From Silicon Valley to City Hall: Exploring GovTech

 Bridging Innovation in GovTech: A Conversation with Manveer Sandhu

Welcome to a unique insight into how technology is revolutionizing governance, featuring Jared Asch in conversation with Manveer Sandhu, a City Councilman from Fairfield and a technology executive. This discussion explores the intersection of innovative tech solutions and local government needs, highlighting how technology shapes more efficient, transparent, and effective governance.

Introduction to Innovation in GovTech

In this age of rapid technological advancement, the potential for governments, particularly local and state bodies, to embrace technological innovations is immense. This potential is not solely about modernizing operations but about becoming innovation leaders. Manveer Sandhu brings a unique perspective to this discussion as both a government official and a technology executive. 

From Politics to Technology

Manveer's journey to becoming a city councilman started with his dedication to public service and education. From his initial campaigns for local school boards to his service on the Fairfield City Council, Manveer's background in technology and time in the Air Force Reserve offer a dual perspective on the role of technology in governance.

The Role of the Military and National Security

Manveer highlights how Fairfield's proximity to Travis Air Force Base integrates national security into local community life. This brings unique challenges and opportunities for using technology to support national defense and the local economy. From logistics to transportation, the impact of a military base on local GDP is significant, driving conversations around economic development and innovation.

Technological Change and AI Adoption in Government

Government agencies often face the challenge of safeguarding jobs while adopting new technologies. Jared and Manveer delve into the balance between fear of change and the necessity for innovation with AI. By using examples such as education tech pilots, the role of young technology-savvy personnel in local governments, and the gradual adoption of systems like AI-driven communication tools and drones for law enforcement, they highlight potential pathways for change.

Improving Communication in Governance

One persistent challenge for government agencies is effective communication with citizens. Manveer envisions a future where technology could streamline communication, making information more accessible and understandable. He discusses the need for solutions to package complex governmental data into digestible formats that keep citizens informed and engaged.

Economic Development and the Role of Local Governments

Jared and Manveer also discuss how military presence can stimulate economic growth, though not without its hurdles. For real progress, attracting logistical support companies is crucial, which requires a shift in how local businesses view government contracts and innovation.

Navigating the GovTech Market

For startups eyeing the GovTech sector, Jared and Manveer's insight is invaluable. Breaking into this market requires understanding city priorities and leveraging ways to engage with government officials and stakeholders. They suggest strategic participation in conferences and using council contacts to pilot new technologies.

Innovation in Public Safety and Law Enforcement

Public safety is ripe for tech innovation. Manveer shares examples of how law enforcement can benefit from technologies like AI in drones and automated report writing, emphasizing the importance of augmenting, not replacing, workforce capabilities.

To listen to the whole episode www.capstonegov.com/podcast or type "Capstone Conversation" on your favorite podcast app

Conclusion

In summary, this conversation between Jared Asch and Manveer Sandhu provides a comprehensive view into how technology and innovation can be seamlessly integrated into government operations. As both sectors evolve, collaborations between tech companies and government agencies will be pivotal in driving transformative change.

Join Manveer and Jared on this enlightening journey as they explore these themes, ignite thoughtful discussion, and challenge the status quo in the realm of GovTech.

#GovTech #GovernmentInnovation #DigitalGovernment #SmartGovernment #PublicSectorInnovation #CivicTech #Egovernment #GovTransformation #TechForGood #OpenGovernment #SmartCities #DigitalTransformation #PublicInnovation #GovTechSolutions #FutureOfGovernment #PolicyInnovation #GovTechTrends #CivicInnovation #GovernmentTech #PublicSectorTech #CapstoneConversation #JaredAsch #CapstoneGovernmentAffairs

For a full transcript

Welcome to the Capstone conversation where you learn about what's happening in the Greater East Bay. I am your host, Jared Asch.

 Today we're gonna talk about innovation in Govtech, and we're going to look how local and state governments can transform. Embrace new technology and be leaders in innovation. So we are joined by a city councilman from Fairfield, California. But his background is unique.

He is a technology executive and player in that market. So he comes here with two perspectives. From both technology and embracing innovation and as a city councilman and local elected official. So today we are joined by Manveer Sandhu with the City of Fairfield. Thank you.

Thanks, Jared Asch.

It's great to be here and it's great to see you again.

Yeah. So tell us a little bit more about yourself, particularly going to your technology background.

Happy to cover that and maybe just share a little bit about how I got here and how we're talking today. As you mentioned, I'm on council right now.

