 This article by Chad Swiatecki originally appeared in the Austin Monitor.
Describing the patchwork of roughly a dozen information management systems her employees have to use to manage the city’s affordable and low-income housing network, Rosie Truelove said it’s time for Austin’s tech sector to help the city run smarter. With data siloed because of incompatible system architecture and other related technology problems, she said she’s limited in her role as director of Neighborhood Housing and Community Development. While laying out her department’s need for a central data management platform to members of Austin’s technology community on Monday, Truelove joined managers from more than a dozen departments within city government in helping to frame the problems local government needs help solving.
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 by Brian Dietrich, Chair, Education Committee
Welcome to our new Austin City Up Education blog series. No matter how you got here, we hope you will return regularly to review and potentially contribute to our progressive Education blog series. The charter of our Education consortium is to evaluate and develop technology projects that will positively impact students in central Texas schools, community colleges and universities. Our group is a diverse group of individuals and technology companies that are coming together collectively to establish collaborations, provide thought leadership, develop campus projects and facility community engagement. As the EdTech marketplace rapidly evolves, new technologies are being adapted for use in the classroom, at home, and on the go that will accelerate student academic achievement through personalized learning best suited for a particular student's learning modality.  by Joe Iannello, President, Austin CityUP and VP CIO, Capital Metro
Welcome to the 2018 edition of Austin CityUP! This is really a great time to be in Austin and there are so many transformational opportunities that will literally change and improve the way residents and visitors will experience this great city and surrounding area. As you know, Austin CityUp exists as a non-profit, public/private consortium to help facilitate the realization of some of these opportunities. I would very much like to thank our board of directors, who in early February, 2018, elected me to be the new president of Austin CityUP. We are fortunate to have a great group of talented and experienced individuals who are members and those who serve on our board of directors and in our management group. ACUP Member Center for Music Therapy Named Finalist for 2018 SXSW Interactive Innovation Award2/13/2018  Congratulations to the team at the Center for Music Therapy! Their Movement Tracks project, dedicated to creating new methods in music and biotech to help people walk again, is a finalist in the Health, Med, and Biotech category of SXSW's third annual Interactive Innovation Awards presented by KPMG. Each year, this competitive category recognizes the new technology that best improves the quality, efficacy, and cost-effectiveness of prevention, diagnosis, treatment, and care in health and medicine.
 Austin CityUP members and followers, Austinites, and other aficionados of smart cities:
Austin CItyUP Consortium was hard at work in 2017, our first full year. We secured our first funding, an award for an affordable housing database development project. We started several other collaborative projects that are in design phases, applied for project grants, and laid a strong foundation for achieving our ultimate vision of a comprehensive, integrated, inclusive, sustainable and evolving smart city infrastructure in Austin.  By Jay Boisseau
We have built a strong smart city consortium in Austin, with more than 50 companies and organizations (local, national, and global), City of Austin departments, and interested individuals coming together in support of a shared Austin CityUP vision: to create the world’s first truly comprehensive, integrated, inclusive, sustainable, and evolving smart city infrastructure. We have perhaps the largest such consortium in the world, with vast aggregate expertise, and we are now designing and developing projects to address civic issues and improve the quality of life in Austin. One project addressing affordable housing has already achieved some initial funding, and several other projects are under way.  As Austin faces a dire shortage of housing for its poor and working-class population, City Council is looking for every way to get developers to build units that rent at well below market rate.
In many cases, developers offer to provide affordable units in exchange for entitlements that Council would otherwise be reluctant to grant, such as increased density or exemptions from certain fees or regulations. But how does the city ensure that the units the developer promised actually materialize, that they are in fact only available to those of certain income levels and that market rate rent is not being charged?  Austin CityUp (ACUP), a consortium of companies and organizations aimed at creating smart-city capabilities in Austin, Texas, plans to install a Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) beacon-based solution in the city center. The group plants to test how well the technology provides location-based content to individuals with an app, and what value that will bring to the city, local businesses and app users.
Consulting and strategic planning company Vizias is part of the ACUP team overseeing the project. The solution's BLE system is provided by technology company Connecthings, using BlueCats beacons on the city's 2nd Street corridor as part of ACUP's Smart 2nd Street project.  Austin, Indianapolis, Miami, Orlando and Philadelphia will receive Readiness Workshops, Products and Services in 2017
(Washington, D.C.) – February 8, 2017 – Smart Cities Council, the world’s largest smart cities network, announced today that Austin, Indianapolis, Miami, Orlando and Philadelphia are the five winners of the Smart Cities Council Readiness Challenge Grant program. Over 130 cities were involved in the application process. The winning cities will receive a tailored Readiness Workshop during 2017 to develop a roadmap for applying smart technologies to further innovation, inclusion and investment within their cities. |
