City on a Cloud Innovation Challenge: Partners in Innovation and Cloud Innovation Leadership Award Winners

Last week we highlighted the 2016 City on a Cloud Innovation Challenge Award Winners. We showcased the five winners for the Best Practices Award and the five winners for the Dream Big Award. In addition, Appriss, GRIDSMART, OpenDataSoft, SmartProcure, and Utility, Inc. were this year’s Partners in Innovation Award recipients, recognizing applications that solve local and regional government challenges.

Check out each of the partner winners below:

Appriss – Prior to the introduction of VINE, an automated, reliable method for victims of crime to be notified of offender incarceration status did not exist. With VINE, Appriss systematized and automated the process of providing victims with information regarding offenders, enabling government agency staff to focus on their core responsibilities while allowing those affected to get timely offender information. VINE provides comfort to victims by providing them with critical information regarding their offenders. They can check the status of an offender 24/7/365 and register for automated notifications to provide extra peace of mind that comes with knowing a particular offender is incarcerated. VINE helps keep victims of crime safe and informed.

GRIDSMART – GRIDSMART is an intersection actuation product that actually “sees” the center of the intersection. The GRIDSMART system is made up of a bell shaped camera and connected into a process (GS2) in the traffic cabinet. The system actuates the intersection, provides video feed for situational awareness, and collects and records data on everything happening at the intersection, counts, speed, vehicle classification, and many others.

Utility, Inc – BodyWorn™ is a smart, policy-based, body worn camera solution that allows police departments to set video recording policies with confidence that policies will always be followed reliably and consistently. Video is uploaded automatically and securely to the AWS Cloud. The Amazon-hosted AVaiL Web™ Evidence Management System allows users to categorize, search, and view video evidence, track officers and vehicles, and automatically redact video evidence through a web browser.

OpenDataSoft – OpenDataSoft has built a cloud-based platform for data publishing and API management. OpenDataSoft’s turnkey solution is ideal for cities looking to provide Open Data as a resource for transparency and economic or social innovation. It is designed for non-technical users and makes it easy to publish, visualize, and share any kind of structured data to bring maximum value. OpenDataSoft can also serve as the basis for a Smart City project, as incoming sensor data can be processed in real-time and displayed on visualizations that can easily communicate the data to citizens.

SmartProcure – SmartProcure is a powerful tool used by government agencies to share and access critical purchasing intelligence. Hundreds of millions of government purchase orders from local, state, and federal agencies are made available and easily searchable via SmartProcure. This information is used by agencies to quickly find products, research pricing, verify vendors, ensure compliance, provide data to their citizens, and benchmark their performance internally and externally. This can dramatically reduce costs, increase procurement efficiency, and decrease records requests. SmartProcure uses AWS to make tool available to cities and to government agencies at every level.

This year, we also added a special recognition, the Cloud Innovation Leadership Award, which recognizes an early adopter of cloud technology that has implemented programs and services with a measurable impact on their citizens. The first recipient of the Cloud Innovation Leadership Award is the Singapore Land Authority (SLA) for its OneMap project. OneMap is an integrated map system for government agencies in Singapore to deliver location-based information and services. It functions as a collaborative environment for citizens, private sector, and the community to use open government GIS data to create citizen-facing applications and services.

To learn more about the City on a Cloud Innovation Challenge, visit https://aws.amazon.com/stateandlocal/cityonacloud/.