11-Nov-2009 Posted by Chris on 11-Nov-2009 | View Comments

City of Edmonton Engages Local Tech Firms

Today the City of Edmonton and TEC Edmonton announced what I hope will be the first of many initiatives to engage the local Software and broader IT community to help find a solution for it’s Edmonton Transit branch.

The City of Edmonton is partnering with TEC Edmonton and local industry to find ways to leverage local technical expertise right here in Edmonton.

This initiative, formally known as Leveraging Technical Expertise Locally, potentially benefits the City by gaining access to new technologies and products that haven’t been realized previously.  Local technology businesses potentially benefit from this initiative by developing business solutions that could lead to broader use, and by learning how to engage with large and complex buyers like the City.
 
The group has selected a relatively small but meaningful pilot project – a replacement for Edmonton Transit System’s current electronic Lost and Found system – to test the approach. 

It’s an opportunity for people from Edmonton’s vibrant IT community to collaborate with the City and TEC Edmonton to develop an innovative solution that could lead to bigger things.

This idea is a great way to start building bridges between what is a vibrant tech community, and an organization that is really starting to get the possibilities of it’s own community. I have always believed that the City buyers and department heads have approached things in the past from a perspective of “we know what we want, and we want firms to simply respond to our RFP’s”.

This is an example of the leadership of certain councillors and the new city CIO Chris Moore to explore the principal of “we don’t know what we don’t know”. By presenting a problem to the community, without projecting the solution, the City will benefit from new unknown, or yet to be built technologies, and frankly cheaper solutions that are not bound by prescribed restrictions.

Congratulations to the City for giving this a try, and good luck to the many companies and individuals who I know will be able to compete for this.

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