I have the pleasure of being elected to the Fairfield City Council. Fun fact, it's actually the second time I'd run for the seat. I, the first time I ran was in 2018 for that election. I lost my first election for that. But I got really good advice, which was never run only once, run twice, because you build all this.

Traction and progress that if you just don't run a second time, it all goes to waste. And that advice meant a lot to me. And then I actually did end up running a second time but it was actually for the school board I went to school at for the school district. And I had the pleasure of winning the election to serve on that school board for four years, from 2020 to 2024.

Which meant a lot to me 'cause I graduated from that district, started in kindergarten there, went through high school, and then my sister graduated from that same place as well. That was a really special time. And then following that had the opportunity to run for city council a second time to represent the district I've grown up in since I was six years old.

That's kinda on the political side but as and for folks on council, they usually have a second or third job to pay the bills. After I graduated from Davis, I had a chance to start working in boutique investment bank covering real estate, and they had a PE side of the house as well.

Came to find out that I might enjoy a different sector of work more so instead of the pure finance side, covering more the startup and venture capital side. And then I had a, so from there I went to a startup that was covering med tech. They were doing point of care blood cell analysis, which had both a medical use case but also a defense use case.

It was like a real pure play def dual use tech company. And then that led me to pursuing a a fellowship through the Air Force, through a company called Shift. I did the DVP program, defense Ventures Fellowship, and had a chance to work alongside an amazing guy Chris O'Connor, who was a former partner at Harpoon Ventures, who went on to become a partner at the NATO Innovation Fund.

And then that experience combined with everything I had done before that I joined Plug and Play where I covered defense innovation here.

You're active in the military as your third job, right? Your first job is in tech. Your second job and in no particular political order is the city council, but you're also an Air Force reservist, correct?

Am I've been in the Air Force Reserve now for over the past six and a half years. I drill at Travis Air Force Base. Fun fact, the the kindergarten I went to school at was actually at Travis Air Force Base. So I like to say at times I'm like the longest serving airman. 'cause I've been there since I was six years old at Traffic Air Force Base.

I've been breathing jet fumes for maybe a little too long now. But yeah, no, I actively do air and I cover intelligence work in my reserve capacity.

It. That's important just 'cause it gives you an another perspective on technology and innovation and how the military and which is a government entity is evolving.

Yeah, 100%. Innovation over, we look at Silicon Valley and what led to the growth of it to a large degree, it was the space race going back decades that pushed a lot of money from the federal government into Silicon Valley to then create advancements in satellite technology. Rockets semiconductors to put the chips on the missiles, on the satellites to go help win to help America win the space race.

Another interesting point is how national security becomes a local matter. When you're a city like Fairfield with Travis Air Force Base being within your city bounds. National security isn't this like thousand miles away concept that only is talked about in dc. It's really how it's really. What helped build the culture, of Fairfield, when you have so many folks who serve the country, living in your city attending their kids, attend your schools that does really create a unique experience to grow up in.

And not only do we talk about, the issues that affect a city being housing jobs, but also well, what can Fairfield do to help Travis ensure that they can go do what they need to do? And if that has to do with ensuring that. Access to the base is safe when there are, for example, protests going on that those are happening protecting everybody involved, the protestors, protecting the base, and ensuring it's a safe environment to, to let people express themselves.

But really ensuring that you have strong collaboration between the civilian side at Fairfield, at the city of Fairfield, a little with law enforcement, for example. And then collaborating with the base and working on these federal projects together. Makes for a really unique experience, especially for someone like me.

Because my council district actually encompasses the base. So not only is that part of Air Force Reserve hat, but it's also part of my city council hat. And then at plug and play I cover defense. So it's covering this space from a different perspective. But but same topic.

Yeah. And there's an economic development angle to. The military base as well. And that's something that we often look at how much it's impacting the GDP of Solano County and the City of Fairfield. The importance of the number of jobs, not just on base, but logistical and support, and it often comes up.

That there could be more around that as a hub for economic activity and supporting the base with other logistical companies. So that does bring an interesting perspective. I also just wanna dive in on the other famous people who lost big elections. Bill Clinton lost George W. Bush before he was governor, lost the congressional seat, and Abraham Lincoln lost eight different times running for office, and we think of him as one of the greatest presidents.

I think perseverance, building relationships, and you continue to learn from that.

Yeah. On the Lincoln front this past year I read a book called, it was recommended to me by a friend, a team of rivals. Which talks about how Lincoln went about building his cabinet right before the Civil War leading up to the Civil War, and how his administrations navigated that time period.

