Providence Technology Group

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Information technology leaders descended on the capital city this week to share ideas and strategies during the 2019 California Public Sector CIO Academy. California CIO Amy Tong gave opening remarks at the two-day event and touted the state’s IT achievements over the past year, while also looking to the future for change. “2018 was a very productive year,” she said. “2019 is going to be another exciting year.” During the past 12 months, the CIO noted, the state has seen a number of successes. One was its ranking in the Center for Digital Government’s* Digital States Survey, which evaluates states’ use of IT to deliver services. After 10 years of California receiving a B+ grade in the national survey, the Golden State finally broke t...[Read More]

UC Davis and IBM are collaborating on the proposed Aggie Square project in Sacramento. UCD Chancellor Gary May announced the agreement on Thursday. A group of IBM specialists joined staff from Aggie Square and the UCD Office of Public Scholarship and Engagement in a newly leased building on Stockton Boulevard. The proposed building will also include a flexible innovation center for UC Davis faculty, IBM and others to host events to demonstrate their latest innovations and collaborative projects. “Aggie Square is off to an amazing start,” said May. “There is still much to do before we start new construction, but we won’t wait to share ideas and create opportunities for the university, for the community and for industry. I couldn’t be more grateful to IBM for their interest and their leaders...[Read More]

Whilst it is often said that the vast bulk of consumer interest in cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology is based on speculative financial gain, it is always refreshing to see its usage considered for the greater cause. This is exactly what innovators at IBM are hoping to achieve, with a recent pilot test to ascertain whether blockchain and IoT (Internet of Things) technologies can help track groundwater usage in the U.S. state of California. In collaboration with not-for-profit organization the Freshwater Trust and satellite sensor provider SweetSense, the IBM project is looking to tackle unsustainable usage of groundwater. The key reason that California has been targeted is that the location hosts one of the most at-risk aquifers in the U.S. In effect, the idea behind the project is...[Read More]

Heather Hiles, a former deputy director at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and technology entrepreneur,  was named the first CEO and president of California’s one-of-a-kind online community college. The college was the brainchild of former Gov. Jerry Brown, who pushed it through the Legislature last year to become the state’s 115th community college with $240 million in state start-up funding over seven years. Hiles will be taking over the leadership of a college that holds great promise amid skepticism and scrutiny. Community college faculty were intensely opposed. Key lawmakers questioned the college’s need. But in Brown’s last year as governor, the college and its funding were ultimately approved. Keep reading this article at Ed Source

Today, SMUD CEO and General Manager Arlen Orchard unveiled a vision for the Sacramento region to lead the way in mobility by developing a model for a future Mobility Center that will foster innovation in the clean transportation sector and serve as a catalyst for carbon reduction and inclusive economic development. Building on California’s policy leadership in tackling greenhouse gas emissions, and SMUD’s commitment to electric transportation and innovative mobility solutions, SMUD is funding two feasibility studies to support the Mobility Center. The Mobility Center would bring existing regional efforts to secure an electric vehicle prototyping hub and the Autonomous Transportation Open Standards initiative under one umbrella organization. The Mobility Center is envisioned as a public- pr...[Read More]

Thousands of hospital patients die each year due to communication errors as medical providers hand off patients as they’re changing shifts or transferring patients. Critical medical information frequently gets lost or miscommunicated. In fact, it’s estimated that 30% of malpractice claims are caused by communication errors. Jocelyn Munroe was working as programmer at UC Davis when a resident physician asked her if she could modify some patient sign out software to work for a neurologist. She dove in and did that and then made the software customizable for any discipline. She would eventually, in her spare time, rewrite the system and launch her startup eHandoff, an online online patient note system for doctors and nurses for when they’re changing shifts or transferring patients. Keep readi...[Read More]

Outside security system responsible for sending alerts takes responsibility for failure Due to a failure on the part of the outside security alert company responsible for sending out WarnMe alerts, the majority of UC Davis students and employees did not receive real-time updates from campus police during an active shooter situation in downtown Davis last week. The sequence of events unfolded on Thursday, Jan. 10, during which time a shooter killed 22-year-old police officer Natalie Corona and fired several other shots before taking off into the city. Keep reading this article at The California Aggie

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — California would become the first state to require businesses to offer electronic receipts unless customers ask for paper copies under legislation proposed on Tuesday. Many businesses and consumers already are moving toward e-receipts, said Democratic Assemblyman Phil Ting of San Francisco. But he said a law is needed because many consumers don’t realize most paper receipts are coated with chemicals prohibited in baby bottles, can’t be recycled and can contaminate other recycled paper because of the chemicals known as Bisphenol-A (BPA) and Bisphenol-S (BPS). His bill would require all businesses to provide proof of purchase receipts electronically starting in 2022 unless a customer asks for a printed copy. Keep reading this article on The Washington Post

In one of the iconic scenes from the teen movie “Fast Times at Ridgemont High,” sun-baked stoner Jeff Spicoli has a double cheese and sausage pizza delivered to his classroom, boldly interrupting his uncompromising instructor mid-lecture. Spicoli was considered a mischievous airhead for flouting early-1980s dining etiquette, but he may actually have been way ahead of his time. More than three decades later, a California campus is embracing a kind of food delivery — via robot. On Wednesday, students at University of the Pacific in Stockton, Calif., will be able to order snacks and beverages for the first time from a bright-colored roving robot on wheels known as the “Snackbot.” Keep reading this article on The Washington Post

Siemens Mobility has been awarded a €650 million contract in Canada to design and build the next generation of VIA Rail Canada’s trainsets. This includes 32 bi-directional trainsets, with a supplemental 15-year service agreement for VIA Rail, Canada’s government-owned intercity transportation operator. The new trainsets will service passengers on VIA’s busiest route, the Quebec City – Windsor Corridor, which connects Canada’s two largest cities, Toronto and Montreal, and spans more than 2,200 kilometers in a northeast-southwest direction. The line carried more than 4.5 million passengers in 2018, representing an increase of more than 30 percent over the past four years. The trainsets will ensure the highest level of safety while also significantly enhancing the passenger experience, with e...[Read More]

Ex-Tesla Motors official believes electric tractors, other innovations will virtually eliminate growers’ fuel costs. Disruptive change is likely coming to California agriculture in the next decade, as technological improvements will lead to electric tractors and alternative-energy storage that will virtually eliminate farms’ energy costs. So suggests David Deak, an expert in “disruptive innovation” who has served as senior development engineer at Tesla Motors, Inc., and chief technology officer at Lithium Americas Corp. “I imagine running an almond orchard with zero cost of energy,” Deak told a luncheon audience Dec. 5 at the Almond Conference in Sacramento, Calif. “What’s really limiting us? Not time, because we have plenty of that. And it’s not money, because there’s some of that, too. I...[Read More]

UC Davis Team Gunrock won the global 2018 Amazon Alexa Prize for creating the best conversational chatbot and advancing modern artificial intelligence. The announcement of this $500,000 prize was made yesterday at the annual Amazon Web Services re:Invent conference in Las Vegas. Zhou Yu, an assistant professor in the College of Engineering’s Department of Computer Science, led the 10-student team to victory. She joined UC Davis in 2017 and was recognized in FORBES’ 2018 “30 Under 30” in Science list for her work developing algorithms that enable software to adapt to users. “When our team first came together, we were competing against teams that had already participated in this challenge,” Yu said. “For us, it was our first time competing. Now, we are the best in the world in social convers...[Read More]