NTXIA Organizational Priorities
Urban Resilience Fellows Program
The Concept: Taking an interdisciplinary approach to bring the multiple perspectives necessary to solve pressing issues for our organizations and residents. Through working across speciality and department, bringing 360 insights in developing solutions will bring ‘complete solutions’ for host organizations.
Program Vision: The Urban Resilience Fellows program will connect teams of students from higher education institutions across DFW with a community partner from local government or industry to develop innovative solutions to a pressing local issue.
We are thrilled we will soon be able to share the organizations to sign-on to host the first cohort of our Urban Resilience Fellows!
If your organization is interested in learning more please reach out to Yumna Bham (ybham@ntxia.org) to learn more
Call for Innovation initiative- What’s Next?
As the public sector seeks to understand new and emerging technologies and their potential to bring ROI to their constituents, finding new ways to learn and expose them to the broader landscape and learning in real-time what these implementations could look like are an area ripe for innovation.
Enter the Call for Innovation initiative, which collects problem statements from multiple departments, or multiple organizations, to release a call to understand the market in various stages of maturity. Companies shortlisted are invited to demonstrate their solutions live and in-person to key stakeholders.
The response from NTXIA’s first Call for Innovation & Demo Day with Dallas County in Summer 2023 was so well received, we're already thinking about the possibilities for future Calls with our members. If you're interested in exploring this program and agile process, please reach out - more to come on some of those in development already!
Research Partnerships: North Texas Center for Mobility Technologies
Research partnerships are a cornerstone of regional innovation and training the next generation of urban technologists. The NTXIA supports the North Texas Center for Mobility Technologies and works to leverage the coordinated expertise of Dallas-Fort Worth research universities to tackle mobility technology challenges across Texas, nationally, and globally. NTCMT is a program of the Texas Research Alliance (TRA).
Seeking New Financial Models & Revenue Solutions for Government
If 2020 taught us anything - it’s the importance of agility and collaboration to meet rapidly changing needs. How we innovate to solve problems - and fund solutions - is part of ‘phase 2’. The North Texas Innovation Alliance has published a call for revenue generating solutions for government on Marketplace.city, a digital marketplace and service that helps state and local governments source, validate, and procure technology. As local governments continue to adapt to evolving resident expectations, budget shortfalls, aging infrastructure, and technology, North Texas is emerging as a leader to stay on top of trends and committed to adopting innovative, research-based solutions. The first step is sourcing a complete market landscape to evaluate available options.
National Collaboration
In 2021, NTXIA was a founding member of the NSCP in an effort to move quickly on common goals across the country. The mission of the National Smart Coalitions Partnership is to broaden partnerships, resources and initiatives that are currently helping individual communities in their respective areas to deploy smart city technologies. As a multi-state association, the National Smart Coalitions Partnership aims to bridge gaps between local and regional technology efforts within specific states and transform them into multi-state collaborative endeavors. More at www.smartcoalitions.org
Supporting Strategic Development of Member’s Smart City Framework
Knowing where to start can be daunting - the NTXIA works with best practices to support members’ defined framework, including Dallas County. The emergence and rapid evolution of new technology, data and design principles are challenging traditional government process and pace; by creating a framework that provides mechanisms to educate, evaluate, leverage industry subject matter experts and effectively collaborate mitigates some of the risk that is ever-present with new technologies. Ensuring that the community’s best interests are paramount, privacy is protected, public transparency is provided throughout the process, and projects comply with existing and anticipated local, state and federal regulation are hallmarks of successful smart programs.
Demo Days
The North Texas Innovation Alliance hosts Demo Days to showcase cutting-edge technology under development, study, and testing within the North Texas region. One such event was the Dallas County Drone and Robotics Day, providing our members with a comprehensive understanding of the applications of drones and robotics within Smart City development.
Immersive Innovation Series
The North Texas Innovation Alliance has launched an Immersive Innovation Program to highlight “the brightest and most innovative projects across North Texas” while providing hands-on learning experiences for its members. The program’s first quarterly “field trip” in December offered a tour of the National Science Foundation’s newly opened eCAT Center at the University of North Texas—and more of these “hands-on innovation experiences” are still to come.
Working Groups & Think Tank -> Do Tanks
In 2021, NTXIA established three initial working groups focused on its six priority areas - Digital Infrastructure, Financial Models & Procurement and Mobility. Through the work of membership, working groups drove the agenda for Building Block series to guide digital infrastructure and broadband deployments, our Call for Revenue Generating Solutions, and the identification of experts and peers from around the country to guide, share and advise individual and collective programs and policies.