Fascinating book. And I think if we built administrations more like how he built his cabinet than we'd see a much better government at times, both at the state level, national level. It's definitely a principle that can, you can apply anywhere. Have you had a chance to read that book by any chance?

Team of No, but

I'm looking it up. Team of rivals. You type in team and it comes up. And I like it's by Doris Kern Goodwins, who is a well-known author of presidential historian and everything else. But wow, the audio version is 42 hours.

I was about to say, I will admit I read parts of it, but I, the entire thing.

Thanks. I I drive, I can edit that. I drive quite a bit, so it took me many hours. Yeah. As you mentioned, 40 hours of listening, which took a few months to get through.

Yeah, that's a big one. I might not be able to finish in time for the library app, but maybe I'll pick that up elsewhere.

And just to go back, as you said, one of the largest impacts on the smaller county, GDP is Travis invoice base. One of the interest unique things about Solano County is our largest employers are, is actually the public sector. You're talking about entities like the base, Travis Air Force Base some of the prisons, the prison in Vacaville, huge employer the school districts obviously, and then the hospital.

I think that's a great way to ensure you have a strong base of an economy, but when you're looking at what are you what are you gonna do to grow sustainably over the next 5, 10, 15 years? You might not want any of these organizations to grow that much. So you need at some point for the contributor, the those who are contributing to the economy of Solana County to be at some point the private industry to help create those jobs locally that can then scale into companies that can hire 5,500, maybe a thousand down the road, and then continue to grow from there.

And I think we're at the beginning stages of being able to build those industries. I often like to say if you look at the court between San Francisco and Sacramento, one of the things I love about Fairfield is that we're a dead center. We are nearly 40 miles from Sacramento and 40 miles from San Francisco.

We are the middle of California. And I think we can do a better job at playing up to that. And if you're looking at like innovation, for example, in defense, Fairfield's proximity to Travis Air Force Base make, makes a lot of. It makes a lot of sense to support that industry 'cause you're so close to the war fighter in that sense.

And Travis's impact is global. They're flying, they're doing missions everywhere, supporting humanitarian stuff, war defense stuff. So I'm optimistic that we'll be able to do more in that space and kinda help people along the way.

Let's hit on that before we dive into the, to the technology, Travis is a leading logistical support for the Asian market, the Middle Eastern market, huge. But from an economic development standpoint, a lot of the companies that supply Travis with that logistical support are not in the greater Fairfield Solano area.

What are some things that can be done? To improve that and attract some of those companies to have facilities here?

I think as quite well doing business with the government is not the easiest, might be the most hardest customer to work with and for good reason. You want to make sure that the folks you're working with are doing good work and with great background and stuff, so there is a lot of compliance work that has to go into the backend.

So I think we all understand that. One of the things I'm excited about that is gonna help businesses to do work with, not with Travis Air Force Base specifically, has been the they've been hosting these events called Industry Days for the past couple of years, and they've done a really good job at bringing in outside companies and vendors to come inside the wire, so to speak, to be able to meet folks at the base and learn about how to do business with the base.

These are more non-traditional vendors who otherwise would not have the ability to learn how to do that because the event takes place on Travis Air Force Base. So imagine getting a few hundred people cleared as guests to come on and hosting this really good public private event. Things like that are gonna help when you're seeing, how do you get folks earlier? To come in and lean in and support what the mission is and what they're doing.

I want to come back to the topic right now.

There's a change in technology right now with the advancement of ai. There's a lot of fear over this balance of protecting workers' jobs who work for local government. But also innovating and embracing new technologies. Government, especially local government, tends to be slow at adopting new technology.

They tend to safeguard. There's an old adage in government procurement around technology that if I buy from IBM, I won't lose my job, so I'm gonna do that. And that held true until about 2010 when the CIA actually awarded a huge contract to the Amazon World Services, the cloud over Microsoft and IBF, and that was the first time government really started to branch out and do other things.

But what should government know about this change that's happening with ai? And talk about that lens of resistance to change and being cautious as part of that.

I'm gonna push back a little bit 'cause I have a personally while I was on the school board at Travis Unified, we actually were able to be one of the first school districts to pilot a technology with a startup to help with education.

Company was basically operating in the space between helping with mentorship, basically between students and those in college and helping them along the college application process. We were the first school district to sign a formal pilot with the company and it did really well. And that was basically done because the board was willing to lean in on it.

