that made our list featurewomen in civic tech,including StormSensor which is led by Erin Rothman. Their technology solution covers all the bases of storm and sewer water project workflow by addressing a problem that cities and localities across the country deal with every day: keeping up with ever-changing regulations that require them to monitor and report stormwater quality in their districts.
For example, municipalities are required to inspect every catch basin in the nation at least once annually, which is quite a lift for under-resourced local governments. StormSensor solves the problem with easier site management and access to reams of data that is required to pass inspections. Unlike traditional monitoring equipment, StormSensor’s Scute™sensors are inexpensive enough to be deployed at multiple locations across a sewershed, helping local governments monitor combined sewage overflow through a network of data-harvesting sensors. Erin Rothman, CEO of StormSensor, cited this as a $32 billion problem affecting municipalities across the country at our recent procurement Technology Symposium.
We’ll go ahead and say it: the government struggles with buying technology. There is a lot of activity at the federal level to address this challenge (see: USDS, 18F), but its also difficult for local governments to stay ahead of the technology curve. CoProcure hopes to solve this problem by helping local governments find, buy, and share high-quality technology products via streamlined, cooperative procurement.
Learn more about Cooperative Purchasing Programs and Multiagency Contracting
Cooperative purchasing programs deliver value when public agencies join to procure solutions that solve common problems. When applied to technology, cooperative purchasing helps organizations save time, money, and resources. CoProcure is working with agencies in California to pool resources and cooperatively purchase aerial imagery. The resulting benefit for those agencies comes from better pricing from government contractors and the efficiencies that result when redundancies are eliminated from agency to agency.Learn more about the program here; interested agencies should express their initial interest in participating by September 14, 2018.
ProudCity understands that a government’s website is the primary point of contact for the communities and constituents they serve. From quickly finding information to making payments, public sector websites must be intuitive, mobile-friendly, secure and accessible. And they must continuously evolve to meet modern visual and technical standards.
ProudCityuses a software-as-a-service (SaaS) model to help organizationsbuild effective websites, online forms, andpayments. Even web design novices can quickly and cost-effectively launch their digital presence throughProudCity’s onboardingprocess, or take advantage of it’s self-managed approach to get started right away. Unlike traditional government website providers, ProudCity offers a platform-based service that deploys new features, enhancements, bug fixes and security upgrades on a recurring schedule.
