This whole Civic Accelerator concept just might work.
The City of Guelph is ready to launch a pair of pilot projects following months of collaboration with two firms. Each has been working with the city to find solutions to nagging problems.
Ottawa-based Milieu Technologies, a company that works to foster better dialogue between local government and the public, and Kitchener-based Alert Labs, a company that develops water monitoring sensors, have been embedded in city operations since last summer. Now, their projects are going to the next level.
“When we started this program, we didn’t know the outcome,” said Andy Best, the city’s advisor on service design and innovation. “We knew that it might lead to us buying something, if the development done during the embed period was great. Or that it might lead to us walking away.”
But the latter scenario appears not to be the outcome. On Wednesday, the city will hold a demonstration event, announcing that both Alert Labs and Milieu Technologies will formally take the next steps towards the “buying something” stage.
“Happily, what we are announcing tomorrow is that both active Civic Accelerator projects are moving into formal pilot programs,” Best said on Tuesday.
Alert Labs focused on the water-use challenge of enabling water customers to get real-time water use data for their homes and other properties. Access to such information can help detect costly leaks in a timely manner, and encourage water conservation.
“We are incorporating Alert Labs into our suites of water efficiency rebates on a trial basis,” Best said, adding that the first 600 residents to purchase the devices will receive a $50 rebate from the city.
The sophisticated devices, which retail for $299, strap on to ordinary water meters, read data from the meter and make it available to digital electronic devices.
Over the next several months, the pilot project will be carefully monitored to determine if it should become a permanent feature of the city’s water program.
The Milieu project explored ways to improve the process of consultation around planning decisions. The planning process is one of the most consulted upon processes that local governments engage in, Best indicated.
The Milieu platform is intended to improve the process of public input on planning processes, allowing more avenues for participation, including through digital technology.
The platform has been further developed through the embedding period, with new features for planners added. Now, the city’s development planning files will go into the platform on a trail basis, Best said.
It will be further monitored over the next several months to determine if it delivers process efficiency, and has good uptake from the public, he added.
“We’re going to try it out on a formal basis, and then evaluate if we want to make it permanent,” Best added.
Guelph Mayor Cam Guthrie, chief administrative officer Derrick Thomson, representatives from Alert Labs and Milieu, and representatives from partner organizations will be on hand Wednesday for the first Civic Accelerator demonstration day. It starts at 1 p.m. in MacDonald Hall, University of Guelph campus.
“I am very pleased with where we’ve gotten to,” Best added. “We definitely took a bit of a leap with this program, and tried something new.”
The process over the past several months has helped validate Civic Accelerator as “a good way to solve certain kinds of problems,” he said, adding that planning is underway on another round of projects using the same model.
