The Sacramento City Council could soon consider a "policy framework" that would enable the city to partner with various types of companies on innovation work, the city's CIO, Maria MacGunigal, said in an interview this week with Capital Public Radio.
"The way that government has traditionally interacted with other partners has been, I would say, difficult at best in some cases. And it's really changing and we're trying to set the policy framework that would allow us to engage with very small companies, or companies that are doing very innovative things, and still do that in an open, public and transparent way," MacGunigal said in the radio special that examined Sacramento's tech ecosystem.
Sacramento is coming alive at a grass-roots level and the local government can leverage it to remain nimble, she said.
"From my perspective, where I see most of the vibrancy and the real hunger and just enthusiasm and interesting ideas is really in the smaller companies right now. There are lots and lots of new companies coming in to Sacramento that are between three and 10 people. They're doing all kinds of interesting things. We see a lot of activity around innovation in the accelerators and innovation spaces, makerspaces — lots of interesting things happening in crossover between those small companies and the education institutions," MacGunigal said.
MacGunigal touched on a variety of other topics in the conversation: The city has been laying the groundwork for "small cell" infrastructure and an upcoming citywide pilot of 5G in partnership with Verizon. Sacramento also has partnered with the traffic app Waze on data integration projects, and is working on policy and infrastructure for autonomous vehicles testing.
In recent remarks, Mayor Darrell Steinberg also said Sacramento is on the verge of being designated by Volkswagen as its California "smart city," and the company would make a $300 million investment in the region.
Sacramento, through its "RAILS" grant program, also has disbursed money to more than a dozen organizations that are engaged on a variety on initiatives, such as civic coding, IT workforce education and development, and local tech incubators.
There are approximately 400 startups in the Sacramento area, with an average valuation of $4.5 million, according to AngelList, a website platform that tracks business activity.
You can listen to the interview with MacGunigal here.
