State of GovTech Showcase

All right, TGIF everyone, and welcome back to Government Technologies In Case You Missed It. Now, towards the end of last year, we had an amazing event called the State of GovTech in partnership with CivStart and AWS and a whole slew of exciting companies that were building the future of GovTech. And this included startups, investors, entrepreneurs, larger technology companies, the platforms All of them gathered in San Mateo, California to network, to collaborate, and to talk about the future.

Yeah, and Dustin, this event, as you know, featured 4 GovTech Demo Day sessions in which we had promising startups appearing to discuss their solutions in front of a panel of judges from both the public and the private sectors. There are 25 separate companies there, and they're all evaluated by the judges based on factors that included innovation, growth potential, equity, differentiation, and company maturity.

So we thought it'd be fun this week to take 4 of the companies that had the top scores by our State of GovTech judges and give them the opportunity to present and to kind of pitch their company to you all so that you can learn more about what is happening in the state of GovTech, but also some of these incredible technologies and the capabilities that they're solving for our market. And so I want to invite to our virtual stage our first guest, Harris Farrell, the CEO of Origen, formerly ADPS. Harris, thanks so much for carving some time out to share a little bit more about your company.

Yeah, thanks, Dustin, and thanks GovTech for having us on. So about Origen, if you want to go to the first slide, Origen has set out to solve an enormously expensive and complicated problem in our society. Every time an individual recidivates, which means they've been released from an incarceration setting, a prison, and then they commit another crime, it costs society about $150,000. That's broken down to the direct taxpayer costs for the reincarceration, court costs, policing fees, etc. The victimization costs that they incur, and other indirect costs in society. And what we've realized is in our country, because we have such high rates of incarceration and such low success with people who are incarcerated returning to our society— about 2/3 of people who are released from prison are going to be rearrested, reincarcerated within 3 years of release— we have to think differently as a society about how we're going to solve this problem. And one of the things that we looked at is, well, what results in recidivism? And one of the things we noticed is that people who are incarcerated prior to incarceration were unemployed at about 3 times the rate of the national average. And if you look at post-release success factors, employment is one of the biggest drivers of success for someone returning to society in terms of being able to provide for themselves, provide for their family, access health and healthcare and resources, attain sustainable and stable housing. And so we as a company set out, how can we break this cycle of recidivation of incarceration by preparing every individual for sustainable employment? And by that we mean employment at a living wage or higher. So if you want to go to the next slide, that's the premise of Origin. We're an education technology company focused on providing better educational opportunities for people who are incarcerated. We have a whole cloud-based learning platform where we bring in best-of-breed content partners in different verticals for education, job training, rehabilitation, and we deliver it on our own secure tablet computers that are both digitally and physically safe to use in correctional spaces, as well as other connected devices inside the correctional facilities that they have. What we focus on though is not just providing access to education. That's one pillar that's necessary, but you have to think about the entire individual. So we, what we have is the whole learner framework, and we really spend a lot of time thinking about how do you motivate and engage somebody in service of educating them and equipping them for successful reentry. And so how do you tap into their hopes, dreams, and aspirations? How do you help them see the potential of who they can become? How do you create a learner experience where it's not just about going through coursework, but seeing the purpose of that coursework, seeing the value, understanding how their interests can translate into attainable job opportunities post-release? And so jurisdictions are increasingly turning to us to help them solve some of these very complicated problems inside their correctional facilities, their massive waitlists to get in access to programming. Only about 17% of the incarcerated population has access to programming. And so we're helping dramatically increase that so that people can get access to their adult basic ed or high school equivalency coursework, into the job training programs, into the rehabilitation programs. We're helping people increase their ability to get earned time credit, which actually reduces their sentences, decreasing the workload of their staff and complying with court orders and court mandates. And so if you want to go to the last slide and look at the outcomes that we're producing, in partnership with our jurisdictions. We're seeing really dramatic increases and improvements, both in terms of individual outcomes, but also in terms of climate and culture inside the correctional facilities. We're now in over 18 states and the District of Columbia. Our customer support and service is consistently related as excellent. We really sit alongside our partners, helping them think through their education strategy and how to leverage technology and service of the outcomes that they're trying to achieve. And I'll just close with an example. In Massachusetts, the Department of Corrections worked with us and realized that through our platform, through the virtual, the video classroom that we offer, their teachers, their instructors could reach more individuals across more facilities simultaneously than they ever could in the offline world, especially given all the restraints around housing movements, and people getting reassigned to different facilities over the course of the time. And they've really seen dramatic increases in the success and progress of their individuals in their custody making progress towards preparing for reentry. So that's us, that's Origin.

