Driving Innovation in the Municipal Government

Jason Cooley, Chief Innovation Officer, City of Frisco

Jason Cooley, Chief Innovation Officer, City of Frisco

Jason Cooley joined the City of Frisco as the strategic services manager in 2015 and is currently serving as the chief innovation officer. With over 16 years of experience in municipal government, working as budget, finance, and innovation director for several Dallas metro-area cities, he leads the advancement of smart city technology and municipal innovation for the city.

In an interview with Government CIO Outlook magazine, Cooley discusses how nurturing partnerships with tech organizations and adopting technologies that improve city services can help the public sector increase productivity.

Can you walk us through your professional journey and current responsibilities at the City of Frisco?

I started my career in Washington, DC as a consultant, focusing on performance management and strategic planning for a federal government agency. After a couple of years, I moved to Texas and began working on policies and procedures with a police department and shifted to budgeting, strategic planning, and performance management. I earned a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt from Denver Peak Academy, which introduced me to the concept of achieving more with less by putting new processes in place and foray into innovation and process improvement. When I joined the City of Frisco, I started exploring how to leverage emerging technology to improve efficiency and effectiveness. Our focus is on implementing solutions that can deliver valuable services to our citizens.

What are some of the challenges that the municipal government faces, particularly when it comes to smart cities?

The municipal government is finding it challenging to adopt appropriate technology with proven effectiveness. As tax-funded entities, we cannot always be at the cutting edge of technology. It is important to find a balance between implementing new, emerging, and innovative solutions while avoiding those that are not appropriate for us. We aim to be more efficient, effective, and productive without investing in solutions that do not align with our needs. For example, while technologies like smart parking meters may work well for some communities, they are not suitable for Frisco since we don't charge for parking. We focus on vetting through a multitude of technologies and adopting those that improve the city services to enhance operations based on our specific needs.

What are the technological advancements and innovations that can be adopted to combat challenges in today's complex environment?

Robotics and transportation innovations are rapidly evolving and hold great potential to combat numerous challenges today. The City of Frisco has been part of successful pilot projects like one with Drive.ai that uses artificial intelligence to make self-driving systems for cars. They deployed their resources in our city and operated for a multitude of months, and ensured successful rides. We were able to collect the project data and share it with them to enhance the working of the vehicles and also save it to use in our upcoming pilot projects.

The advancements in autonomous vehicles can improve our traffic management operations in the future. Additionally, robotics can play a significant role, not by replacing workers but by allowing them to focus on higher-order tasks. For instance, we can employ autonomous robot vacuum cleaners to handle large-scale floor cleaning in a couple of hours while around three workers need all night to achieve the task. These workers can rather focus on deep cleaning. Another successful pilot project was testing Wing's autonomous drone delivery service. The city of Frisco is one of the only places in the country where ordered goods are delivered to a customer’s doorstep by a drone in six minutes or less.

How do you envision the future of the public sector and smart cities?

We continue to focus on finding solutions that are tailored to meet our specific needs. Attending events like the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) helps us identify such technological solutions. We also adapt to existing technologies to enhance our current practices. One area we are excited about is augmented reality (AR). We are planning to use AR to activate our municipal parks to offer AR mile markers, highlight areas of interest in the park, and provide way-finding assistance. AR presents a unique opportunity to experience nature by delivering immersive experiences.

What is the sage advice that you would like to give to budding professionals in the public sector?

When it comes to innovation, building partnerships is an important aspect to consider. Collaborating with telecom and other tech organizations can help facilitate the adoption of innovative solutions and harness their expertise and available resources to improve our capabilities. Internally, it's crucial to identify colleagues who are passionate about innovation and involve them in the process of vetting new technologies. Clear communication with legal and purchasing departments is also essential. Initiating conversations early on and expressing our needs to these departments can help overcome potential hurdles. By fostering partnerships, engaging internal innovation champions, and communicating effectively, we can successfully develop an innovation strategy and drive transformative changes.