Welcome

It is my pleasure to introduce to you our first white paper, bringing together the views and voices of key cities and experts on data ownership, sharing and control.

When, as a community of cities, we founded OASC we knew that our fundamental task was how to deliver on the promise of digital transformation for cities all the way from the city economy to the very societal fabric that makes us all who we are.

Underpinning this noble challenge was a problem that we needed to solve: how to make smart city solutions interoperable in a way that would allow solutions to scale from city to city via a common marketplace.

We’ve brought this into sharp focus, recognising that if we can understand what is minimally needed in order for cities to exchange solutions, services and data among themselves and their respective ecosystems, we can offer a common ground for cities wherever they are, and in celebration of all of their diversity.

Our Minimal Interoperability Mechanisms (MIMs) form this common ground.

MIMs help cities stand on the shoulders of their peers by using stuff that works in other places. Not tomorrow, but today.

We have grown from a handful of trailblazing cities to over 150 municipalities located all over the globe and we are still growing. The information needs of our cities grows along with us, and this white paper reflects a set of priority data-related issues that were identified over the course of two roundtables in 2020. It is just the start, as we respond to further city priorities over the coming year.

Thank you to city representatives for your expert input via the roundtables - we are nothing without our cities.

Davor Meersman CEO OASC

City experts

In 2020, OASC held two roundtables with city representatives to unpick the issues they faced with respect to data ownership, sharing and control, and to understand where they saw their own journeys taking them in responding to these challenges.

We would like to thank everyone who gave up their time and shared their expertise and wisdom, including:

Bobo Baudin, Association of Swedish Municipalities and Regions. Ciara Campbell, Officer, Smart Belfast, Belfast City Council. Alexandre Chaffotte, Smart City Manager, Saint-Quentin. Deborah Colville, Head of Smart Belfast, Belfast City Council. David Cunha, Head of Smart City, City of Lisbon. Benjamin Ditel, Data & Tech Enabler, CDO Office, City of Kiel. Burcu Özdemir, Smart City Director, City of Istanbul. Bart Rosseau, Chief Data Officer, City of Ghent. Adrian Slatcher, Senior Officer, City of Manchester. Tarja Vuorinen, Foresight Manager, City of Turku. Doug Young, Data Cluster Project Manager, Scottish Cities Alliance.