The excitement around once-in-a-generation funding made possible through the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) is understandable. At last, government agencies – long held back by limited budgets – can bring their transportation safety aspirations to life by giving citizens and employees sound roads, job sites, commercial districts and more.

These agencies now have the opportunity to put digital at their core for the kind of modern transportation safety program that demonstrates value across human, organizational and community impact.

Just how big of an impact can digital transformation have? Consider all of these scenarios:

Drive employee productivity and collaboration
Leveraging innovative digital technologies such as IoT, digital twin, thermal recognition and mixed reality headsets not only ensures worker safety, but improves their productivity, collaboration and effectiveness. Imagine providing them with HoloLens guides for flexible, hands-free training at their own pace from remote experts. They can attain new skills and feel more successful and integral to their organization, boosting their engagement and retention.

Automating processes enables more efficient safety incident reporting and reduces re-work due to human errors. AI ensures someone is always available to speak to field workers, and comments can be translated to pull out essential safety elements and map them to the incident management system. And, in the paper-dominated environment of field-related processes, Azure-based technologies allow field workers access to asset information such as work orders, material availability, documents, drawings and procedures so that they can capture data directly from the worksite and initiate critical processes (think unplanned maintenance, emergency work orders).

Manage infrastructure deterioration and operational failure risk
Infrastructure maintenance becomes more predictable, maximizing energy efficiency and decreasing the overall safety risk profile. And that also extends to fleet maintenance, where advanced technology can understand utilization, demand and capacity, and to construction sites, enabling better cost and schedule control.

Managing to OSHA standards becomes more streamlined, ensuring data is properly captured, elevated and put into meaningful context to promote and support safe operations and avoid costly fines or budget penalties.

To improve both citizen and employee safety, public safety agencies, operations and field personnel can be connected with real-time data to simplify and improve incident response time with a common operating picture. Data from weather, time of day and day of the week, can improve the safety of roads and highways for citizens and workers, and in some cases the probability of accidents can be accurately predicted by as much as 100%. Sensors on luminaires can monitor energy consumption, predict lighting network maintenance, monitor parking availability, track the need for street cleaning...even provide Internet throughout the city.

Lead the responsible use of AI
Early adoption of generative AI will give agencies an inside track on understanding the technology that many of them will soon be asked to regulate. Simply putting public-facing information into ChatGPT capabilities could enable citizens to find relevant information quickly and easily using natural language prompts. (By the way, generative AI capabilities can instantly translate into many languages.) For those organizations that are more advanced in their digital enterprises, generative AI can be a connection point to partners, including other agencies, to expand their knowledge bases and inform better decisions.

The technology is here – and so is the funding – for governments to go the distance for their communities with a modern transportation safety program. It’s an exciting time to be in the public sector and plan these digital transformation journeys.

If you’re ready to put digital at your core and make a genuine human impact, click here.