Thank you so much. Quick question for you, would you tell us where the audience can go to learn more about the work that you're doing?

Yes, well, we are on the web at origin.works. We also have— you can find us on LinkedIn if you want to follow us and stay up to date in terms of what we're doing and who we're talking to and the research that we're producing.

Great, thank you. Thanks very much. Okay, next, our next guest on In Case You Missed It today is Bertram Lyons. He's the CEO, co-founder of MedX Forensics. And Bertram, welcome. Tell us about what the work— tell us about the work that you are doing.

Sounds great. Thanks, Mark. I appreciate y'all having us on today. Um, could you, um— yeah, this, this works great.

Thanks.

So yeah, I, um, I'm Bert Lyons. I'm CEO and, um, co-founder here at MedX Forensics. We're a digital forensics company. We deploy technology to automate file format analysis, really hope— hoping to reveal greater truth in digital evidence, uh, increase and increase the value of digital evidence and investigations. What does that mean? I will tell you real quickly, I spent my career as a digital archivist, and now here I am building software for justice and public safety. I am going to tell you a little bit about why that is here. In 2016, I started working with the FBI based on some relationships we had with my previous job at the U.S. Library of Congress, where I did work on digital history. And we were asked to bring some clarity to questions around proving the authenticity of digital evidence. So if questions were around, you know, what were videos of— around that time, 2016, were videos of some beheadings that were showing up on the web true or fake? You know, what cameras were being used to create child sexual exploitation videos online? Is a bystander-submitted video of a crime authentic or was it edited? Or questions like, has body-worn camera footage been edited before being shared with the public? So these were questions that required a new approach because the questions weren't around the content but more around the authenticity or the provenance or the context of that content. So in 2020, after a number of years of R&D, we solved that issue. We developed invented a new method that does 3 things very well. It identifies the originality of a video file, it identifies the source software and/or hardware that created that video file, and then it also focuses on identifying tampering or modification of a digital file. And most importantly, the methodology was needed to be able to succeed at the scale and speed required in today's digital landscape. So, you know, after that work in 2021, we founded MedX Forensics, and our flagship product is what we call the MedX Video Authentication Platform, as seen on this slide here. It's a scalable tool for agencies and other users to conduct thorough and automated digital video authentication on a wide range of evidence items and investigative assets. We offer a software-as-a-service platform. We also offer on-premise desktop application and/or an API that users can examine those evidence files as quickly as possible and at scale. Among other important uses, I'll say we are a first line of defense when it comes to the currently proliferating threat of deepfake and synthetic media in the law enforcement community. Just to give you a sense, like currently we work with customers from a variety of sectors. Federal-level law enforcement agencies, police departments at state and local, whether that is city urban police departments or county sheriff's offices. We also work with private organizations who are doing work with attorneys, both on prosecution and defense, so expert witnesses, etc., and, and global media services as well. Media organizations have an emerging need to prove the veracity of the evidence, which is largely usually image or video that are driving their journalism these days. So we work quite a bit. If you don't mind advancing to the next slide, the reason we exist is because when it comes to video evidence, the problem being faced by law enforcement agencies and others in justice and public safety is one of scale, right? So take a look at these 3 bullet points here. And these are areas where we find that we provide quite a lot of value with our technology. You know, in the US alone, you may not know this, but there's 12 million investigations each year on average that are conducted. And actually more than 12 million, because 85%, which is 12 million, include video evidence. So 12 million is the 85% of the 100% of actual investigations. But we're talking 12 million investigations just per year in the US alone where digital video is a key part of that investigation. It needs to be authenticated. You know, we want to make sure this video is real and valid and can be trusted for what it's being used for. As we all have probably seen, if we pay attention to any media streams these days, video is, you know, shared in the billions on social media platforms, and disinformation and deepfakes, synthetic media, is a growing challenge. We cannot overstate that as a society. If you look at some of the data last year alone, well, between 2022 and 2023, fraud with deepfake or synthetic media increased 