When you think of government, you likely don’t think of words like efficiency, speed, and innovation. That’s all about to change thanks to the convergence of multiple demographic shifts, consumer demands, and government constraints which will lead to a multi-decade and multi-billion dollar investment by governments globally. Collectively, these have created a massive market opportunity for startups ready to solve some of our most pressing government challenges.

This new paradigm will require rapid innovations in traditional areas like fraud detection, law enforcement, permitting, and bond issuance. But more interestingly, it will encompass new areas like blockchain, artificial intelligence, driverless vehicle traffic management, drone traffic control, real-time video analytics, and public service cognitive chatbots.

There has been an explosion of innovation and startup activity in this space, which includes the creation of the OpenData movement. In 2016 alone, the Govtech 100 startups have raised $185M and there have been several Govtech exits such as Urban Engines, Opower, 2FA Inc, GovDelivery, and Granicus. Exits have even occurred starting with the US government’s OpenData datasets — like Climate Corp’s $930M sale to Monsanto.

We’re thrilled to offer a brand-new Govtech track at TiEcon 2017 to reimagine how technology can improve government services, and ultimately, enhance the lives and well-being of its citizens. We have assembled an outstanding set of leaders speaking at the Govtech program that collectively represent more than $20 billion dollars of annual IT purchasing (software, hardware, services) across Cities, Counties, States, Federal Agencies to entire Countries.