DEPARTMENT: Office of Innovation
DEPARTMENT HEAD: Brian Dillard, Chief Innovation Officer
COUNCIL DISTRICTS IMPACTED: City-Wide
SUBJECT:
Briefing on the SmartSA Program
SUMMARY:
The purpose of this item is to provide the Innovation and Technology Committee with an update on the SmartSA program’s progress, including updates on the responses received from the SmartSA Vendor Summit and upcoming steps in the procurement process.
BACKGROUND INFORMATION:
SmartSA is a partnership between the City of San Antonio, CPS Energy, San Antonio Water System, San Antonio River Authority, and VIA Metropolitan Transit Authority. The SmartSA vision is to build a connected, inclusive, and resilient community supporting a high quality of life. The goal of the City of San Antonio is to continue to provide quality services to our residents. In order to achieve this goal, we must effectively work together with our SmartSA partners to utilize resources and knowledge. SmartSA is the partnership that will help us achieve this goal.
The solutions implemented through SmartSA will be located within three Innovation Zones. These zones will provide SmartSA partners the opportunity to pilot ideas and technologies that are designed specifically to address our City’s biggest challenges. Our goal is to scale the successful pilots to benefit the City at large. The designated innovation zones are:
• Downtown San Antonio
• Brooks
• Medical Center
SmartSA has three distinct areas of focus regarding challenges. These areas are Access to Services, Mobility, and Sustainability. Within each area of focus there are a number of challenges that have been identified through community input, as well as input from the SmartSA partners.
ISSUE:
The City of San Antonio hosted a SmartSA Vendor Summit in January 2019, which was meant to be a non-traditional interactive RFI. The purpose of this approach to the RFI was to present challenges to vendors in a manner that would result in custom responses from potential vendors.
FISCAL IMPACT:
This item is for briefing purposes only.
RECOMMENDATION:
This item is for briefing purposes only.