1,200% just in the US. So this is a growing need to be able to bring toolsets to combat these challenges. And then finally, one of the most important reasons that we exist and that we want to be in the market working with our, our colleagues in the field is that in our society globally, we have a weed growing out of control. It is in the form of child exploitation and sexual abuse. You know, some data points for those who may not pay attention to this. In the U.S. alone, our law enforcement agencies in 2022 received over 37 million video cyber tips. What that means is identified, 37 million videos were identified alone just by hash analyses that could potentially contain child exploitation and sexual abuse. Those things, those, those videos filter down to investigators around the country who have to quickly triage, look for live, you know, do we have live children who are, who are in trouble? What is going on? And so we are one of the tools that we want to be in there to help those investigators move as quickly as possible in their analysis. At this scale, and that's just a few of the areas, right? But even at that scale, there's not enough time in the day for investigators to analyze evidence being created and acquired from all kinds of sources. And beyond the scale, there's a compounding challenge with video authentication, and that's one of time. Time. It's time-consuming. It's a difficult manual process as it's practiced today. You know, a single individual has to review tons of data points around a single video object to make some determination around authenticity, right? You can't just make informed decisions watching video. It really requires trained experts as it's currently practiced. It's a high-touch process, and it's hard to find and retain these specialists who can do this work, right? So what are we doing? So our patented methodologies We automate the process. We make them work more accurate in general because of the scale of data points. We make it possible to be more accurate than we can at a one-to-one analysis by a human. And we allow for more people across an organization to engage in the process. So we're lowering the barriers to entry, which helps with a lot of the staffing challenges or just finding experts who can do this work. And our SaaS application and our APIs allow for video files to be processed at a massive scale. Which is what we really need to do to counter that sheer volume. If you don't mind going to the last slide, our customers are already using MedX daily, you know, some of these really important topics. I'll point out here some, some of the important use cases where you find video authentication as a critical need, right? We want to establish trust with community and local leaders by authenticating critical incident videos. We want to, we want to make sure synthetic media detection in the justice and public safety sector, as well as globally, has as many tools as possible to help with that detection early in the process as videos are being analyzed. We want to ensure citizen-submitted videos of critical incidents are authentic. So the process of law enforcement organizations opening portals to allow citizens to submit evidence from their mobile devices, from their home IP cameras, is, is a growing, it is a growing option, and it is going to continue to grow. And, and one of the challenges there is, is getting some trust around that video as it comes through the door. So that is, that is a place where, where our tool is very useful. As I mentioned, identifying and prosecuting child predators is, is, is crucial. And that is what we can do there is track the life cycle of, of identified child sexual abuse material, videos, and really help add context. This video was created by this kind of camera or was downloaded from this particular website, et cetera. And finally, we wanna secure the authenticity of videos submitted into court. As I mentioned, over 12 million cases a year with video going into court, the more quickly and objectively we can ensure the authenticity of that video for those procedures, the better, right? So I'll just wrap up here and say, you know, at MedX, our mission doesn't stop with video. We're pioneering new phases of digital forensics for justice and public safety. We have new methods for a variety of file formats, including image file formats, and our goal is to deliver new sources of intelligence, new possibilities for evidence examination. Join us now in our video authentication platform and let us power up your investigations. Thank you very much.

All right, thanks for that great overview, Bert. I think, you know, this is such an important area, you know, knowing and being able to validate What is real, what is true is so critical within justice and public safety and every other domain that's out there. So really applaud you and the team for this work. Easiest question for you is just where can our audience go to learn more about this?

Right. Well, bottom of the screen, our website, medxforensics.com. We're always there. We got a chatbot if you want to talk to us immediately. And, uh, and as Harris mentioned, we're all— we're similarly available on LinkedIn, MedX Forensics. You'll find us there.

