The Startup in Residence program received problem statements from cities around the U.S. in November, including from six California cities and one California special district.
The STiR program began under San Francisco’s Office of Civic Innovation as the Entrepreneurship in Residence program in 2014. The program was expanded the next year under a U.S. Commerce Department grant that would scale the program to include Oakland, San Francisco, San Leandro and West Sacramento.
The City Innovate Foundation has helped expand the 2018 program to include 11 cities.
The cities will choose problems to solve and present them to startups, which will work with the department over a 16-week residency to create a “co-developed and relevant” tech solution.
“STiR teams prioritize inclusive design and receive input and insights from the communities and stakeholders to understand the context and challenges being faced,” the StiR website reads.
Santa Monica sought out the program after “watching from afar for several years,” city Web Development Manager Behrang Abadi told Techwire in an interview.
Seeking the best option, even if it is for a small startup that does not have a historical reputation like larger companies do, led Santa Monica to apply.
“We know the city has more work than we have capacity for and we’re always looking for strong partnerships to help deliver really outstanding customer experiences to the public but also to our staff as well,” Abadi said.
Santa Monica will pay about $15,000 for its solution, based on the program’s budget-based subscription.
Walnut Creek was interested in creating “more innovation and process improvement across all of city hall,” city Head of Innovation and Economic Development Jessica Cole told Techwire in an interview.
After questioning how each challenge would impact residents the most, Walnut Creek decided to present three problem statements that would address residents’ biggest concerns or speed up service delivery that would be hard to solve in one department.
“We took a big step back and asked what are some of the problems that actually impact the largest number of residents that we serve and which of those problems are truly interdisciplinary, which means that they are unlikely to get solved by one department, working on its own,” Cole said.
Walnut Creek will pay the nonprofit behind STiR for the creation and procurement of a solution.
“We are choosing challenges that are important enough that we would have budget to procure them. On the other hand, we are only paying for those solutions if we find a great match in a startup that is working with us to build the right tool,” Cole said.
Other benefits include the training provided to the participating city’s employees, scaling startups to serve more government customers and access to the learning experiences of other cities in the cohort.
Problem statements presented by California cities include:
Metropolitan Transportation Commission
Responder Communication System
Regional Transit Connection
San Francisco
User-friendly solution for Planning Code
Natural Language Interface for SFO Customers
Whole Person Care Mobile Encounter App
Wearable Solution for Electronic Monitoring Devices
Stormwater Management Using Computer Vision Applications
Digitizing Street Sweeping Route Navigation
Trash Can Sensors and Management
Santa Cruz
Rental Assistance Landlord Navigator Tool
Santa Monica
Creating and Populating Resident Data Model
Interactive Park Finder
Vallejo
Infrastructure Assessment, Mapping and Safety Tool
Data Governance and Security
City Fiber Initiative
Walnut Creek
Preferential Residential Permit Parking Process
Contract Tracking and Management
Traffic Data Dashboard
West Sacramento
A gamified community engagement solution
A special event permitting application
A volunteer matching and engagement tool
Problems that are not chosen for this year could still require solutions in the future.
“We’re not attached to any particular way of doing things, just because that’s the way we’ve always done things,” Cole said. “Instead, what we’re saying by participating is that we are always on the lookout for new solutions; we are always open to new ways of doing things.”
