TOP NEWS
Conduent Sells Piece of Gov Tech Business to Avenu The deal will see a relatively small component of Conduent's wide-ranging government solutions transferred to Avenu, which is backed by private equity. Never heard of those companies? That makes sense — they both formalized their existence in January 2017, pulling together assets from other existing corporations.NIC Launches Drug Prescription Monitoring System Prescription drug monitoring systems are common tools among state governments for combatting the opioid crisis — it's an information clearinghouse to prevent patients from getting multiple prescriptions from different doctors. The move follows NIC's acquisition of the RxOrbit suite from the company Leap Orbit.
As New Wildfires Rage, California Governor Reconsiders Statewide Emergency Alerts System The world is getting warmer, and California's wildfires are getting worse and worse. As smoke from the Carr Fire blankets the state Capitol, Gov. Jerry Brown is reconsidering legislation that would create a statewide emergency alerts system.
Will the Rush to Police Body Cams Run into a Privacy Wall? As more and more police departments start putting cameras on their officers, civil rights groups are warning that they might serve the goals of law enforcement while eroding privacy for the communities those cops patrol.
California Picks Blackboard for Statewide Employee Training The state is turning to the vendor for training and learning management for its employees. The reseller Taborda is in on the project as well.
MARKET SPOTLIGHT
What do County IT Departments Care the Most About? We asked participants in the 2018 Digital Counties program and put together a top 10 list. Number one will not surprise anybody familiar with the program.WATCHLIST
GovTech company on our radar this week:SkySkopes: This drone operator out of North Dakota specializes in the energy sector, including damage assessments to power infrastructure following natural disasters and using their machines to string power lines between towers.
Run a GovTech company? Get on our radar here.
BIZ NOTES
>ProudCity has launched the beta version of a government website accessibility checker, with promises to release a general guide to website accessibility soon.>The city of Salinas, Calif., has launched an open data portal from OpenDataSoft.
>The city of Eureka Springs, Ark., has completed a mobile app for parking from the vendor Passport.
>The San Francisco Mayor's Office of Civic Innovation is hiring two fellows for a year-long stint beginning in September.
WHAT WE'RE READING
How Cities are Fighting Secret Surveillance (CityLab/Medium)Fixing Open Gov Orgs After "Me Too" (Sarah Schacht/Medium)
After Yelp Published Health Scores, D.C. Found a Glitch in its Inspection System (Washington City Paper)
GovTechBiz is our weekly newsletter covering the companies, deals and trends in the business of gov tech. Got a news tip? Other feedback? We're listening. Send it to GovTechBiz Writer Ben Miller at biz@govtech.com.
