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San Francisco's Gov Tech-Focused Startup Program Is Looking to Expand

Plus, a Texas marketing agency creates platforms for cities to launch Alexa skills, the Montgomery County, Va., Sheriff's Department tests smart bulletproof vests, and more...

TOP NEWS

San Francisco Startup in Residence Program Seeks New Cities The program, which puts startup employees in close contact with the city workers they hope to serve, has generated success stories in the Bay Area. Now, San Francisco Chief Innovation Officer Jay Nath has opened up applications for cities across the country to set up their own programs.

Marketing Agency Creates Platforms for Cities to Launch Alexa Skills The Texas firm Imaginuity is looking to make it easier for cities to connect with citizens via Amazon's Alexa device. For now, it can offer citizens answers to city government questions. In the future, it might allow them to access data from their utility account and pay bills.

Virginia Sheriff's Department Tests Smart Bulletproof Vests In Montgomery County, Va., officers are pilot testing bulletproof vests that can automatically send alerts when wearers are injured. The tech comes from Select Engineering Services and DataSoft Corp.

Ancorage Adds $5.8M to ERP Replacement Project with SAP A project in Anchorage, Alaska, to replace an old PeopleSoft ERP package was already seven years old and had exceeded its budget nine times over when leaders voted last week to spend $5.8 million more on it.

Video: Examining the Future of Special District Tech Special Districts, small and niche-focused as they may be, represent a giant chunk of local government entities. In a new video, e.Republic Chief Innovation Officer Dustin Haisler talks about what they do, what kind of technology they use and where they're headed.

How Chipotle's Bad Press Boosted a Gov Tech Startup When dozens of cases of E. Coli were traced back to Chipotle restaurants in 2015, the government inspection startup MeWe found a new direction. That moment led the company to focus specifically on food inspections, and the company is still growing today.

Federal Government Won't Use Kaspersky Labs, but Local Govs Do The U.S. federal government won't use the Russian cybersecurity firm Kaspersky Lab's products for fear of foreign interference, but those products are already in place in local governments around the country through multi-year contracts.

Cisco Acquires College Professor-Founded Cybersecurity Startup The IT giant, which serves thousands of government entities, is purchasing the St. Louis-based company Observable to expand its approach to cybersecurity: Monitoring network-connected devices, rather than data streams, for malicious activity.
 

MARKET SPOTLIGHT

CDG law enforcement jurisdictions by type

 

Law Enforcement Agency Breakdown There are nearly 18,000 law enforcement agencies in the United States. Using Data from the Center for Digital Government, we break down which types of agency are more common here.

WATCHLIST

GovTech companies on our radar this week:

MotionLoft: A pedestrian and traffic-counting company offering sensors and data reports, MotionLoft is working on a pilot project with the city of Las Vegas.

SkySafe: A company that can disable drones flying where they aren't supposed to via radio waves, Sky Safe just raised an $11.5 million Seris A round led by Andreessen Horowitz.

Run a GovTech company? Get on our radar here.

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WHAT WE'RE READING

Expanding GetCalFresh to All of California (Code for America)


Study: Millenials Use Chatbots, a Lot (Mobile Marketer)

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.

Ben Miller is the associate editor of data and business for Government Technology. His reporting experience includes breaking news, business, community features and technical subjects. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in journalism from the Reynolds School of Journalism at the University of Nevada, Reno, and lives in Sacramento, Calif.