From Machine Learning to the Resilient City, Civic Tech Trends for 2015

Screen Shot 2015-01-08 at 1.30.53 PM

In the five years since the first Gov 2.0 Summit and the creation of data.gov we’ve see tremendous growth in Civic Tech. At the end of 2014 we saw a lot of activity in three distinct areas that have evolved and are now entering a new phase:

  • Civic hacking projects have grown into independent businesses
  • Cities are moving beyond Disaster Preparedness and looking to design in resilience
  • Data solutions often include an element of machine learning so they continue to improve the more they are used.

 

Civic tech start-ups

As the civic tech ecosystem matures, we are seeing more and more entrepreneurs turn their civic hacking projects into sustainable businesses. At the end of 2014 we saw the first wave of capital move into this segment. For example, in September the GovTech Fund launched with $24m devoted to government technology start-ups. Its first round of investments included AmigoCloud and SeamlessDocs, alums of Code for America’s 2014 accelerator cohortTumml just kicked off its third cohort and already one of its participants has been acquired when Lyft bought Hitch. It’s not just early stage start-ups that are being funded. Socrata, which provides social data discovery services for opening government data recently closed a $30m funding round this past December.

In 2015 I expect we will see this trend continue to grow as civic tech companies mature and make measurable impacts.

 

Resilient Cities

As civic tech providers mature, so are the consumers of their offerings. One example of this is how cities handle disasters. At first, cities simply focused on building plans for responding to disasters. Over the years, we’ve transitioned into devoting resources to preparing for disasters such as pre-staging resources and retrofitting buildings. Now we see this morphing into proactive resilience planning, and civic tech is playing a key role in this. For example, many cities are hiring Chief Resiliency Officers and The Rockefeller Foundation is now offering a $100m Resilient Cities Challenge to help cities not only respond to acute shocks like earthquakes and floods, but also chronic stresses such as climate change and transportation gridlock. Civic tech plays a key role in this, as timely access to information is critical in both cases. According that a recent Red Cross report, access to information is as vital as food, water, and shelter during emergencies. Once victims of a disaster find a safe location the next thing they want is to understand what just happened and how to locate their loved ones.

Here is how San Francisco is tackling its own resiliency issues right here in our Bay Area community.

 

Machine Learning

One of my favorite phrases for 2014 comes from Satya Nadella when he said “big data is the exhaust of the cloud” at the SQL 2014 launch here in San Francisco. While people argue over where big data is in the hype cycle, the unsung hero of big data is Machine Learning, technology that can turn voluminous data into ambient intelligence.  At this past year’s Machine Learning Conference discussion centered around how ML has mainly been applied to working on ‘negatives’ (e.g., fraud detection, spam filtering) and how the sector is now moving towards increasing people’s productivity with tools such as Microsoft Cortana and Delve. We are further seeing ML move into the Civic Tech world. There are now several non-profits dedicated to bringing data-driving solutions to solve social problems. Real world examples where ML is being applied include analyzing police body cam footage and CCTV surveillance video.

In 2015 this trend will continue as cities publish more and more data sets both to their own data portals and resources like the Azure data marketplace. This year will see new Machine Learning as a Service offerings come on line like Azure ML, making it easier for people to gain insight from powerful predictive analytics.