Agenda Item 2a: Office of Innovation Briefing — original pdf

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Innovation Office Community Technology and Telecommunications Commission January 2022 The City of Austin's Innovation Office works with City teams to Primary Strategic Direction 23 alignment: GTWFA Strategy 13: Establish a workplace culture of high performance, continuous improvement, and human-centered innovation that encourages employee growth and inclusive collaboration. In addition, embrace technology, rapidly prototype potential solutions, and improve business processes to increase efficiencies and reduce red tape. Who we are identify and test solutions to complex challenges facing Austin. We hold space for early-stage ideas and solutions. We facilitate teams, research problems, and design services to make progress toward Austin’s strategic goals We define innovation as any project that is new to you with an uncertain outcome, and we’re aimed at addressing pressing challenges that affect our community. We practice human-centered innovation, which is a new approach to exercising authority and decision-making that starts with the needs, behaviors, and experiences of our community, and continues through a process of questioning assumptions, engaging with empathy, stewarding divergent thought, reflecting, and learning. Organizational orientation Chief of Staff Innovation capabilities Qualitative and quantitative research Community-based accelerators Systems design and mapping Data science Co-creation facilitation Design and prototyping Community organizing Evidence-based practices Grant applications Impact evaluations Networking and partnering with community, technology, and nonprofit orgs Theories of change in complex systems Proving things that haven’t been done, yet Business modeling, program design Office structure Chief Innovation Officer (Daniel Culotta, Acting) Research & Strategic Initiatives Alba Sereno, Chief Research & Strategic Initiatives Officer Design, Prototyping & De-risking Portfolio Manager Daniel Culotta Digital equity/community tech related projects (Recent Past) Lifefiles: Grant funded project to build distributed ledger to help residents control and share their identity documents facilitating their access to social and health services, especially those vital to ending homelessness such as housing, public benefits and access to medical care. Digitally certified and encrypted, LifeFiles allows for the decentralized distribution of certified documents, allowing for remote verification and secure shareability. Code is open source for those who wish to implement the solution. Contact: Daniel Culotta, OOI https://rwjflandingpage.webflo w.io/ Open Data Portal: This portal provides easy access to open data and information about your city government. We encourage the use of public data that the City of Austin has published to spark innovation, promote public collaboration, increase government transparency, and inform decision making. We are preparing a scope for a next phase of refinement to the portal & its accompanying internal Open Data Meetup. Staff Contact: Charles Purma III Urban Air Mobility Working Group: Several City departments operate drones and related technologies for purposes of improving service performance and delivery. This working group seeks to unify policies, technology guidelines, and management best practices under a formal governance structure. The core team and Executive Sponsor (CTM CIO Chris Stewart) has been identified to lead this and are currently developing their Charter, list of enterprise-wide priorities, and roadmap for achieving their goals. Contact: Kirk Scanlon, ATD Infrastructure for Advanced Services (IAS): A cross-department team has worked to identify municipal purpose, gather current and future use cases, and initiate the community relationships needed to explore how me might leverage intelligent infrastructure to improve City operations and deliver advanced services to our communities. ATD is taking the lead to prove out this space through pilots aligned with their Smart Mobility program. Contact: Jason JonMichael, ATD 2 Thank you! alba.donajhi@austintexas.gov 8