The superintendent was very optimistic about it. As we see younger folks enter government who are, who have, who've grown up with technology more, I think you'll see government overall begin to move faster on it. For example, me being someone obviously on the younger side in government does help push some of this stuff a little earlier and for folks to think about it more.

That's why it's really important to, at the core of it, to just have a seat at the table. To bring that perspective. So that, that was one success story I wanted to share because that was a great example of being able to move fast. But yeah. And

that's important and that's while you're the expert on this topic today,

An interesting use case, for example, with AI in this instance, I think is gonna be how do you help communicate what a city is doing with people? A government does so much across, a dozen different industries or verticals, or these aren't the right words to use a different areas of responsibility that a city covers.

And one of the biggest gaps usually is it's hard to communicate that to the people, to, to the citizens we represent, just because everybody else, everybody out there has their life to live their jobs, do their families to take care of. And the last thing you wanna do is spend.

Five hours on the council meeting, but then you also have the planning commission meeting. You have the school board meeting, then you have the special committee meeting, and every organization might have a special meeting. I thought I once did a search. I think there's 60 different agencies and boards in Solano county alone.

So one of the use cases, and the problem that I would love to see, this stuff solve, is how do you condense all this information to, to be digestible so you could have some sort of. Agent that you can just talk to, to be like, what is my city doing? And get that answered in a few minutes. We're not quite there yet because that would require so many different partnerships and plugins and stuff to be able to pull all this information.

It'd be a monumental effort, probably. And the problem I think, generally sometimes becomes who pays for this? 'cause the problem might sound great. The solution is amazing. But then the market for it when it comes to who's gonna pay for this information gets really tricky.

Because you're solving a problem that while is important, might be really hard to quantify. Then it becomes, is this more of a non-profit focus versus a for-profit focus? Because solving problems in this space might not make the most business sense per se, because you can't, and you probably shouldn't be charging the kind of margins you would selling some typical software to a business. But like it's things like that I think about often because for example, in the city of Fairfield, we're working on a project it's a permanent supportive housing project. It was just hard to get information out in time at the pace and at the speed people want.

I think we need some sort of solution to help with that. It has to be more than just. We talk about at a council meeting, because that doesn't get out to enough eyes. Social media has been one but even then, you're maybe engaging with 10% of the whole population that are gonna engage with that content.

And when you're talking about a city of a hundred thousand plus people over, 30, 40,000 homes mail is an option. It's very expensive. So I don't have a great solution for it per se, but I know there is gonna be something at the intersection of in this gov tech space between constituent relationship management I've seen a couple companies come and go in the space.

And I think the problem does become the business model behind it. And it, and how you think through that, because that's gonna be really important. But the, I think it's a wicked hard problem.

Yeah.

It's right. Finding the balance of who pays and how. And you're right, not everybody is on X looking for an all capitalized statement from your city manager on something. Let's talk about time to review things, right? Government, we talked about it. Tends to be careful, particularly with their procurement process.

You're seeing defense though a lot of shifts to speed up that procurement process and review. With technology changing so rapidly, how can cities carefully look at rapidly more rapidly procuring and piloting new technology?

Yeah. Great question. As like the general consensus when it comes to innovation and like Silicon Valley is move fast and break things not necessarily the approach you want to take in defense let alone at local government where that's just not the culture usually.

I think one, if that is the course a city, for example, wants to take or an organization. You have to, to some degree, incentivize that sort of behavior. One of the problems, for example, historically on the, government contracting side has been, is the incentive for a contracting professional, acquisitions professional to go out of the way to do something different at times might not be that high, let alone if something goes wrong.

The fear, because maybe on paper is if something goes wrong, you might end up in a legal hearing potentially. End up down the road in prison prevents a lot of folks from maybe wanting to take risks on a new thing, even if it's, even if it's good. I, but I will admit that the reason we have all of these rules to begin with is historically because folks have gotten a little too creative historically on acquisitions and buying stuff for the government that you need to have this in place.

100%. That, that is, you need that for sure. I think from the city perspective. When it comes to leaning in on newer technologies, for example, that might be coming from a new vendor that is cheaper is just the realities of city budgets right now. Across California. , But I'll just use my city for example.

We're, we have a small structural deficit. I know some of the other cities in Solano County do as well, and I'm gonna assume here that many other cities in California are facing that same challenge. Overall, you're building to a degree more folks who living longer costs are going up like everything else.

