Innovation

The Smart City Journey: 5 Key Steps to Success

COMMENTARY | The path to becoming a smart city is eased by incorporating a few important steps into your planning.

  • By Patti Zullo

Attention, Lazy Garbage: This Bot Will Insult You Until You Vote

The free service, a product of the nonprofit Fight For The Future, sends daily text messages that urge you—impolitely—to go vote.

  • By Kate Elizabeth Queram

Want to Solve Society’s Most Urgent Problems? Cash Prizes Can Spur Breakthroughs

COMMENTARY | Big cash prizes can be big motivators for people to get involved in developing innovative ideas.

  • By Luciano Kay, The Conversation

Introducing Future Cities: Government's Inside Track to 2030

Next week, Route Fifty will host Future Cities—a weeklong digital experience that will help government officials envision what the next decade of city government could look like.

  • By Alisha Powell Gillis

Why We Should Stop Conflating Cities With Innovation and Creativity

COMMENTARY | The language we use to discuss innovation and creativity has such a pro-urban bias that we’ve forgotten these qualities flourish outside of cities, too.

  • By Richard Shearmur, CityLab

Artificial Intelligence Could Have Biggest Impact on White-Collar Jobs

New research suggests that white collar jobs are more likely to feel the impacts of artificial intelligence in the workplace than blue-collar positions.

  • By Andrea Noble

Don’t Be Afraid of a Cashless Future

COMMENTARY | City ordinances requiring businesses to accept cash payments to protect the poor are missing the larger picture.

  • By Gary Shapiro

Silicon Valley Mayor to Feds: ‘Get Out of the Way’ of Innovation

The federal government could do more to promote innovation at the state and local levels by doing less, according to San Jose’s mayor.

  • By Jack Corrigan

Port San Antonio’s Redevelopment Enters New Territory

The port authority is exploring a new public-private partnership to get the Texas metro area’s unique mix of industries, like cybersecurity and defense, collaborating more.

  • By Dave Nyczepir

Without a Federal Privacy Law, States Are Left to Figure Out How to Protect Consumer Data

Representatives of the technology industry, and some state officials, say having broad privacy laws in each state could curb innovation. But other states leaders argue intervention is necessary to protect consumers.

  • By Dave Nyczepir

40 Startups to Work With 22 Governments on Civic Tech Challenges

The Startup in Residence Program has grown and even inspired California’s governor to turn its approach to innovation into a new procurement pathway.

  • By Dave Nyczepir

Quake Early-Warning App Now Available to Anyone in Los Angeles

Making seismic alerts available to the public has been a priority for Mayor Eric Garcetti.

  • By Michael Grass

Featured eBooks

Government Tech & Innovation
Management in City and County Government
State CIOs in 2020

A Neighborhood-Driven Approach to ‘Smart City’ Technology

2018 NAVIGATOR AWARD WINNER: José Serrano-McClain, former Project Manager, NYCx, Mayor's Office of the Chief Technology Officer, City of New York.

  • By Bill Lucia

Investing in Your Employees' Best Ideas

COMMENTARY | "Baltimore put money down on its own creativity and has raked in results. Other cities should make the same bet," writes former Baltimore budget director Andrew Kleine, previewing his new book.

  • By Andrew Kleine

9 Cities Selected as 2018 Bloomberg ‘Mayors Challenge’ Winners

Each of the cities, part of “a coast-to-coast civic-solutions laboratory,” will receive $1 million in funding.

  • By Michael Grass

Navigating Chicago’s ‘Labyrinth’ of Lower Roads Just Got Easier

A public-private partnership between the city, Waze and SpotHero installed more than 500 Waze Beacons to help drivers pinpoint their locations.

  • By Dave Nyczepir

Testing Out Faster and Flexible Ways to Deploy Homeless Shelters and Services

Modular housing pilot projects in King County, Washington aim to create flexible and replicable prototypes of how to expand the number of beds and provide 24/7 case management.

  • By Michael Grass

Bridging the Public-Private Divide

COMMENTARY | The former smart cities manager for Redlands, California believes there’s an opportunity to accelerate public sector innovation—he just moved to the private sector to help make it happen.

  • By Kjeld Lindsted

Portland, Maine Ready to Flip Switch on Smart Traffic Signals

The city hopes a new tech upgrade will cut wait times at one difficult commuter bottleneck by 20 to 30 percent.

  • By Timothy B. Clark

‘Government Is What We Do Together That We Can’t Do Alone’

As civic technologists gather for this year’s Code for America Summit, there are some key themes worth repeating.

  • By Michael Grass

Help Us Honor the Best in State and Local Government

Nominations for the third annual Route Fifty Navigator Awards are now open!

  • By Mitch Herckis