OS City

Facing a rise to 5B people living in cities by 2030, governments are suffering a crisis of institutional agility operating with legacy tools that are insufficient to cope with the environmental, social and economic challenges of today and tomorrow. This results in $5T government revenues that go missing each year, 87% dissatisfied government workers, very low constituent satisfaction and trust, and 50% of rainforests devastated since the industrial revolution.

We propose an open source, software framework using cloud computing, artificial intelligence and blockchain to transform governments into integrated platforms of digital services. Today we ship it with a modular set of services that work as building blocks to fulfill government’s most pressing needs, but plan on giving continuous access to new and better modules through the community; we are envisioning the App Store for governments. 

(We have intelectual property over the software solution, but code is open source)

We’re addressing the Community-driven Innovation challenge, targeting Latin America’s +600M inhabitants and our governments, who are missing money, operating with dissatisfied workers, and confronting very low constituent satisfaction levels. In numbers, facing a rise to 5B people living in cities by 2030, or 3M people moving to cities each week, governments are suffering a crisis of institutional agility operating with legacy tools that are insufficient to cope with the environmental, social and economic challenges of today. This results in $5T government revenues that go missing each year, 87% dissatisfied government workers, very low constituent satisfaction and trust below 47%, and 50% of rainforests devastated since the industrial revolution.

City-level governments and population in urban areas. We focus in Latin American cities, and that's mainly because the region is home to 10 of the 15 most unequal countries, and to 47 of the 50 most murderous cities on the planet. Latin American cities suffer from “peripheralization” – they’re fragmented, segregated and exclusionary. Also, Latin America is the most urbanized region in the world, making simple changes a huge leap into improving the lives of citizens. Expansion is natural to other regions of the world since this is shared reality in most of the emerging markets.

We leverage state of the art technologies to improve government’s efficiency and trust, increase public servants productivity and offer a unified and better experience for both workers and constituents while increasing operational satisfaction. 

Currently under a SaaS model, we are using cloud computing, artificial intelligence and blockchain to transform governments into integrated platforms of digital services. We ship it with a modular set of services that work as building blocks to fulfill government’s most pressing needs.

Our current offer includes modules such as: 

City Listener: To receive, route, process and analyze massive amounts of resident feedback and service delivery data using AI.

Blockchain Certificates: To serve tamper-proof and secure digital documents, such as permits and licenses, enabling and democratizing digital inspections.

Trust & Transparency: To enhance government’s accountability, measure its performance and promote engagement by showcasing and tracking commitments and geolocating public programs and expenses.

Open Urbanism: To foster an inclusive urbanization by democratizing the urban inventory and actively informing the community about urbanization programs.

Foundational attributes include 3 main technologies: 
*Cloud computing:
On-demand, self-service internet infrastructure 
Great potential in the democratization of services 
Shared APIs and components 

*Artificial intelligence: 
Create deeper connection between government and constituents 
Streamline government processes making digital data work for accountability 
Reveal, prevent and even predict corruption and red tape, reducing discretionality, and accelerating innovation 
Efficiently allocate personnel to areas of need Improve accuracy relative to traditional decision-making and prioritization 

*Blockchain: 
Critical data security, difficult to alter, and open to both the rich and the poor 
Transaction integrity, efficiency, and auditability 
Open standards ensuring longevity and portability 
Control and monitoring of public procurement and support 
Streamline tendering and purchasing
*Open source.
It creates a scalable business model that respond to the demand for the development and application of new technologies and innovative solutions for the public sector. 
It boosts diversity and competition, spurring increased innovation with a stronger focus on the end users.
It joins efforts across the globe in an open, shared - government as a platform - innovation framework
It opens a door to funding in the impact investment and emergent technologies sectors

While we as citizens got great access to technology on our mobile devices and app stores, public institutions were left behind. Unsustainable development, rise in poverty, inequality, crime and corruption are all problems that require innovative solutions. OS City narrows the gap between the public sector and technology, envisioning what could be the AppStore for governments. 

While on continuous development, our software solution has been using cloud computing, artificial intelligence and blockchain to transform governments over the last 2 years, now we are looking for growth. 

We ship with a modular set of services that work as building blocks to fulfill government’s most pressing needs, while promoting innovation transfer. Current modules include: City Listener, to analyze massive amounts of data using AI, Blockchain Certificates to serve tamper proof and secure digital documents, Trust & Transparency, to help measure government’s performance, and Open Urbanism, to foster inclusive urbanization.

