SPI Insights

Washington– Snohomish County announced plans to deploy technology and form partnerships to draw economic growth and improve connectivity to all residents. The county released a request for information (RFI) through its Department of Information Technology. The Snohomish County RFI seeks details on potential public-private partnerships for the county’s rural and urban areas for review by July 12.

County officials are designing plans after the established smart city model used across the nation but have not specified exactly what type of technology they are looking for because they want all types of ideas from vendors. The county is open to all ideas including integrated information and communications technology, Internet of Things devices and data, publicly deployed infrastructure, rural broadband capacity, urban informatics and data analytics, mobile/civic applications, sensor-based networks, and/or urban wireless networks (including 5g). A challenge facing the county is figuring out how to balance the needs of its rural areas with the needs of its high-tech urban regions.