One of the banes of the D.C. innovation scene has always been the great bureaucratic divide. Young, innovative startups have the brains and the ideas to change the world, but rarely get the funding to implement them on a larger scale level. The government has the budget – annually about $200 billion – to get this done, but crossing the divide to attract and employ private entrepreneurs is a tricky and loathsome task. They both want what the other has, but bridging the gap, somehow, is still a problem in the 21st century. A new online platform created by former CIO of the Department of Transportation Nitin Pradhan, however, aims to end the divide, bringing the public and private tech worlds together in an effective and efficient manner. Meet GOVonomy.
Currently in beta, GOVonomy looks like a typical online store, but instead of offering merchandise, the platform offers vendors (private tech companies) and their services to government buyers. Essentially, private companies with solutions for problems facing the public sector list themselves on GOVonomy and agents of the public sector register as members to buy their services. It's that simple, but Pradhan thinks it's the first of its kind.
"Unfortunately, government buyers have large technology budgets, but have little success in locating [and] attracting innovative smart startups and growth companies to submit proposals," he told InformationWeek. "Startups and growth companies have few resources to create a public-sector marketing programs and sell to the government. I believe GOVonomy is the nation’s first marketplace that bridges this gap."
Pradhan came up with the idea based on an early initiative with the DOT called the Technology Evaluation and Learning Sessions. "This initiative introduced innovative startups and growth companies whose products had the potential to address US DOT’s needs, challenges, and opportunities quickly and at a fraction of the cost of custom-building these solutions internally," he said. "TELS proved very popular in US DOT with both government employees and contractors. So after I left US DOT, I teamed up with Ty Gabriel, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur to launch GOVonomy for the entire US public sector to drive public-private innovations."
Currently, there are about 15 private companies on the website, one of which is Bethesda's Koolspan. The idea is that this number will rapidly grow to about 100 companies in a year. Any private company can join the marketplace as long as their privately sold product can also address a public sector need. "Any technology company with a high-quality product can apply to become a GOVonomy vendor through the online GOVonomy platform for free," Pradhan said. "Such vendors must be qualified and approved to sell to the US public sector, demonstrate they can address the requirements of the public sector, have the product available and have sold it to the private sector, and finally have commercial pricing, support, and maintenance structure in the US." For the most part though, GOVonomy recruits vendors to join the platform. But because "startup and growth companies realize that we offer a one-of-a-kind, highly specialized public-sector service," Pradhan said, that has been no trouble so far.
