Providence Technology Group

SACRAMENTO, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Envoy Technologies, a provider of shared on-demand, community-based electric vehicles (EVs), today announced the first wave of live sites and vehicle deployments under the Electrify America Green City initiative in Sacramento called Sac-to-Zero. The companies joined Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg at an event to unveil the first EVs, and outline the vision for future development. More than 20 Volkswagen e-Golf vehicles are now available across Sacramento at over 10 multi-family properties, each with an accompanying Level 2 charging station. The majority of these sites are in disadvantaged communities where drivers can use the “Envoy There” mobile application to use vehicles for a myriad of uses, including personal errands or exploring job o...[Read More]

Self-driving shuttles are en route to the Sacramento region. Sacramento is one of two test tracks for Olli shuttles, which can carry eight to 14 passengers without a steering wheel and a driver. “We actually are a center of technology and it’s burgeoning,” Sacramento’s Chief Innovation Officer Louis Stewart said. The company, Local Motors, is hosting the “Olli Fleet Challenge” for businesses, nonprofits and universities in Sacramento and Phoenix. Two winners will get their own fleet of Olli vehicles for three months. Stewart said the idea is to use these shuttles in neighborhoods, on college campuses and healthcare facilities. “We actually can get these shuttles on the road and get kids where they need to be, or patients on a healthcare campus or students who are running late for class,” h...[Read More]

Through the Startup in Residence Program, city workers collaborated with developers to create Outreach Grid, a program designed to improve municipal efforts to address homelessness. To combat homelessness, the West Sacramento Police Department has begun using a tech platform called Outreach Grid, which the agency helped create by collaborating with developers as part of the Startup in Residence program in 2016. With Outreach Grid, case workers and other public servants in West Sacramento can now map homeless encampments, consolidate client info from multiple agencies into one platform and customize intake forms based on needs. Other cities across the country have developed similar tech-based improvements to their homelessness outreach efforts, while at the same time almost universally agre...[Read More]

Sacramento has earned a reputation as the “farm-to-fork” capital thanks to a thriving agriculture industry with businesses that grow, pack and produce everything from tomatoes to wine. But these days the focus is shifting from rural farm fields to an urban core is buzzing with activity. Downtown Sacramento is experiencing a surge of development with more than $1.1 billion in public and private investment that has been made over the past decade. Some of the projects that are expected to be “game changers” for the city include: Keep reading this article on Greater Sacramento Economic Council

Apple is expanding its facilities in Elk Grove, California, adding more office space to complement its existing operations at the campus, with the additional space likely to help expand its AppleCare operations already well-established in the area.  The new premises consists of a one-story building located at 2216 Kausen Drive, which is approximately one block away from the existing campus, revealed in property records to have cost Apple $4.2 million. An Apple spokesperson has confirmed the purchase is part of an ongoing effort to increase its operations in Elk Grove. According to filings seen by the Sacramento Business Journal, the 24,400-square-foot building was previously used by DeVry University, which started to use the facility in 2004. Elk Grove economic development director Darrell...[Read More]

Yuba City-based company launches subscription service for educational toys. In 2017, Aaron Watkins launched a rental service called STEMtrunk because he doesn’t believe educational toys should be left behind. He calls his Yuba City-based startup “Netflix for learning toys” because it works with the same subscription-based concept. Parents need only look at their children’s old toys to recall the law of inertia — that an object not played with will sit on a shelf collecting dust. In 2017, Aaron Watkins launched a rental service called STEMtrunkbecause he doesn’t believe educational toys should be left behind. He calls his Yuba City-based startup “Netflix for learning toys” because it works with the same subscription-based concept: Parents select a STEM toy (LEGO Mindstorms, Parrot Minidrone...[Read More]

In its 16th year, the Best of California Awards recognize public-sector professionals and innovative service delivery and use of emerging technologies to improve citizen services. Best of California Awards 2018 recognize innovative service delivery and use of emerging technologies to improve citizen-services. Sacramento, Calif. – September 18, 2018 – The Center for Digital Government presented the Best of California Awards today during the California Digital Government Summit. The Best of California Awards recognize state and local government organizations for innovative technology initiatives. This year’s Best of California awards honored 15 winners including. • County of Los Angeles, AI-Driven Video Analytics Drowning Prevention System, which uses advanced video analytics through u...[Read More]

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — A Silicon Valley tech company recently posted a video front and center on its website that may startle some Sacramentans. It shows a sleek black car driving across the Tower Bridge … with no one in it. The company, Phantom Auto, is a key player in the emerging world of autonomous vehicles. But the car cruising across Sacramento’s iconic portal wasn’t a robot car. A human was in fact driving. That person just happened to be 100-plus miles away, sitting in Phantom Auto’s Mountain View headquarters, with a steering wheel, gas and brake pedals, and a series of computer screens that allowed him to see, via car cameras, 360 degrees around him. It’s called teleoperations, and some people in the autonomous vehicle industry say it’s the little-known irony behind all the bold ta...[Read More]

Governor Signs Bill by Senator Jerry Hill to Outlaw Drone Flights Over State Prisons SACRAMENTO – Starting in January, it will be illegal to fly a drone over or at a state prison under legislation by Senator Jerry Hill that Governor Brown signed today. Violating the new law, which also will apply to jails and juvenile facilities, will be an infraction punishable by a $500 fine. The restrictions do not apply to employees of the facilities who operate drones as part of their job and have specific permission to use them. Senator Hill, D-San Mateo and Santa Clara Counties, introduced Senate Bill 1355 earlier this year amid a spate of incidents involving drones that smuggled drugs and other contraband into lockups. In February, near Kern Valley State Prison in Delano, a drone dropped a bag fill...[Read More]

GALT — If you have ever had a computer crash on you or lost what you were working on and what you had saved you know “crisis” may not be too strong a word. “You lose all your data, that’s a crisis. So in managing other crisis, whether it’s man-made or natural, my job is to make sure I’m the calmest guy in the room and just try to get the facts,” said Galt Police Chief Tod Sockman. On Aug. 7, the system that Galt police officers use to write and save reports crashed. “Systems crash. I mean, it happens,” Sockman said. “It happens in business, it happens in police departments, it happens at cities. I mean it just happens.” But when it happened at the Galt Police Department the city’s Information Technology staff realized a year and a half ...[Read More]

Officials with the Department of Human Assistance, or DHA, in Sacramento, California, have been using license plate readers since 2016 to investigate welfare fraud, the Sacramento Beereported last week. Police use of the readers, which match pictures of license plates taken from street poles and cop cars to a searchable database, have been on the rise over the past decade. According to the nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation, however, it is highly unusual for welfare departments to employ the technology. Moreover, the foundation alleges that the DHA violated California state laws dictating that any entity using a license plate database must institute a privacy-and-usage policy that includes regular audits and record keeping. The department reportedly did not have such a policy until t...[Read More]

As prices for drugs and procedures soar, and health insurance premiums for employer-based and individual policies inexorably climb, more than are few people are asking: Is the health care industry spiraling out of control? Liana Bailey-Crimmins, a top official with California’s public employee benefits and retirement system (CalPERS), offered a simple response. “Yeah,” she said. But Bailey-Crimmins is in the driver’s seat at one of health care’s most powerful vehicles — and she has some ideas about how to slow costs down. The decisions she makes ripple far beyond the state workers and retirees she represents, affecting the cost of health care for the entire state, if not the nation. “To me, I think you can either sit in the passenger seat … or you can go into the driver’s seat and effect c...[Read More]