Former US Transportation Department CIO Nitin Pradhan discusses why he established GOVonomy to compare government needs with innovative technology startups

Nitin Pradhan has seen technology innovation from all sides of the general public-private sector divide. Pradhan was CEO of a wireless startup, the managing director of Virginia’s Center for Innovative Technology, and an IT executive at Fairfax County Public Schools (the nation’s 12th largest school district) before serving as CIO of the united states Department of Transportation from 2009-2012.

Since leaving US DOT, Pradhan have been on a mission to bridge another divide by making a marketplace designed to check government needs and opportunities with emerging technology products from startups and growth companies. Pradhan, who also writes about technology and government for InformationWeek, talks with InformationWeek Government editor Wyatt Kash about his rationale for the marketplace, called GOVonomy, and why it fills a necessity he first recognized as a federal government CIO.

InformationWeek: Why did you are feeling the necessity to create a marketplace between government and startups? Why aren’t traditional integrators ready to provide that connection?

Nitin Pradhan: The general public sector typically custom creates most technology solutions. Such custom solutions are costly to develop, time-consuming to check, difficult to preserve, and dear to upgrade. Angel- and VC-funded startups and growth companies develop thousands of scalable products or productized services, which distribute the price of development, testing, maintenance, and upgrade over more than a few customers. The federal government could be better served if it can use more commercial off-the-shelf products from such startups than custom development.

Unfortunately, government buyers have large technology budgets, but have little success in locating [and] attracting innovative smart startups and growth companies to submit proposals. Startups and growth companies have few resources to create a public-sector marketing programs and sell to the govt. i feel GOVonomy is the nation’s first marketplace that bridges this gap.

How does the marketplace work?

Pradhan: GOVonomy works to know the wishes, challenges, and opportunities within the US public sector. It identifies quality solutions from startups and growth companies whose products can solve these issues. Finally, GOVonomy introduces public organizations to those new technology products in the course of the GOVonomy.com online platform. GOVonomy also helps arrange strategic discussions, demonstrations, and pilots for increased understanding, education, purchasing, and integration for these products.

How did you come back up with the idea that for GOVonomy?

Pradhan: i’ve always been fascinated with driving public value through private growth. After I was the departmental CIO for US Department of Transportation I launched an internal initiative called Technology Evaluation and Learning Sessions (TELS). This initiative introduced innovative startups and growth companies whose products had the capability to handle US DOT’s needs, challenges, and opportunities quickly and at a fragment of the price of custom-building these solutions internally. TELS proved highly regarded in US DOT with both government employees and contractors. So once I left US DOT, I teamed up with Ty Gabriel, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur to launch GOVonomy for the complete US public sector to drive public-private innovations.

[Read why former Transportation CIO Nitin Pradhan wonders: Can we Want a U.S. Department Of Technology?]

Who are you definitely targeting as buyers?

Pradhan: GOVonomy is targeting the united states public-sector IT marketplace – about $200 billion in annual spending — including federal, state, and native governments, law enforcement agencies, K-12 institutions, universities, and faculty systems, non-profits, associations, and international organizations, in addition to embassies based inside the USA. GOVonomy’s buyers are mainly government employees — and contractors from public-sector business units.

How do government agencies make the most of working through GOVonomy?

Pradhan: GOVonomy works with the federal, state and native governments in three other ways: (1) regularly introducing a sequence of groundbreaking new technology products from US startups and growth companies to the govt. to showcase innovation, (2) researching, assessing and presenting new technology product solutions available for presidency in keeping with its specific needs, challenges, and problems, and (3) facilitating the creation of recent technology products enthusiastic about government opportunities that lack government funding or buying commitment.

How do government buyers use the GOVonomy platform and what does it cost?

Pradhan: Membership to GOVonomy.com is free for presidency buyers by enrolling online. Members can browse the whole catalog, create wish lists, find out about new products, recommend products, document business problems and seek solutions, request presentations, demonstrations, or pilots, seek quick quotes, get discounted pricing, receive special offers, in addition to get exclusive invitations to GOVonomy educational, networking, and demo days virtual and physical events.

What are your criteria to become a GOVonomy supplier?

Pradhan: Any technology company with a high-quality product can apply to become a GOVonomy vendor during the online GOVonomy platform without spending a dime. Such vendors should be qualified and approved to sell to the u. s. public sector, demonstrate they’ll address the necessities of the general public sector, have the product available and feature sold it to the non-public sector, and eventually have commercial pricing, support, and upkeep structure within the US.

What’s the business model for sustaining GOVonomy?

After review, assessment, and approval by GOVonomy of the seller and the product, GOVonomy becomes the authorized reseller, getting reseller commissions to introduce, market, and sell the goods to the united states public sector. Vendors normally support products sold by GOVonomy directly.

How do you recruit startup and growth companies for the govt marketplace?

Pradhan: We continue to get referrals from the general public sector, the venture capital community, and entrepreneurs. We also research and analyze [a] vast amount of data with reference to global-venture-capital-funded companies and proactively reach out to them either directly or via their venture-backed firms.

The startup and growth companies realize that we provide a one-of-a-kind, highly specialized public-sector service, so recruiting has not only been stress-free, but fun! We currently have about 15 companies in our portfolio, mostly from [the] USA and a few from Canada in areas of cloud computing, cyber-security, mobility, big data, and social networking. We are currently assessing about 20 companies from US, Canada, India, UK, France, Germany, and Israel. We expect to reach a portfolio of about 100 companies in a year’s time.

What companies are in your portfolio and what prospective companies are you talking to?

Pradhan: We have an interesting portfolio of companies with leadership positions in their segments, including Mimecast (unified email management), Zoom (cloud video conferencing), KoolSpan (hardware-based mobile security), Avotous (sourcing, expense, and usage management), Beachhead (complete device management), Perfect Cloud (identity management in the cloud), and PowWow (porting desktop apps to tablet). Microsoft recently acquired one in all our portfolio companies — Apiphany.

We’re chatting with a number of exciting companies in areas of enterprise stress management, smart power grid management, mobile citizen engagement, application performance management and monitoring, tele-medicine, social network[ing] for [the] critically ill, and many others.

We are also actively looking for quality mission-focus technology products in defense, intelligence, healthcare, environment, transportation, law enforcement, and all other major government functions.

Do you envision VC’s and PE firms playing a role in supporting the marketplace for government products, given their traditional skepticism over how long it can take to secure government purchases?

Pradhan: Absolutely! We can help VC’s and private equity companies on their public sector investment strategy for their fund and portfolio companies.

GOVonomy is also working to help create new technology products focused on government opportunities, but with no government funding or buying commitment. So we have launched a new service called “request a solution.” Public-sector members can list their problems and the type of solutions they are seeking. GOVonomy then will work to search for available solutions or seek funding of new companies targeting this problem with venture capital funds if no quality solutions are available.

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published Nov. 15, and republished Nov. 19, to make some minor corrections.

 

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