Digital Economy

People-Centered Innovation for an Inclusive Economy

Exploring how digital platforms, data, and innovation can serve workers, riders, students, small businesses, and local communities—not only distant corporations.

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Community Mobility

Fair and accessible rideshare platforms

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Digital Platforms

Inclusive and trustworthy ecosystems

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Data & AI for Good

Public-interest and social innovation

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Work & Opportunity

Equitable access in the digital economy

Ride app pickup area
Reachable Future Goal

Technology that Serves People and Communities

Our mobility work now includes a public prototype exploring how digital coordination could serve workers and communities more directly, alongside our longer-term research into fairer driver-and-rider-centered mobility models.

These are research and development initiatives—not operating transportation services. The current prototype is designed to make the idea testable, invite feedback, and inform future feasibility and pilot work.

Active Prototype · Digital Economy

CommuteTogether: Rideshare Commuting to Work

CommuteTogether is a public interactive demonstration of a worker-centered carpool coordination concept. It asks a practical question: when many coworkers travel to the same workplace on recurring schedules, could lightweight coordination help them share empty seats instead of driving separately?

The prototype lets visitors explore simplified schedule and home-area matching with fictional data. It does not arrange real rides and does not yet demonstrate real demand, travel savings, driver vetting, or an operational booking system.

Why it matters: the project turns our research on platform economics and everyday mobility into something people can actually test, critique, and help improve before any real-world pilot is attempted.
Public Purpose

A digital economy with public purpose

Digital platforms have changed transportation, delivery, education, commerce and work. The question is not whether technology will shape the future, but who owns it, who governs it and who benefits from it.

Cooperative Ownership

Platforms where workers, users and communities can participate in ownership and decision-making.

Local Value Creation

Systems that keep more economic value circulating within Sacramento and the broader region.

Ethical Innovation

Technology that is transparent, fair, privacy-conscious and accountable.

Community Mobility Cooperative

From driver and rider to driver and rider

A cooperative mobility platform could give drivers, riders and local communities a voice in pricing, policies, data use and distribution of value.

Research direction: examine ownership, governance, affordability, driver earnings, rider experience, reliability and local reinvestment together rather than treating them as separate problems.
Focus Areas
Community Mobility Cooperative
Platform Governance & Policy
Data, AI & Digital Inclusion
Jobs, Skills & Future of Work
Development Roadmap

Listen before building

1. Research & Listening

Understand needs and barriers facing drivers, riders, workers and small businesses.

2. Coalition Building

Connect cooperatives, universities, technologists, public agencies and local entrepreneurs.

3. Feasibility & Pilot

Study regulation, insurance, economics and governance before prototype development and evaluation.

Sacramento Collaborative Review

Research and public discussion

Follow our continuing investigation of cooperative rideshare, platform economics, rider adoption, worker experience and community-centered digital systems.

Invitation

Join the conversation.

We welcome students, drivers, riders, developers, researchers, community organizations, cooperatives and public-sector partners interested in building a fairer digital economy.