This Week in Gov Tech

All right, it's Friday, so you know it's time for In Case You Missed It. Joe, Jed, and myself are back to kind of break down some stories that caught our attention from the week that was and talk about what we see in the coming weeks ahead. We've got a short show this week because it's a long weekend and we want to let you all get out of there and celebrate. Uh, on today's show, we're going to discuss a recent announcement by Colorado's governor that the state will start accepting crypto for taxes by the end of summer, and We've got loud car exhausts probably aren't the only thing keeping New York City residents from sleeping soundly at night, but they certainly don't help. Now the city is deploying some old tech and new ways to help enforce sound ordinances. But first, I want to tell you about an update on an event that we're doing in 2022. Beyond the Beltway is going virtual. It's an event that's coming up. You want to make sure that you register. This annual event brings together analysts and government leaders to share their insights. This year's speakers list again is a who's who. of CIOs, CTOs, and industry experts as they break down what's happening in the market. Joe and I are gonna be there, so you don't wanna miss out on that. You can visit events.govtech.com for more information. But as I mentioned at the beginning, we're gonna talk about crypto, and we know this is all the rage. As you kind of follow Twitter, there's been a lot of conversations about crypto in recent weeks online, but let's talk about crypto and Colorado. So we saw this week the governor of Colorado announced that the state is planning on accepting crypto soon. We've got a clip of this, of this and what it means for the state of Colorado here.

To Colorado Governor Jared Polis, he is certainly in that camp. The state plans to start accepting cryptocurrency for taxes this summer. He did acknowledge the volatility in crypto and says Colorado is getting around that by converting crypto immediately into dollars. Colorado will not hold any digital assets on the state's balance sheet. Polis does not own Bitcoin. You got to ask these guys what their holdings are. No crypto for him. He says buyer beware, though, when it comes to investing. Dustin, he's also a former dot-com entrepreneur and a CEO. He did talk a lot about the potential for the underlying tech.

I don't advise speculation, you know, unless you have extra money and you feel like gambling on what individual digital currencies are going to do. But the concept is sound. The concept's here to stay. Decreased transaction costs, increased efficiency. I think this is the way the whole world is going.

There are at least 20 states right now with crypto or blockchain-specific bills in the works. Texas, Wyoming, Colorado, of course, Florida are among the most vocal in trying to attract blockchain business. They're seen as some of the most, most hospitable. Polis is hopeful. He says the competition between states could also spark some action in D.C.

There's only so much we can do at any state level because we're all still subject to federal laws. But I think the more states have a forward-looking approach to this, and I would certainly include Wyoming, Colorado, and Florida among them, that, that pushes the federal government to, to create a more favorable ecosystem for crypto across our entire country.

And guys, we've talked about Miami, New York City issuing their own cryptocurrencies called city coins. Polis says Colorado is not going that far. He also says it really goes against the ethos of cryptocurrencies being free from government intervention. So no Denver coin for now. He did, though, float the idea of blockchain being used in things All right, guys, so what do you think about this?

You know, states are getting into it. We're starting to see a lot more chatter around not just the blockchain applications in state and local government, but now the crypto side of things. Joe, let's start with, uh, with you on this one.

You know, it's interesting that there's a race to be first here, right? So the governor of Colorado mentioned Arizona and Wyoming are pretty active in this space. They've got active bills all facing a variety of hurdles to get there, One being that states can't create their own currency, so they're barred from doing that. You know, as I look at it, we, you know, Dustin, we've talked about blockchain and many of these underlying technologies now for quite some time, but I hearken back to what we talked about a couple episodes ago. I think that the pandemic taught us that states, localities have a tremendous amount of work to be done to address the plumbing of state and local government. So to me, this still fits in the hype category. There's so many more meaningful things that we can be doing versus working on addressing accepting crypto payments at our state level?

Yeah, I think, you know, when you look at the underlying technology to crypto being the blockchain, there's definitely implications of that technology in government. But, you know, the question is, is the technology in kind of search of a problem to solve, or is there a problem that's ready for the technology to be applied to? I think you're also gonna see some of these technologies ushered in through the industry providers that are already kind of serving up these capabilities for government. So if you look at that system of record side of government, That's where it's natural to start to do these things. And, you know, when it comes to these regional economic development plays, whether it be crypto or, you know, back when I was in government, there was Macon, Georgia that had Macon, you know, kind of their own Macon-type currency. It wasn't a crypto at that time, but it was their own kind of local economic development thing. So it will be interesting to see how this plays out and how scalable this is longer term. Jed, what are your thoughts on this?

You know, to go back to what Joe was saying about the race to be first. I really do think this is Colorado trying to flex some muscle because usually when you hear about crypto and states, Wyoming is the one that shows up in the headlines the most. And this is just Colorado trying to announce, hey, we're actually big into this too. Now to go back to whether this is, you know, something that we should be focusing on or whether it's hype, I want to draw attention to one comment I remember the governor saying something to the effect of this is where the whole world is heading. I mean, what else could that be but hype? Haven't we been hearing this for years now? And so I'm still waiting on it to be true. I'm still waiting on it to be true that everyone is really into crypto because it really is like a very small segment of people that are into it. I think they have specific interests, sometimes specific political interests. I know libertarians are very interested in crypto because it's, you know, divorced from the government. Now, this is not to say that crypto itself can't have any applications for government. Dustin, you already talked about the blockchain applications, but I think there's some potential for crypto to help with some government programs. One I just heard about from San Jose with their Digital Divide Initiative, they're actually working with a company called Helium. And they are going to be mining cryptocurrency to help pay for internet bills for people who don't have service. So that's one creative way that it can be used for something useful. But I go back to what Joe says, I do think right now this is hype.