All right, thanks so much for hopping on and joining us. Our next guest is Neil Sautra, the CEO of Societal Systems. Neil, thanks so much for carving some time out to share more about your company.

Thanks for having me, Dustin. So yeah, my name's Neil Sautra. I am the CEO of Societal. I'm gonna tell you a story about a grandmother. You can picture your favorite grandma in this story, right? So imagine that grandma gets dementia As my dad did a few years ago. Because Grandma can no longer manage her finances, the county probate court assigns a guardian to manage Grandma's money for her. Let's call him Sam. But Sam steals Grandma's retirement fund and spends it on himself instead. The court is supposed to audit Sam's expense reports and catch this theft, but courts are using old software. They have stopped— staff shortages, so they often miss these kinds of issues. Next slide, please. So that's where Societal comes in. We partner with courts to provide a guardian portal where it's easy to submit these expense reports, whether you have a lawyer or not. It's a pretty big system, but here's a few key features that courts love. First, 40% of reports are submitted late. That means that issues are caught late and grandma's accounts have already been drained by the time you can do something about it. Now, if you sign up for a dental cleaning, your dentist will send you 3 text messages and email reminders to make sure you show up on time. So when the stakes are so high in a court case, we want to enable courts to also send automated text and email reminders. Second, Imagine writing up every expense, every investment account trade or dividend for the year. It would take hours, but we can import it directly from your bank in minutes. For good guardians, this means that you can now focus your time on taking care of Grandma instead of doing paperwork. For bad guardians, it's so much harder now to get away with common scams like forging bank statements or Or rounding up expenses. Finally, we provide court clerks a review portal where their rules and our AI flag suspicious transactions for the judge to review, making it easier to catch bad guardians. Now, Dustin, I know AI is a hot topic these days. You've had a few podcast episodes about it, trying to distinguish between what are party tricks and what are real results. My previous job was building AI for governments at Google, and I learned that AI is only as good as the input data. So we're uniquely able to power this AI fraud detection because we're getting this raw data directly from the banks and coupling that with the recent advancements we've seen in, in LLM technology. Next slide, please. So guardianship is just one case type, and it might sound small, but this problem is actually massive. There's $50 billion in assets under management for guardianship and another $36 trillion being transferred from one generation to the next as baby boomers retire. That's a huge lucrative target for bad actors, which is why 1 in 10 elders already experience abuse each year. So this problem is so large that just in 9 months after founding last year, we've already completed procurement and gone live with our first court customer in Illinois. We're launching pilots with legal aid societies and estate attorneys in California and Illinois pretty soon. And this is just the start. Already courts are repurposing our software for a wider use case, which is estate administration when people pass away, which targets a lot more of that $36 trillion wealth transfer. And beyond probate court too, we're starting to see applications in the general justice system. So it turns out that we can apply modern technology to many parts of the justice system to drive societal change. Thanks.

Great. Thank you very much, Neil. Appreciate it. Can you again share with our audience what's the best way to find out more about the work that you're doing?

Yeah, so our website's over here, societalsystems.com. We're creating a lot of content with folks around the state, around the country who are working in guardianship. And so whether our solution is right or not for you, you probably can learn a bit about what other courts are doing as best practices for guardianship.

Great, thank you so much, appreciate it. Now I'd like to welcome to In Case You Missed It our 4th guest today, and that is Anshuman Bhatna, the co-founder and chief learning officer of Terra AI. Welcome. And please tell us about what you're doing in the GovTech.

