The Transportation Department has selected seven finalists a $40 million national contest to develop programs to address mobility, environmental and safety problems through the integration of technology and data-based approaches.
All finalistsin the Smart City Challenge will receive $100,000 each to aid in the development of new ideas that would be judged on the candidate’s ability to “think big,” form a road map and integrate technology on a proposed city transportation network, DOT said Saturday.
“The level of excitement and energy the Smart City Challenge has created around the country far exceeded our expectations,†said Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx.
Foxx said that seven were selected instead of five because of the potential of the participants to develop the future of urban transportation.
The complete list of finalists is found on DOT’s website and the department will announce the winner in June.
Related Articles
Gregory Barbaccia, federal chief information officer and a 2025 Wash100 awardee, has shared his insights on how the federal government should advance digital transformation. “I notice a lot of the government considers itself to be ‘digital,’ but in reality, we’ve only digitized, not transformed. Sure we went 0-1, but that should have just been the beginning,” Barbaccia wrote in a LinkedIn post. He noted the lack of automation and that workflows remain unchanged despite the replacement of paper ledgers with spreadsheets. “Files are shared over email instead of through real-time collaboration tools,” he added. Advancing Digital Transformation in Federal Government
The Federal Communications Commission has adopted new rules that seek to eliminate unnecessary paperwork and address regulatory barriers to the ground-station-as-a-service, or GSaaS, business model as part of efforts to drive innovation in the U.S. space economy. FCC said Thursday the new rules establish a process for ground station operators to secure a baseline license without first identifying a satellite point of communication. A simple FCC notification will be required for each new point of communication. According to FCC, the change would eliminate nearly half of earth station modification applications. “Making the smallest change to a satellite system or earth
The General Services Administration has announced a OneGov agreement with Amazon Web Services that will provide up to $1 billion in direct incentive credits to federal civilian agencies. According to GSA, the direct incentive credits, aggregated across the agencies, will include savings on core AWS cloud services through AWS credits, infrastructure and application technologies modernization through AWS modernization credits, access to AWS training and certification through training credits and a streamlined engagement model with greater savings for direct contracts through direct partnerships. Advancing America’s AI Leadership The agreement is expected to accelerate large-scale IT transformation and boost AI innovation across