And at times expenditures are outpacing revenue. When you're having to continue participating and supporting, obviously for good reason, your long-term obligations and pensions and stuff like that for whether retirement, it does make for a challenging fiscal landscape. So when you're looking at.

The solutions for operating a city you're gonna have to start looking at these newer companies that are building because it'll just be cheaper. And that'll just help the dollars stretch more. And I think we're getting close to that now of that need becoming higher.

Along those lines, I have several clients in the govtech space and when I talk to cities, they're like wait.

We don't want that to replace any jobs. We don't want any problems with our unions. This isn't criticism of the unions. That's just a political line that people give me. And I said, but the goal is that we're saving them Every person. If we save them an hour to two, three hours a day, they should be able to utilize that time to do more and replace future hires or retirees, or a lot of cities just have vacancies they can't fill.

How do, how should cities look in a new way around that issue? That it's not about replacing people like Workday or Salesforce who just fired people with ai. It's just about shifting what they do.

. I think you said it well. The goal is not, government is inherently about people.

Politics is about people. Like that is always gonna be a part of it. And I think we are a long time away from where we're gonna be. Like, I want. A machine to be the judge or something like that. I think we're far away from that, not far from it becoming a technical capability or possibility, but far from a society or a culture that we're like, that's what we want to listen to, or we all agree as a collective that is the decision making body we're going to adhere to.

We're, we are so far from that. I think, I think many folks can probably talk to, attest to the fact that a lot of their time when they're working, it's, you're not actually getting your work done, you're just trying to get through your emails or something like that. Like the amount of time you spend on like the core work of getting something done and delivering on something might be a minority of your time.

A majority of it oftentimes gets taken up by just. A meeting maybe where you're not contributing anything in, but you're added to the calendar and this and that. I think a great area for us to look at is really gonna be, as you said, like how do you augment someone to be able to get more done in less time.

And there have been so many companies out are building specific AI assistance to support that. I don't think we've seen a clear winner quite yet. But. Once, if you look as, if we look at the stack here, like we had the data setters that have come on, the foundation models are being built, the application layer is getting better, and now we're moving on to the agent side.

And that's where we're gonna start seeing, I think, a lot more innovation when it comes to AI agents to support government, for example. We're just beginning to approach that, so there's not a lot of great success stories to mention. But there was a company that was doing some work with the mayor's office of Denver.

That, that had built an AI assistant essentially to help with facilitating scheduling and emails and all that kind of stuff. So we're seeing more and more of that. But the goal is just to give people back their time, man. And I think we don't have a great product to do that yet. 'cause there's so many folks competing right now in the space to enable that to happen.

But the need for it is massive. It's a multi-billion dollar problem of getting something to run in the background to support you. And we're seeing that on the commercial side and it'll we're already starting to see it. For example, I think AI copilot, Microsoft copilot launched with our city for example.

We have a few licenses for it. It's beginning to happen. And as you said, it's not about replacing really, it's really about augmenting to help people

\ give a couple of examples. City staff council, people who are listening should, could consider looking at just the use cases, not necessarily companies where they could start incorporating some of this to save that time and , hopefully money with that.

One example I that, that stuck with me was seeing how San Francisco PD began to use drones for law enforcement. The goal was never to replace police officers for law enforcement. It was how do you augment a police officer's job to help them do it better? As you might recall, like post COVID San Francisco saw a massive increase in car break-ins.

We all saw it. I think we all know someone who's had the car broken into in the past few years in San Francisco. I don't have the numbers in front of me, but I think the general consensus is that those numbers have gone down significantly and in part. You've seen San Francisco PD using drones to track the cars that get broken into that get driven away.

And it, it makes for a safer environment of rock because you're not having to have police officers speed through intersection to go catch this car because they now can see from a 30,000 foot view not literally 30,000 feet, but from a bird's eye view, that car headed we'll go send an officer to intercept him and they can travel at a reasonable safe speed.

You have come full circle on that crime engagement and you've basically enabled the officer to conduct that mission set in a safer way. That's a, I think that's a great use case. And it, it does bring up a concern, I will admit of the argument of behind like a surveillance state kind of system.

So I think the privacy side of this is gonna be a really important discussion of how do you ensure you're not, unreasonably. Putting cameras on people, recording people and all that kind of stuff. That is a well needed debate to have. And I think organizations like City Council, board of Supervisors, and California State Assembly, the state Senate and stuff like that will have those discussions as they come up in time.