Thanks, Mark. And thanks for having me on the podcast. My name is Anshuman Bapna. I'm the CEO and founder of Terra. And our mission is to get 100 million people working in climate this decade. So why climate? And why working in climate? And why 100 million? I've been— my own background has been as a tech entrepreneur, starting and selling multiple companies, worked at Google and other places in the past, and then had a classic midlife crisis a couple of years ago, looking at the scale of the crisis that climate change was for us and for future generations. But just like the old proverb that behind every crisis is also an opportunity, What's becoming amply clear is that the climate crisis also presents us an opportunity to change fundamentally every single economic system that we have. We are talking about changing sectors as diverse as energy, agriculture, transportation, manufacturing, construction, and even horizontals like finance. And underlying a lot of that is what's happening at the governmental level in both in terms of policy discussions, but also policy implementation. And all of that requires this massive level of upskilling for every individual who is connected to the climate economy in one way or the other, including people in the government who have to decide what to do with the IRA money, how to put climate justice at the center of what they do, and so on. So we started the company 3 years ago, and we have— we built a full stack of talent transitions into climate. We do 3 things. We run learning programs, which I'll talk a lot more about. We run now the world's largest job board for jobs in climate and sustainability. And third, we have underlying all of that a global community of practitioners, of experts, of individuals, organizations who are already doing transformative work in climate and sustainability. And they're spread across not just 25 but almost 60+ countries now. So let's zoom out for a second on how we do what we do. So we run, uh, some of the best climate learning programs, in my opinion, in the world, uh, and they range from everything that, uh, sits inside climate. Uh, so we have a foundational program for mid-career professionals like myself who are trying to make sense of what's happening on the science side, on technology, policy, and so on. But then we have specialized programs that sit on top of that, that range from what's happening in ESG to how to do— what is regenerative agriculture— to how to use software for building climate tech solutions, and so on. Across the last 3 years, we have graduated over 3,000 people all across the world from 25+ countries. US is our largest market by far. And we also realized somewhere at the midpoint of our journey that just teaching people was not going to be enough. In fact, that's kind of embedded in the name of the company itself, which is Terra.do, as opposed to Terra.edu or Terra.learn. And that came from this core belief that the climate crisis is such that we don't have time to just learn and sit back. We have to apply that learning as quickly as possible into action and into, into our jobs, uh, into the work that we already do. So at the midpoint of our journey, we decided to also roll in, uh, jobs as part of our mandate. So we ended up building this job board which has about 40,000+ climate jobs already. And more interestingly, we get— we have about 700 employers in the climate space who hire from the— from the— from our platform. And we run things like online job fairs. So every week we get about 5 to 10 organizations that are in climate that are hiring to come in and present for about 5 or 10 minutes, not too dissimilar from what's happening here right now. And on the other side, we have 1,000 people logging in, recent college graduates, people who are working in policy, people who are working in government, trying to figure out what roles are available and what's— what these companies look like. And the third thing that we have done is to build a community which is very empowered and very active on its own. So this community is now— just to give you a sense of the breadth and scale of this— so we have about 25 cities across the world that host something on a monthly basis that is entirely self-organized by our community members. We've had 40+ climate companies start out of Terra alumni already, and they've gone on to do interesting things. And of course, the graduate base of all the people who have graduated from Terra's programs are now working in organizations like the logos that you see here, from Google to BCG to Verizon. And what we're really proud of is increasingly the work that we're doing in the government space, and both on the development side and on the government's— on the policy side. So for example, State of California, the Office of Data and Innovation uses us to upskill their employees on all things climate and specifically climate justice. We also work with the World Bank, IFC, Dahlberg, and a bunch of other institutions that understand what it takes to deploy climate policies and climate technology at scale. So the thing that I would love for all of you to consider is, is this proposition that We are all living in this new world where the climate economy is going to touch us in every— whether we like it or not, in one way or the other. And it harks back to when I started my career 20 years ago in the digital economy. So please come by and see what we do. Back to you, Mark.

All right. Thank you so much for sharing. Where can our audience go to find out more information? I know you've got a catchy domain.

Yeah, it's a very simple domain, terra.do. The do part, as I said, is very close to my heart.

Absolutely. I greatly applaud that mission. Well, I think we're going to bring everyone back in here for a second.

We are. Just wanted to say thank you once again, congratulate all of you for being recognized by the State of GovTech judges, and also to thank you for taking the time to talk to us today. We definitely look forward to following your progress, your successes, and wish you all the best in your efforts. For those of you who are in our audience, please look for the show notes to be coming up on gt.com. There'll be links to learn more about each of the companies that were featured here today and to communicate with the, the people that you just heard from. So we want to thank everybody again for joining us.

Have a great weekend.

Thanks so much.