Dr. Rebecca Hammons is an Associate Professor at Ball State University with 40 years of experience working as a software executive. Recently, Dr. Hammons also served as the IEEE IoT Initiative’s Smart Cities Working Group co-chair. Given her expertise in ethics, we asked her for recommendations on how smart communities can operationalize ethics.

US Ignite responded to the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NIST) request for comments on broadband programs created by the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Law.  In the text below you can find the comments made in response to questions 1, 7, 12, and 31.

Over the last eight months, our proposed Civic Trust Framework has helped our communities evaluate their smart city projects through the people and policy lens. Here we go through the most common privacy concerns communities express and four narrative traps that community leaders must avoid.  

This post contains excerpts from NIST's CHARIoT Challenge Report Advancing First Responder Communications  

Smart Community Sparks: Project OVERCOME Partnerships for Broadband Success

We launched InnovateSLC, a smart city accelerator program designed to support local startups and provide Salt Lake City (SLC) with innovative solutions for some of its most pressing challenges. InnovateSLC aims to equip startups to enter the smart city market with connections, tools, and the knowledge needed to deliver smart solutions for the city.  

As we get closer to 2022, we take a moment to celebrate some of the accomplishments from 2021. So take a trip down memory lane with us by reviewing our list of the five most newsworthy items from this year below.

Augmented reality (AR) no longer only applies to games and social media fun. The innovative use of AR technologies can add value to the lives of community members like those above. US Ignite partnered with Reality Labs to launch the AR Developer Challenge grant to help communities discover and leverage the possibilities of AR.

A Conversation between our Smart Communities and Gigi Sohn, Distinguished Fellow at the Georgetown Law Institute for Technology Law & Policy and a Benton Senior Fellow & Public Advocate on the Infrastructure Bill

Cybersecurity problems tend to be undetectable until an incident occurs. A cybersecurity flaw can rear its head through a hijacked autonomous vehicle, an IoT device compromised via electromagnetic interference, a ransomware attack, or endless other cases. With the expanded use of IoT in transportation, automated infrastructure, and other autonomous systems, the security of these networks and devic…

While entertainment has been one of the most popular uses of augmented reality (AR), the City of Philadelphia wondered if AR could also help make public transportation more accessible and welcoming to people with disabilities. Through funding from Facebook Reality Labs and US Ignite, Philadelphia and SEPTA (the city’s mass transit system) challenged developers and creatives to innovate solutions…

RIoT earned a grant from US Ignite and Facebook to host an AR Developer Challenge to find and support AR solutions for accessibility and inclusion, economic impact, and workforce development in the Raleigh-Cary region. These are the top moments of their final pitch event held in late July 2021. 

Here are a few examples of how our Project OVERCOME communities are proactively engaging their residents ahead of deploying their tech solutions for connecting the unconnected.