But that's one great example I think on the law enforcement side. And I bring that up because as we're tracking, like the majority of city spend is on law enforcement. That is nearly half, if not well, usually over half of the city budget. So if you can reduce the amount of resources it takes for law enforcement to conduct its business, you'll then begin to open up dollars to go toward other buckets that the city spends on.

For example, parks and rec, for example. It's usually sometimes the earliest place to cut because it impacts maybe the least amount of people directly. And you can reallocate money and it's unfortunate. So if there's ways to, save money from the biggest bucket and reallocate in a responsible manner, I think that'll make for a better city operational mission set overall.

So yeah, that's one that comes to mind off the top of my head.

I think that's good. And I have a couple of public safety clients, one that's geared towards. Helping law enforcement write their police reports and

That was another one that came to mind. Yeah.

. It's geared towards, let's say police based on the level of arrest, have to spend, I like simple math, four hours writing reports and doing paperwork.

My example is no police officer went to the academy to do paperwork. We call those people accountants, but they, but if we could reduce that four by taking their body camera footage and an audio statement while the officer's driving back to their off their precinct from central booking or something like that, and they still have to spend time on the report.

They still have to read it. They still have to input their own thoughts and proofread everything, but that could still save three out of four hours on the reports and make use of time more efficiently. The goal there I say, isn't about. Cutting hours for overtime. And the officers that like getting overtime, get them back on the streets, get them back in the community meeting with people because that will reduce your crime and then it'll continue in a cycle.

And I have other examples in law enforcement like that. I also. And talking with a communications company that, that can help save employees hours of time by like setting up those FAQs. How do you write? Not have to take every phone call in or email in and respond, and how do you track somebody calling about a pothole problem?

Those are common questions city council people get when you get that and you get it via text message. How do you send it over to staff? How do you track that? Staff ever gets back to that person and says, yes, we're on our pothole list. If AI can help streamline and manage that communication process, that seems like an improvement to me, that makes the workers that are there more efficient in all of those cases.

One thing that the city of Fairfield has done is we launched a chat bot on our Citi website called Archie, which is powered by a company called Citi Bot. And it's a way for people to ask, their kind of more straightforward question that they want a quick answer to leveraging this AI enabled system on our website.

That saves a little bit of time. It's a start. 'Cause I think there's a lot more we can do in that space, but that's one thing that we've done to begin implementing some of this stuff. I'm looking forward to the future of this space because folks in general are usually not broadly speaking, are not like in love or very happy with their government, but I think over time as some of this stuff just becomes more utilized and more clear and more transparent, it'll make engaging with government easier.

Because I it's definitely hard the amount of layers you have to it. And, in the beginning stages, I think, of seeing a strong interest from the commercial side of engaging with Govtech. I know you had Rachel Stern on from Govtech Ventures she did work in the space. You've seen American dynamism from a 16 z involved in the govtech public safety space.

One of the benefits of the increase in interest of defense tech. Has been not only looking at defense tech only, but looking at defense tech as a sect of government innovation broadly. And that's been a, I think a net benefit of the space because historically no one really looked at govtech as a hot area.

But with the increase of interest in defense venture that's gotten folks who start thinking about defense, but then also public safety and from public safety started engaging at the city level. And then all of a sudden you're like, wait, there are cities with billion dollar budgets. All of a sudden you're like, this isn't really a small market.

This is a massive market. But the go-to-market strategy is not clear per se, because it is such, it is quite antiquated overall. It'll just take a lot more time for people to get used to breaking in and doing business with, for example, city, municipal, county governments. But it'll help a lot once we can do more of it.

So let's look at it from a company perspective. Let's put the big companies the Googles, the Microsoft, the side. Right now, if you are a startup, early stage or even an a round company with 25 employees. How do you break into the govtech market? How do you meet people , let's first start with that and then second, let's look at like, how do you convince government to pilot something that's not been done before?

On the engagement front, this might sound a little too simplistic, but I have found if you call people usually pick up the phone. Government, I think to a degree has to respond to every phone call they get. So sometimes a as simple as a call to the city manager's office goes a long way.

Obviously a warm intro is probably the best way to get anything done. But I would say don't downplay the impact a cold call could make. I went to DC recently and at one point we did make a couple cold calls and then set up some meetings. At the hill. So it does work. Now, that's not the best strategy per se.

It is one. The other one would be when it comes to engaging on the conference front, when you're looking at, for example education institutions you have CSP in California, the California School Board Association, they host a couple conferences per year. You'll have hundreds of school board members from around the state attending that.