Unlike others, we offer a long-term solution that builds greater insights over time using government’s unique data. We strive for:

• Reliability. Fostering city-innovation transfer through the integration of technological solutions that have already demonstrated positive impact for safer government modernization

• Affordability. Flexible pricing advantages, leveraging modular technology creation, curation and reuse to bundle solutions as needed and lower development and implementation costs

• Novelty. Pioneering AI & Blockchain using government’s unique data to speed-up the next generation of smart cities and governance models within a faster exponential technology deployment

A digital platform consisting of proven building blocks solutions, which currently include a fundamental set of modules:

• City Listener

  • Improve efficiency using artificial intelligence to better understand your constituents

  • Connect massive amounts of data, from city hotlines to social media and sensors, and 

  • Accelerate your effectiveness and citizen convenience

• Trust & Transparency

  • Improve accuracy relative to traditional decision-making

  • Boost public impact, regain public trust and strengthen social fabric, and

  • Foster a more inclusive and smarter growth boosting local economies

• Open Urbanism

  • Better plan your urban development

  • Foster an inclusive urbanization inviting citizens for meaningful participation, and

  • Tap into constituents’ knowledge for a more collaborative and open collaboration

• Blockchain Certificates

  • Secure, control and monitor critical data, permits, licenses and certificates like never before

  • Leapfrog digitization and go straight to the most transparent, portable and interoperable digital certificates

Foundational attributes

• Cloud computing.

  • On-demand, self-service internet infrastructure

• Artificial intelligence.

  • Reveal, prevent and even predict corruption and red tape, reducing discretionality, and accelerating innovation to improve accuracy relative to traditional decision-making and prioritization

• Blockchain.

  • Critical data security, difficult to alter, and open to both the rich and the poor

• Open source.

  • It creates a scalable business model that respond to the demand for the development and application of new technologies and innovative solutions for the public sector. 

We are in the midst of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR), which will affect governments, society, businesses and economies in substantial and unanticipated ways. At the same time, maturity of emergent technologies such as Blockchain and Artificial Intelligence has reached a point of demonstrated potential to tackle government’s most pressing problems. This platform makes use of these technologies to raise government productivity, efficiency and transparency. Examples of potential include locate yearly missing revenues, and meet constituent demands and public servants technology needs. What is more, this platform could become the shared framework upon which governments are going to catch up with Moore’s Law and the digital age.

Now: +2M

One Year: +5M

Five Years: +50M

Goals are divided in two: implementation experiences and technological offering. On the implementation experiences, we want to properly measure impact in current cities that we are working and consolidate a partnership with International Organizations to seek for a collaborative strategy to implement technology in multiple cities at the same time. On the technological offering we want to consolidate the open source documentation to start receiving open contributions and foster the development of other modules. 

We see a list of risks including: few implementations in real cities with real government agencies using the platform, failing to standardize the methodology to easily replicate operations in more cities, and even not documenting properly the process and open source code to expand its use. 

The way to mitigate these risks is strengthen our network of partner institutions. On the one hand, institutionalize our relationship with organizations such as the Inter American Development Bank (IDB) or the Development Bank of Latin America (CAF) and leverage our role with Singularity University and UNICEF’s Innovation Fund to reach as many city-governments willing to implement as possible. We are also working with the Organization of the American States (OAS) to foster these kinds of technologies in public administrations across Latin America. On the other hand, we plan to leverage our closeness to developer communities, experience in previous Google IO’s, belonging to Google’s Spark program, to ensure we’re using the right tech stacks with the right quality standards to meet every city’s requirements.

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4 Founders

8 Full time

1 Part Time 

2 Advisors 

Our team is built by PhDs, masters and experts in artificial intelligence, robotics, data science, political science and economics. We've been trained at Singularity University in NASA, leading the implementation of emerging technologies for government. Together we’re brains and muscles in politics and technology. A perfect blend of data, exponentials and public sector. We believe that our value lies in combining experience in technology development plus knowledge about public policies and the functioning of the public sector. These complementary views on the same problem is what differentiates us, what makes our diversity so powerful. We have decades of experience in consulting with Latin America ́s governments on topics like technology, democracy, modernization, transparency and civic technology. Essentially, we have the skills to see trends, build human capacity on emergent technologies, and create and deliver technological solutions into the public sector.

Cepeda, Jesús 

• Head of OS City

• PhD in AI and Robotics, Singularity University GSP

Del Bosque, Jesús

• Head of Innovation

• MsC in Intelligent Systems, Industry Project Management

Garza, Alecs

• Head of Operations

• Data Scientist, Founded 5yr Data Analysis Company

Jolías, Lucas 

• Head of Business Development

• MsC Political Science, +10yrs Smart Cities Consulting

• Key-Partners: Singularity University Ventures, Google, Organization of American States, Inter American Development Bank, ALTEC (Avina Foundation & Luminate) and UNICEF Innovation Fund invested in us. We are currently a portfolio company of the Unicef Innovation, working together to improve our blockchain solution for social impact. 

• Guadalupe, Mexico on-boarded 17 institutions resulting in increased citizen participation by 24x, while taking its time-to-respond from 2 weeks average to immediate answer

• Tlalnepantla, Mexico on-boarded 6 institutions increasing citizen convenience and accelerating its data usage resulting in going from 84th to 1st rank in public service delivery. They are pioneering a way to better understand the impact of public budgeting

• Bahia Blanca, Argentina leading the fight against corruption becoming the 1st city in Latin America to make a Blockchain real implementation for securing arts and culture subsidies

• Chile’s National Government regaining trust and reducing red tape and corruption by using Blockchain to generate tamper-proof records in public procurement, contracting and energy

• San Nicolás, Mexico pioneering the liquor licensing and construction permits using blockchain certificates for its own inspectors and citizens to be the auditors

• Buenos Aires Province University (Argentina), pioneering in using blockchain to issue graduate diplomas and improve certificates trust and security.

