As part of its ‘Accelerator Day One’ event, the Scottish Government’s national accelerator programme CivTech has announced the next series of innovators who have been selected to solve public sector problems with tech.
The programme tackles challenges facing public sector organisations in collaboration with private sector expertise and resources. It said key challenges consider ways in which technology can assist farmers to improve the environment under their stewardship such as a farm payments system based on the quality of the environmental results delivered; as well as how we can help shape the future of online learning in the wake of Covid-19, how Scotland can use technology to create a smart and sustainable travel network in remote and rural areas and how innovation can help NHS Scotland to reduce virus transmission in care settings.
The firms announced are:
Carbomap – a team of forest mapping specialists, with an international reputation in active remote sensing methodologies such as LiDAR and Radar.
Vivid Economics with Arbonaut – Vivid Economics is a strategic economics consultancy spanning public policy and support for commercial decision making with a broad, international focus. Arbonaut are world leaders in developing information gathering and GIS solutions for forest inventory and natural resource management and supporting all kinds of activities, from satellite data collection to computer data analysis.
Sentinel Unmanned – a developer and service provider of unmanned aerial systems and is the pioneer of the ground-breaking LONGREACH long endurance unmanned helicopter.
EOLAS Insight – a young company providing analytics and information to support livestock and wildlife management.
Iceni Earth – exists to empower farmers with digital technology to respond to the climate and biodiversity emergency.
This is Milk – a digital strategy & consultancy specialising in service design, business change, transformation for growth & precise digital delivery.
SkillSeeder – seeks to create new opportunities for people to learn and share skills across Scotland by connecting learners to their perfect skill sharers through a personally tailored search, then helping them arrange in-person or online courses.
Rujuvi – a new Scottish company that is centred around providing information, resources, and access to support to Connecting Scotland’s users through a pre-installed app.
The Routing Company – an on-demand vehicle routing and management platform that partners with cities to power the future of public transit.
Wallscope – aims to empower organisations to navigate and link ever-increasing volumes of information, and present this in an understandable and engaging way by using semantic web techniques and linked data principles to improve the search and discovery of information.
Yoti with GeneMe– combines a rapid Covid-19 test with a digital ID and credential management platform that allows organisations to verify identities and trusted credentials online and in person.
Nectis Ltd – use data to dynamically overcome barriers to collaboration, such as silos, failed project delivery, the loss of valued staff members and more. The ten challenges they will take on span a broad range of sectors including healthcare, forestry, transport and learning.
Over a 12-week period, CivTech will work with the chosen teams and Challenge Sponsors in a series of workshops that will focus on collaborative working and knowledge sharing designed to stimulate innovation.
Each team completing the Accelerator will receive an initial contract of £25,000, with newly added support offered by Amazon Web Services (AWS) as the Accelerator’s first commercial sponsor.
The CivTech Accelerator will culminate in a ‘Demo Week’ 2-4 February 2021, also supported by AWS as headline sponsor, where the selected teams will demonstrate their solutions to an audience of key stakeholders seeking answers to similar problems.
Ben Macpherson, Minister for Public Finance and Migration, said: “I’m very impressed by the new innovative way in which CivTech is approaching procurement, and pairing public service teams with Scotland’s digital entrepreneurial talent.
“In previous years the programme has provided ways of exploring responses to the most difficult issues we face as a nation, including how we respond to the climate crisis and build a wellbeing economy, and this year’s winners show that CivTech will continue to make significant contributions towards addressing these shared challenges.
“The winners this year have posed a number of ground-breaking solutions and I look forward to hearing more about the proposals that the teams come up with at the Demo Day.”
Mark Elliott, Programme Director at CivTech, added: “The quality of solutions put forward as part of this year’s programme together with the record numbers of applicants has been extremely rewarding to see and we are excited to see how the solutions develop.
“We’re proud of our growing international reputation as the pre-eminent public sector focused tech incubation system in the world and that is due in no small part to the quality of solutions put forward by our entrants. We want to create great businesses and jobs that will drive prosperity for the nation. We also want to ensure that we deliver on the Scottish Government’s mission to make every aspect of life better.”