Meet the Non Profit that is Matching Municipalities with Vendors

In our video about Philadelphia's advanced light fixtures, we explored the players involved in the project. One of them was U .S. Ignite, a non -profit organization that is acting as a sort of a matchmaker in the smart city industry, bringing together municipalities and smart city technology vendors to find solutions that can improve the challenges communities face. We spoke to their Director of Community Development, Lee Davenport. We're based in D.C. We spun out of the White House 10 years ago. And we are focused on accelerating the pathways that municipalities go down, their journeys to adopt and deploy technologies that can help to improve the experiences and the lives of their residents and visitors. So the scope of our project work includes membership of almost 50 cities, each of whom are deploying one or two smart city projects, services or applications per year. U.S. Ignite works with large partners that don't typically work in a fluid environment. The large corporations, small corporations, are often prohibited by procurement rules from working with cities directly, and so we stand in the middle of many of these relationships to help them navigate those difficult waters. One of the points U.S. Ignite works on is securing funds for pilot projects to help speed up the process of bringing new technology to municipalities, as the technology these days... initiatives require can be very costly so how does the organization secure that budget so cities can afford to deploy advanced solutions we work directly with federal funders and receive federal funding when the government has been such an active role across our 10 -year history at funding these different initiatives there's an opportunity for the private sector to see how they can also support these initiatives and potentially term return on investment they can create return on investment for the dollars that they're still stakeholders have given to them. So in that way, we receive sponsorship support and support in in-kind from a large network of corporate partners. This type of funding ensures relations with industry players. However, the downside is maybe those sponsors have a priority over other companies for projects. The organisation takes part in both small and big scale projects, but focuses on the early stages of emerging pilots and building what they describe as a living lab because cities are focused on finding a solution they are willing to test technology and vendors are willing to contribute as they know that once the use case of the solution has been tested it becomes easier to get funding either locally or from federal funding meaning us ignite can focus on other new projects for the organization to get involved in an initiative and act as a mediator criteria criteria has to be met by both municipalities and companies. So, what is that criteria? We find that those that can quickly move through the process of understanding the needs that their communities face, that such a clear use case exists, or they're open to identifying that clear use case. We find that cities that are really of any size can be successful at this process. We would like them to have high levels of penetration. from a fiber provider or a cable operator. We would like them to have an existing understanding of an experience set with smart city infrastructure so that we can tell they're likely to deploy a solution, not for pilot's sake, but deploy a solution that meets a particular need and then solve it. We like clear leadership identified. cities that have been successful at having a partnership with an academic institution, not always a tier one institution, a large school, many times can be a local academic relationship with a trade school or community college. These to me are the indicators that will be successful working with a city who's able to mobilize efforts, mid -level managers and public works and streets and police and fire and emergency managers. As the cases develop, we're able to get buy -in from departments needed to deploy and mount and expedite the permitting for these sensors or IoT networks or connectivity devices necessary to reach the goals of the project we want. So we work with the private sector to help them understand how a particular technology they're looking to test in market might be most effective. We'll want partners who are willing to be open about their efforts willing to work with other partners like academic institutions that can help them improve their models we like it when we can work with a partner that is going to show up in person to meetings when necessary and is long -term committed to the solution because they also live there like they these executives who can be in market also see the problems because they live them as lived experiences, they're not observed or written and read about in a report from a local partner. The only difference is instead of returning on a social good, like the municipalities do, they need a return on their stakeholders. It can be more effective in the long run as they leverage their own existing infrastructure, their own partnerships, their own ideas. And so a longer timeframe to return on that investment does allow them to have a more significant investment we've found. This approach of preferring the solution vendor to be based in the municipality that is going to test the technology is a perfect way to boost local innovation and solve the decades-long problem affecting rural areas and smaller cities across the U.S. and the world, that of talent migrating to big cities. However, there is a downside as this approach could mean missing out on the perfect solution which could be outside the U .S. So, if a non - U .S. company wants to be considered for a U .S. Ignite project, what do they have to do? So we do work with several companies that are not based in the United States. And I think their willingness and the success of those companies that have shown to be committed long term is the willingness to take the time necessary to understand the problem and understand how the solution they've developed might meet that problem. It might be the case. that it doesn't meet the problem it is a long process for pilots to be launched and there are many challenges and costs that can increase if the company is not us -based the challenge obviously is the sunk cost in staffing and meeting those people in meetings in space over many months as we work to understand the challenges and truly understand the requirements phase 80 of the work is really in requirements understand the requirements space as necessary to then deploy a solution and i think many times the first versions of smart cities were built on available technology and then attempted to fit the technology to a problem and oftentimes seeing that what was necessary was not yet built and so both the vendors and the cities were let down in the process because the product pre -existed an understanding of the solution we encourage our cities to be in the problem business not the solution business so knowing what problems society is facing and the technology that is out there what is the most in -demand technology by cities or what is a technology they should focus on connectivity for many cities are partnering with the private sector to deploy connectivity at fiber like speeds or fiber speeds both wireless and fiber to the home The underpinning of a utility infrastructure lives in wires and a water infrastructure lives in pipes. A broadband adoption infrastructure lives in fiber. Shot detection, gunshot detection is unfortunately necessary in too many communities in the United States, and so we need to understand better how we can accurately know where gunshots were, if we can isolate. location of the shot, if we can locate a shell casing, if we can match the shell casing to a previous crime, if we can solve other crimes based on this information. So in many ways air quality I believe will be a new area where or an area where many many new cities are starting to really think hard about this. Every city of the United States or many cities of the United States have a single EPA sensor. And we found that when cities are deploying 50, 75 sensors, they get a much better idea of the microclimates. Lee explained to us that every community is looking to increase connectivity for its residents in one way or another. For air quality, at least 10 % of U .S. Ignite municipalities are already deploying projects related to it, and another 10% is experimenting or considering them. As we can see, the environment is playing a big role in smart technology. City Solutions. For other stories like this, remember, check out Current Insights.