Even when pilot projects achieve their goals, scaling them into full-time programs can be difficult, writes the online magazine Smart Cities Dive. In an interview with officials from Frisco and San Antonio in Texas, and the New York Public Library system, the magazine explored the challenges faced when transitioning pilot projects to reality in cities.
For Jason Cooley, innovation officer for the city of Frisco, Texas, the biggest challenge is identifying the pilot project that works in any given city. “I think in some cases, we move forward with pilots that actually didn’t succeed in their mission (…) and it’s a failure,” he told Smart Cities Dive.
Julia Murphy, deputy chief sustainability officer for the city of San Antonio, told the magazine that pilot programs are a “great way to demonstrate what good can come out of the goal that we’re trying to achieve” but “finding partners to move it onto the next phase requires establishing the scope of work, addressing legal and procurement concerns and making it attractive to the private sector”.
Smart Cities Dive also spoke to Garfield Swaby, vice president of information technology at the New York Public Library, which recently concluded pilot tests on a Citizens Broadband Radio Service. He said he plans to recommend the library system conduct a phased expansion of the program, rolling it out to other locations while maintaining the technology in-house.
Cooley believes that for project rollouts such as this to be successful, “we have to have clear expectations”. Projects fail, he said, when expectations don’t correspond with what the vendor can deliver. For Murphy, the challenge her city faced when implementing an EV charging station program was communicating to other city departments that the effort was citywide. “The private sector was instrumental in making this project successful,” she said.
