LATEST THINKING

Just how smart are smart cities?

It's time for digital government to ask citizens

Overview

As we enter the digital age, ‘smart cities’ provide a glimpse of the future, but a big gap between the hype and the reality remains.

Many smart city initiatives apply technology-driven solutions to yesterday’s problems and fail to re-create systems and services designed with their digital citizens in mind.

We believe city and digital government leaders must demonstrate clear value, tangible outcomes and engaging experiences for their citizens, businesses and visitors – delivering public service for the future.

“It’s time for cities to take the reins from the technology industry and lead the next generation of smart city initiatives from an outcome perspective that is centered on the citizen.”

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Background

Early adopters rarely grasp how things might work in the future.

They often use new technology to speed up existing processes, instead of creating new way of doing things.

For example, the advent of work processing software was first seen as a tool to speed up office typing pools as opposed to replacing them entirely.

Today, smart city initiatives are often doing the same thing, thinking in evolutionary instead of revolutionary terms. Few have grappled with the kind of radical re-invention necessary to find new ways of running a city and providing value to citizens.

Where cities have started to do this, the results are impressive, reaching across old silos to drive mission productivity for the whole organization. For example:

The program integrated city data from a vast array of sources into a single analytical platform. Looking at data from multiple angles is leading to more insight-driven operations and delivering improvements across city departments. One has been a five-fold increase in the inspection ‘hit rate’ of New York buildings so dangerous that they must be vacated, boosting return on investment, and making the city safer.
Yokohama Smart City is another example of joined up thinking, in the city’s ongoing efforts to cut CO2 emissions, while boosting economic growth in the city. It is seeking to rethink how the city deals with energy use in a wide range of contexts, from people’s individual homes and cars, through to the wider community, bringing together a range of city functions.

Analysis

If our cities are to meet the challenges of tomorrow, the smart city agenda needs an overhaul. Better technology to support business as usual isn’t enough.

Better technology to support business as usual isn’t enough. By focusing on the citizen and real outcomes, city leaders can reinvent their institutions, improve services and build the infrastructure of the digital age – delivering public service for the future.

Urban areas that fail to make the transition will be, like the typing pool, abandoned; but those that embrace a human-centered approach to their digital government strategy will thrive in the information era.

Recommendations

By focusing on the citizen and real outcomes, city leaders can reinvent their institutions, improve services and build the infrastructure of the digital age – delivering public service for the future.

Rebuild city hall for the digital age

Move from portal to person

Develop a more entrepreneurial mindset to city data

To drive change across silos in city institutions new governance structures such as a dedicated executive and smart city board are needed to guide strategy. To deliver on the clear direction, cities should look to appoint cross-cutting CIO or CTO roles to turn strategy into reality.
By focusing on the citizen and real outcomes, city leaders can reinvent their institutions, improve services and build the infrastructure of the digital age – delivering public service for the future.

Rebuild city hall for the digital age

Move from portal to person

Develop a more entrepreneurial mindset to city data

Smart cities must start with the citizens’ needs, not the technology, and build new services through human-centered design.
By focusing on the citizen and real outcomes, city leaders can reinvent their institutions, improve services and build the infrastructure of the digital age – delivering public service for the future.

Rebuild city hall for the digital age

Move from portal to person

Develop a more entrepreneurial mindset to city data

By embracing a mindset of public entrepreneurship city leaders can open up their data and create new marketplaces for private proprietary data that relates to the city, to foster innovation, improve services and boost their economies. They must also shift from a ‘supply-driven’ approach of releasing available data to a ‘demand driven’ one based on valued citizen use cases.