Change Forces

Technology Advancement. CAVs and other transformational technologies show great promise to improve safety outcomes, reduce congestion and provide positive societal impacts. There are also risks associated with deploying transformational technologies that need additional research and vetting.
Legislation, Regulation, and Funding. Public and private agencies and research organizations are starting to understand the critical issues surrounding deployment of CAV and other transformational technologies. However, additional research is needed to inform policymaking and legislation. At the same time, current public sector funding levels are not adequate to deploy large scale CAV infrastructure and do not address improvements to existing assets.
Shift in Role and Focus. The growing emphasis on system operations contributes to interest in use of CAV technologies to achieve more efficient use of existing capacity with improved safety.

What Capabilities Are Needed?

Agility and Resilience. agencies must recognize uncertainties with respect to the timing of technology maturation and adoption and the specific communications technologies and standards that will be used. They must design procurement and operations strategies that provide flexibility to adjust to different scenarios.
Technology Adoption. agencies must build the capability to evaluate, pilot and integrate new information and communications technologies.
Operations Focus. agencies need to strengthen their capability to plan for and actively manage system operations.
Aligning Skills to Needs. agencies need to identify the knowledge, skills and abilities required to plan for CAVs and other transformational technologies and determine what skills to develop in-house and what can be best met through use of external consultants or partnering with universities.

What can you do about it?

• Organizational Structure – to ensure that system operations and technology deployment functions have the appropriate level of focus and resourcing.
• Change Management – to help the agency understand the implications of CAVs and adjust to use of new technologies.

• Strategic Workforce Planning – to proactively plan for needed skills for technology deployment.
• Recruitment and Retention – to ensure that the agency has the right mix of skills and experience needed to plan for and integrate CAV technology.
• Professional Development – to strengthen employee skills and support career advancement.

• Social and Learning Communities – to provide an opportunity for internal agency knowledge sharing and collaborative problem solving.
• Knowledge Capture and Transfer – to capture and share knowledge from inside the agency as well as from peer organizations and industry.
• Learning Organization – to create a work environment that encourages experimentation and enables teams to “fail fast” and learn from their experiences.

• IT Strategic Planning – to integrate consideration of IT infrastructure, cybersecurity and data privacy concerns into future investment strategies.
• IT and Data Governance – to establish clear roles, responsibilities, standards and processes for decision making related to technology acquisition and integration.
• Cloud Solutions – to equip the agency to manage and access large volumes of data associated with CAVs.

• Innovative Contracting Methods – to provide the flexibility to use different models such as design-build-operate-transfer.
• Public/Private Partnerships – to take advantage of new opportunities for collaborating with industry.

What resources will help?