Now they have their own national version of that association as well. So becoming a small sponsor for these events usually goes a long way in meeting many people all at once. And then on the city government perspective it's probably one of the best organizations in California when it comes to municipal politics and government.

The League of California cities, they are a powerhouse when it comes to California government. And you have usually a couple council members from each city in California attending that conference. That's a great time to, even don't, the company for example, doesn't even have to buy a ticket to attend per se.

I'm sure Cal Cities would love for them to, but just be in Long Beach at that time and reach out to people, ask to grab coffee. And I think if you give people a chance, they will. They'll meet you halfway. And people do, I know for other conferences, people do that all the time. Like they'll be in San Francisco doing JPM not to go to JPM, just to be in SF at that time.

Or for example in Florida for Soft Week, they might not attend Soft week per se, but they'll be in Florida at that moment in time in Tampa. Then have the meetings just to be, just proximity matters and being at the right place at the right time matters a lot. And I think tracking some of those conferences can go a long way and building those relationships organically.

To then break in and sell into that space.

I have been known to, to do that at the California League of Cities, where I will sit in the lobby of the convention center or. Hotel Lobby, which is the main hotel out of, they take up several for that conference. We'll just be there to talk at the bar.

I have a plan and I reach out to people and I know people and they always bring a friend. But I will do that as a way to start those conversations and build that relationship. So I recommend that the. It's also about building relationships, going to people you trust, utilizing parties that are like myself connected and friends with people because they just, they don't want a transactional thing.

They want to know that this is government. Like you said, they represent people. That's a relationship game for them. The other part of that is. How do you get a city to pilot something that's new and innovative? Here's the concept, here's the idea. This is how we could prove to you how the technology works, but it's never been done, or it's only been done in Tacoma, Washington or in El Paso, Texas.

How do we bring that to larger scale for our cities to, for both the city to adopt it, but how do the companies. Get in and get that first set of data to approved this crazy idea could work.

Oh. So assuming they don't have anything already happening, how do you break in?

Yeah.

From zero.

Hey, we did a pilot project as part of our degree at Stanford or Berkeley.

Sure. Here's what we're testing, here's where we believe it'll work.

A couple of things come to mind. One is, even though all cities in America. Tend to have the same core responsibilities, public safety, housing permits whatever. They'll each have their own twist to it. What I mean by that they'll give priority to different things.

The same things Fairfield cares about might not be what Beverly Hills cares about. They might be different priorities, even though we're doing the same core job as a city. What you focus on, what you spend a majority of your time on, are your, what are your goals are gonna be a little different.

So where I'm going with that is usually each council is gonna put out a list of council priorities. That'll, it might be five or six things. And then there'll be a larger document after that, that go into specific goals that they want to get done. If you can figure out which one you fall into, which bucket you fall into that'll go a long way because the city manager and his team, or their her team, their team, their goal is to go after those council objectives.

So that in one year when they go back to the table and say did we get any of these done? The city wants to be able to put a good showing forward and that helps the city look good. It helps with the city manager's evaluation and when it comes up and when they're dealing with re renewals possibly and stuff, the city manager needs to be able to point to getting these council objectives done.

So I think one would definitely be looking at whatever city someone's thinking about. What is that council's priorities? What are their objectives and goals? It'll usually, you, it should be pretty clearly identified somewhere on the website that these are what they're focused on. So that, that is the one of the first things that comes to mind.

The other one would be, look, I would say do some homework on the buyers of your council members. For example, if we're dealing with city government and see if there's anyone who has a background in the space you're looking at. I think an intro from a council member to staff goes a long way. Just getting visibility.

You're not, say you're not really getting priority on winning a contract 'cause we're not involved in that, per se, until the very, very end process. But when it comes to just taking a look at something, Hey, could we, could this help the city? If a council member is willing to, take a call with somebody and then say, you know what?

Let's see if this can help our city. That'll go a long way. And then I think engaging with folks on councils and stuff, any kind of community event they'll usually be around. So they're, I would say. Folks in that seat I would like to think tend to be fairly accessible people.

That's a good point.

'cause if you have a transportation technology issue that could solve parking or reduce. Left hand turns in one intersection that's causing a lot of accidents. There's usually a council member that prioritizes transportation within a city, right? They sit on the regional transit authorities, the bus authorities representing the city.

They take more of an interest in it, and so that would be the appropriate person to, to start having the conversation with where the staff director of that space. Might be like, , I don't have a budget for new technology. I'm not interested, but it could be looked at differently.

