The future of mobility innovation could mean getting rid of those pesky requests for proposals (RFPs).
“We need to reimagine the systems in how government engages with emerging technologies and startups,” Leigh-Ann Buchanan, president and CEO of the nonprofit Miami-Dade Innovation Authority, said Wednesday at the CoMotion Miami conference.
“We need to do away with RFPs, and replace them with pilot-based open-innovation challenges, because that not only allows governments to de-risk — try before they buy — but it also creates an opportunity for more innovative startups to have an entry point into public contracts that are traditionally unavailable for them,” Buchanan said.
Pilot projects and more innovative collaborations among transportation departments and other partners like private-sector companies, philanthropies and other non-conventional arrangements should all be on the table, mobility tech watchers said, particularly given the challenges regions face, and the recent policy changes coming from Washington.
“There has been a really radical change of tone from Washington, in which federal largesse is being cut off,” John Rossant, founder and CEO of CoMotion, a Los Angeles-based think tank at the intersection of mobility and urbanism, said at the conference. “You almost have the feeling that the federal government is anti-city.”
Rossant was referring to positions taken by the Trump administration to realign federal funding programs. These headwinds, leaders said, should not stop cities, regions and states from thinking innovatively around transportation.
“I think many of us in the room are feeling the sense of uncertainty,” Justine Johnson, senior vice president and chief mobility officer with the Office of Future Mobility and Electrification at the Michigan Economic Development Corporation, said during the event.
Johnson said she has been using this uncertainty as the “fuel to focus more on collaboration in a way that we really have not done before.”
States, cities and even philanthropy have been coming together to have “conversations that I think we hadn’t seen as much before. And so we’re continuing to force that level of collaboration,” she said.
Michigan intends to “work with both sides of the aisle, and really thinking about, what are the opportunities around ensuring there’s a space for infrastructure, innovation and jobs,” Johnson stressed.
Cities, Buchanan said, need to identify their mobility problems and challenges, and then clear a path for technology or other innovators to step in and quickly produce a solution that can scale.
“We need to reimagine that perhaps an RFP is probably not the best way for us to find solutions,” said Buchanan, a self-described “destructor” and “recovering attorney,” advocating for what she described as “pilot-based open challenges” which outline the problem, leaving the solution an open question for the private sector to solve using public infrastructure.
Rethinking the process is not a bad idea, said Stacy Miller, director of Miami-Dade County’s Department of Transportation and Public Works. Procurement, she said, can be complicated.
“I think there are checks and balances for a reason,” Miller said. “But really what is the end result that we’re looking for. Safe, efficient mobility.”