Yeah.

One last thing on this. I mean, regardless if it's hype or my personal opinion on it, if states are moving this way, and that's, you know, Colorado's first or Florida or any other states that were on the map, That means that the vendor community that supports tax payments and the collection of funds are going to have to adjust their solutions now to deal with this new reality. So that's going to be fascinating to watch too.

Yeah, and I think when you look at the underlying infrastructure of, you know, like the blockchain, it works when you do it in an ecosystem or a network. So I think the one-off approach is very isolated. I mean, we saw, you know, the implications of that when we saw some of the early blockchain experiments even in the state of Illinois. Right? They were wildly successful at showing the implications of the technology and how it could be applied to different use cases like land deeds. Where it failed is they had to manually enter and update data from some of the people that weren't participating or had access to the blockchain itself. So I think sometimes we have to think about the wider picture, even though this is a local economic development play. It really works better when we start to think about the ecosystem of government around it and how we might be able to use it for resiliency, continuity, you know, Kind of looking at disaster recovery and how we store records differently. I think there's a lot of potential benefit there, but it works better when we do it in groups. Now, I know we want to wrap things up today with a story out of New York City. Over the weekend, someone posted this picture to Facebook, and we'll let that picture show here. So if you can't tell, it's a summons to a New York Department of Environmental Protection facility for noise testing of this person's exhaust. Apparently, it may be too loud, and it's nearly a $900 fine if this person doesn't show up. This seems to be part of a pilot program started last fall to help curb noise pollution in New York. And according to roadandtrack.com, it uses microphones attached to cameras to catch loud cars, similar to how a camera may catch a speeder or a red light violator. So guys, what do you think about this? I mean, we've seen a lot of really interesting technology that's out there. We saw the red light camera phase kind of come and go. And, you know, all the controversy that surrounded that. Good use of tech or bad use of tech?

I'm a big fan of this. As someone who's not a huge fan of loud motorcycles and loud cars, I could see this getting some good use to drive some revenue in my own city. Outside of that though, I think we've all been on the wrong end of maybe a red light camera before or a speeding camera. But personally, I think it's a good use of technology and 2 thumbs up for me.

Jed, what are your thoughts here?

I have, I have mixed thoughts about this because I'm of the opinion that when you're just trying to have, you know, a nice dinner on the patio somewhere, there's few things that are more annoying than some entitled, you know, inferiority complex having person just driving by as loudly as they possibly can. I mean, it's, it's absolutely disgusting. I despise it. So, and I can really sympathize with New Yorkers on this because I'm sure they hear a lot of it and I'm sure it's hard to enforce. The law when it comes to this. And so that's one argument for it, is that it could help with enforcement. My reluctance though is anytime that you're using an audio detection system, uh, I just have questions about it. Because you think about like, what's, what's like one of the biggest audio detection systems right now that's been used, that's being used in a lot of cities? ShotSpotter. You know, ShotSpotter is being used in a lot of places, and I think the jury is still out on that. I'm not saying that there aren't jurisdictions where it has perhaps led to some, you know, positive outcomes. There's some evidence for that, but then there's also some evidence that it's not doing, uh, so much. So, you know, is there a possibility that if you have a bunch of cars at a certain intersection, could someone get, you know, ticketed just because there's just a lot of noise in New York in general, um, and really they're not the ones that are making, you know, that are breaking the decibel level? So That's the sort of questions that I have in my head. Obviously, they're going to be looking at this for the next few months. I'll be interested to see how accurate this thing actually is.

Yeah, and I think, you know, you both made really good points about this. I mean, I think when you think about these automated enforcement technologies, there's a lot of benefits when it comes to eliminating kind of the human element and the time and kind of wasted manual cycles that are there and efficiencies that come out of it. You know, we've seen a lot of innovation, especially with Assembly Bill 917 in California that allows automated enforcement of people that are parked and bus lanes and other things. There's operational benefits to that technology that are very strong. I think the flip side of all of this is making sure that we think about transparency, we think about ethics, we think about, you know, all the things, Jed, that you talked about and how these technologies are used. And we let the public know how it's going to be used and how it's not. I mean, you think about, you know, the Alexa device, right? When it invoked its name, it's probably going to start coming on in my house somewhere. But when you think about these technologies, when people found out that the recordings were stored, locally on the devices, what did they do? They freaked out about it, right? And they had to change policy procedures and how they kind of handled that. So I think with these types of things, we have to be transparent, and it can't just be a roadandtrack.com website that is breaking this to New Yorkers, or when you get a summons, you know, in the mail that says, hey, this is what happened. We need to, you know, be proactive, talk about how it's being used, how that data is being stored, what information is personally identifiable, and ultimately what the long-term implications are of that, and we have to make sure that there's safeguards in place that can't be used to use the same technology to listen in on conversations and, you know, look for terroristic threats that start to violate, you know, some of our other constitutional rights. So a lot to unpack here, but definitely, you know, an emerging technology that is creating some emerging regulatory needs when it comes to how that technology is expanded in state and local government.

And maybe upsetting a lot of Harley-Davidson owners.

That's right.

Well, that's all the time we have for today. Join us next week at 12 o'clock Pacific for a special interview with Luke Stowe, the CIO and acting city manager of Evanston, Illinois. Have a great long weekend.