Or it's finding that balance between approaching the right council person who prioritizes that topic or, and or going to staff.

Was a bit of just education or just maybe cross teaching has to go on because. Generally speaking, the companies that have operated in municipal business have been industry kind of giant in a way, and they are well established, for example.

So it there is a bit of just maybe contracting education that has to go back and forth between the startup who might be a three person team, but doesn't have a legal HR compliance team just ready to go and, for the city to be willing to just explain and walk them through that process sometimes.

But it's also con contingent upon for example, the small business in this case, for them to be able to do the homework and be able to spend the money to get the compliance done to become a vendor to the government. 'Cause this is such a new, overall, a newer thing that's going on now as we're seeing what people build in the space.

That's really interesting because there's another side to that. The pressure that some of these gov tech startups, particularly those taking early stage seed money or venture funds, they might have a great product and it solves that need, some of that police tech we were talking about. But what they don't realize is just because you're even giving that to a city as a free pilot program.

You can't offer it to them on September 10th and expect to close a deal by September 30th, because that's unrealistic. Government works in a process and a timeline. What are your thoughts around that, both from how can government work more efficiently, but also what do you want the startups in Govtech to know about that timeline?

One thing, and this is a perspective on, I think my views might evolve on over time, but at least for now for conversational sake, might be trying to avoid signing multi like long year engagement contracts with companies. It leaves very little room for a city, for example, to try new things because if you're locked into one service provider on a 10 year contract or one technology vendor for a 10 year contract.

You will not have any ability to try new things. So I think this is much more of a strategic shift for a city if they want to go down that path of, you know what, we love your thing right now, we'll do a two year engagement or three year engagement, and after that we'll see what we can do. I think it takes a lot of a level acceptability of, not pain per se.

What's the right word? If you're dealing with newer companies in the market, like just the pain, the growth of a company, and like the product might change over time, so you can't do it everything. But if you are willing to kinda lean in and be on the front end of innovation in the space I'm rambling now.

Let me go back to the point being not signing multi-year engagement, because I've seen that happen even in our own city. We're dealing with a vendor and it's oh, I'd love to try something else. They're like, oh, we can, 'cause we have this for the next eight years. And I'm like

And it's exclusive and the world is changing so quick.

And I would also caution those particularly investing in, or those startup founders, this is not a business to consumer product. To our point is government has a whole lot of process in place and there's reasons for it. They are trying to innovate a little faster, but at the same time, you cannot expect 60, 90 day, even six months is a very fast timeline in government to look and embrace and close a deal.

And so I would just be cautious to know. That. Look at where you are at making progress in your sales, but six months, 12 months, and 18 months. See if you're advancing it.

Absolutely

What's a problem in government that you would love a SOL technology solution to solve?

On the public sector side, like I serve on a council I have other colleagues who are on different councils. I have colleagues that are on different boards and stuff. And one thing I'm never really aware of, I am aware 'cause I talk to them at events and stuff, but it's hard to track in a quick way what everybody else is doing.

Because there, there's quite a bit of duplication of effort at times. We might be doing a transportation project that somebody else's too or some or something else. Even though you do have these regional boards that exist, it's usually just one person sitting on it and it information doesn't flow right around in an efficient manner.

Like for me, I would love if there was a way for me to engage with a product that I can query questions against. Oh, what if there was a. Centralized system of decision making happening across a county, for example. Where it was like a platform where you can just see, and it summarizes for you.

This is the three big things Fairfield did that week at Vacaville, the county, Dixon, Rio Vista, Cun. But then not only the councils, the boards, the commissions, the committees, just one all encompassing platform for all that, in a dashboard view would be super helpful because f. For me to figure out what we should do maybe as a future in the city of Fairfield it would be helpful for me to be able to figure out quickly what are the other cities, counties in the region doing?

And that would not be a easy thing to do when you start looking at five or 10 cities at once because you'd have to go into each city's minutes individually or something like that. Yeah. 10 different newspapers. So this has been an area I've been thinking a lot about is build this knowledge base that updates, 24 7 and pulls information in.

You create the Bloomberg terminal, the a a Bloomberg terminal like system for local government. That, that's one. Yeah, that, that'd be a big one for me.

Man. This has been an absolute pleasure. It's great to see you again, and I hope to catch up with you soon and yeah.

Thanks. I appreciate it. Maner Sandhu, Councilman from the City of Fairfield and Tech Executive, thank you for joining me today.

Thanks, Jared.

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