Philadelphia’s Pitch & Pilot program was created to test technology-enabled responses to municipal challenges, with the aim of improving government services and advancing the SmartCityPHL Roadmap. The City launched the initiative in December 2019 through its Office of Innovation and Technology (OIT), drawing on ideas from policymakers, entrepreneurs and innovators inside and outside government.94
The program invites proposals for specific city problems, then supports selected providers to develop and test solutions with City departments. Pilots are assessed for their practical value, including whether they can help deliver services more efficiently or affordably, and whether they benefit residents underserved by existing approaches.49 The City’s current program page says the application cycle is closed; it describes awards of up to $75,000, or $100,000 for a local business enterprise.1
Early challenges covered waste reduction and diversion. Partners included Metabolic, whose tool used construction data to identify opportunities to reuse materials from demolished buildings, and Retrievr, which offered household pickup of clothing and electronics for recycling.411 During its three-month pilot, Retrievr collected about 27,000 pounds of material from 468 Philadelphia households.12
Other pilots examined streets and public feedback. GoodRoads analyzed images from 1,200 miles of roadway to help the Streets Department identify repair needs; the City reported that inspectors captured more than one million images in 438 hours of driving.5 State of Place analyzed street-level features, while Zencity used public social-media posts and 311 reports to help City departments track residents’ concerns.48
By February 2021, the City reported four supported pilots and said it would use their findings to decide which might be expanded.4 The program’s approach is to treat each deployment as a test: gather evidence about performance, consider equity and costs, and use the results to inform future decisions.413