Get Smart Together! Smart City Transformation Calls for Collaboration Between Policy Makers and People

Utilising the seemingly endless amounts of data being created to make cities smarter may seem like a one-way ticket to happiness for municipal and government decision makers around the world, but it must be a two-way street for seamless transformation if everyone is going to benefit.

The 2.5 quintillion data bytes being generated every day worldwide presents a raft of opportunities for governments to enhance their services, which can transform a city to truly become smart if decision makers embark on extensive collaboration with the private sector and the people through open-data policies and transparency on data collection. 

That was the overriding view from a panel of industry experts at the Internet of Things Expo (IoTX) 2018, the region’s largest event focused on smart cities, which is running concurrently with the Gulf Information Security Exhibition and Conference (GISEC), under the banner of Future Technology Week, at Dubai World Trade Centre (DWTC) this week.

During a panel discussion titled ‘Enabling the next generation of smart city solutions through an open data policy’, the experts discussed how cities can capitalise on the data created by its people, it requires the buy-in from citizens and a willingness to share data if a city wants to be ‘smart’. 

“The fuel for the transformation to smart cities is the information, the data itself; to help decision makers reach better decisions, to create seamless services and improve the experience of living in the city,“ said Kaveh Vessali, Senior Partner at NXN, a company that is working with the region on open-data policies and embracing smart city solutions.

“Governments, as regulators and market makers of open data can learn a lot from the private sector and companies that are better at understanding their customers. A company that thinks about itself, its product and technology and tries to find a use for it will be unsuccessful. A company that seeks collaboration with its customers will be a success.

“If governments think about themselves and what we have and how cool it is they will get it wrong. However, if governments think about the customers and about what they want and what is the value in both directions it becomes a genuine collaboration to create a data economy.”

Roman Rohrberg, Regional Marketing Manager, EMEA, Miovision, a company that specialises in creating smart solutions for traffic management, agreed, insisting that cities must start educating people on how and why they are using data. As cities we need to start educating people what the data is actually going to be used for. Often people will think their own personal bit of data is shared, but usually it’s not.

Rohrberg cited an example of traffic management, in which he stressed that companies don’t monitor each individual car, but look at patterns such as how many cars were where at certain times and what it infers?

He added, “People have to understand that this data is being used for the greater good. It’s the governments that encourage citizens to become part of the decision making. And they need to educate people on what the data is going to be used for, they have to be transparent.”

But in an age when people are becoming increasingly skeptical about data collection and data usage, what is the incentive for the everyman on the street to willingly share their data?

“One of the biggest challenges is encouraging citizens to understand that they have a part to play and involve themselves in decision making.  There’s the question of whose data is it actually. For example, if I open a bank account, it’s my bank account therefore the data should be mine. You have a right to know who is taking your data and who is making use of it and for what,” said Ger Barron, Chief Technology Officer (CTO), City of Amsterdam.

It’s only logical for a city to share the data when it benefits the greater good and that data, from healthcare to mobility should be accessible to everybody.” 

You have to think about the outcomes, for us and the people we work with, the outcome is never about the data itself, it’s about improving the lives and experiences of citizens. It’s one thing to get the information, it’s another thing to act as an enabler to get it to the right decision makers and then it’s easier to assess the outcome because now you have a business outcome. You can see if traffic decreased, if the number of accident victims who didn’t make to the emergency room on time increased etc.”