Until today, our organization has had revenues from sales and grants by institutions such as Unicef or Omidyar Network. In just two years, we have positioned ourselves as one of the most important GovTech startup in Latin America, working with governments like Chile, Argentina, Mexico or Colombia and with organizations such as IDB, UNICEF or CAF.

Our business model is based on Platform as a Service & Support License Fee. A single module fee ranges low-end $24K annual and high-end $60K annual. A bundled fee ranges low-end $2K /mo per module, and high-end $4K /mo per module (depending on number of modules). Additional income comes from innovation grants. Future business model could come as a transactional means from the AppStore for Governments including X% from 3rd-party modules, smart city repairs, smart contracting, recovered revenue, among others.

Until today, our company has had revenues from sales and grants by institutions such as Unicef or Omidyar Network. In just two years, we have positioned ourselves as one of the most important GovTech startup in Latin America, working with governments like Chile, Argentina, Mexico or Colombia and with organizations such as IDB, UNICEF or CAF.
Currently, the company is looking for a Round Seed, which will finance an expansion in sales and new clients, as well as   operations in other Latin American countries. It is expected that by end 2020 the revenues from sales will double and by 2021 we will be able to aspire a Series A investment round.

We are working for a more sustainable world, fighting corruption and fostering smarter citizenship with exponential technologies. We know MIT SOLVE is one of the best place-time opportunities to be in terms of social impact. Current demonstrated impact, experiences living in Silicon Valley (9 weeks Singularity University GSP, 6 weeks SU Ventures Incubator), and financial moment of the startup; makes us feel this is the time to meet people and hopefully join Solve’s community and receive mentorship, resources, and strategic advice to scale out work. These funds will strengthen our team and enable us to be able to implement more pilot projects and attend conferences for 'umbrella selling' purposes where municipal governments' leaders meet. This is a promise for growth.

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In addition to strengthening our relationship with current partners (see section "team"), we would like to partner with:

- MIT Blockcerts (the team that developed the open standard for issuing certificates in blockchain), to improve our knowledge and use of the protocol 

- Sidewalk Labs: to refine our knowledge about cities and technology 

- MIT Media Lab: to improve our knowledge about exponential technologies 

- Accela: to integrate them on our platform and offer their solutions in LatAm 

- Google Jigsaw: to expand our network of organizations focused on technology and social impact.

Unlike many govtech approaches, we offer a long-term solution that builds greater insights over time using government’s unique data. Current government modernization strategies include the digitization of individual agencies, creating data silos that become a show-stopper for AI. There’s no integrated digital strategy or framework that’s actually helping towards futurizing cities. Solutions come in the sense of legacy software or are narrowed to specific topics (security, services, health, etc) without inter-agency possibilities to collaborate. What we propose is a standard baseline of code, leveraging data sharing and interoperability that enables AI in the backend, and the reuse of modules in the front-end, making innovation transfer for the public sector accessible and de-risked. This way we believe AI and cloud pilots in government can yield immediate, meaningful results, that may prompt more buy-in for these technologies, creating an opportunity to reinvent city experiences.
We have learned to deploy a “day-zero” strategy (when no specific data on the city has been collected) using Google’s AI APIs such as NLP and Cloud Vision to process written messages and gain better understanding on citizens perspectives and necessities on neighborhoods, but also to make urban inventories running image processing over google street-view to better learn the structure of parks, streets, sidewalks and greenery (e.i (http://senseable.mit.edu.ezproxyberklee.flo.org/treepedia). Using these data, we’ve played in-house (non production level) with Tensorflow, OpenCV and scale and orientation invariant algorithms such as SURF and SIFT for exploratory purposes. We’ve MSc and PhD in artificial intelligence and robotics in our founding team.

Today, with 80% of its population living in cities, Latin America is the most urbanized region on the planet. At the same time, Latin America is home to 10 of the 15 most unequal countries, and 47 of the 50 most murderous cities on the planet. Many Latin American cities also suffer from “peripheralization” – they’re fragmented, segregated and exclusionary. Such urban growth and challenges, combined with corruption, lead to a crisis that’s crippling institutional agility and innovation.
We suggest the use of a modular open source software, allowing governments to tailor their digitization strategy to their own needs while providing continuous access to new and better solutions. AI, IoT and Blockchain pilots in government can yield immediate, meaningful results, that may prompt more buy-in for these technologies, creating an opportunity to reinvent city experiences and build modern workflow processes. We’ve already started, with our Blockchain MVP being the first experience for the public sector in Latin America, and deploying our beta web platform for AI-aided governance in two cities with 1M citizens. Now we need capital to scale up to generate the envisioned ecosystem of trust and collaboration, fostering a better quality of life for all – inexpensive energy, convenient mass transit, good schools and health services, faster emergency responses, clean water and air, lower crime rates, sufficient food, water and shelter. With the prize, we can build and test technology while covering expenses for a real use case in one Latin America city.