This Pilot Registry is a new resource and effort from the City of Philadelphia.

It grew from a need to create better and more transparent onboarding processes for startups and smaller vendors seeking to partner with the City in ways that let them test their products, goods or services and build credibility by having a “pilot with the City”.

Sometimes free, and often low cost, pilots are a smart way to try things before spending more money and time to create new processes and operations.

As the idea evolved, we realized there was a greater need, and potentially a national one: we craved a simple and accessible place for pilot projects and innovative collaborations to form.

We believe that transparency and this simple easy step of registering experimental projects, what they tried to and did accomplish and who worked on them, will help inform the work and outcomes of other governments and the businesses that help them. It will be like a best practices, business directory, yelp, testing and innovation hub for government on steroids.

Government departments need to be able to more easily find solutions to problems they have. Sometimes it is helpful to hear about those solutions from vendors or stakeholders when there is no contract, formal, solicitation or funding in place yet. Under other circumstances, it may be useful to find and learn about other experimental efforts which sought to solve a similar problem, or address a similar issue, and may in fact have been successful. Imagine the virtuous circle created when one government shares the summary benefits and successful approach they tried in a pilot project with others who are trying to solve the same problem. We also see the need to work towards a home for “unsolicited proposals” because such proposals may in fact offer great value to City efforts despite not originating with a formal solicitation.

The Pilot Registry seeks to be an information sharing portal that finds use by governments, vendors and stakeholders all across the County. It was built and started in Philadelphia and is hosted and moderated in Philadelphia by Philadelphia’s City government. Like all agile efforts, this is new and acknowledges there is learning to do and likely ways to improve this attempt. Help us make this useful, better, and well used so that governments across the County can buy better.