You may be thinking right now about all the data your municipality holds in non-digital, semi-digital, or digital - but not shareable - means. From procurement information to maintenance records for the council’s own estate, municipalities the world over still struggle to know what data they currently collect, how they gather it, and for what purpose. Being able to persuade internal colleagues about the importance of a data review is often the first step to uncovering a trove of information that could, ultimately, help bring better value to the city. This is regardless of whether the data is made open or not - or whether this is a city-wide review or within a specific operational area.
Recognising that not only do we all horde data (it is estimated that the average organisation stores more than 50% of the data it collects without ever using it), the data we possess is not always fit for purpose (incomplete, error-strewn, non-compliant, not standard or duplicative)[^1]. Sometimes it remains elusive or can’t be read - tied up in vendor systems and not sharable. Tempted to clean your house?
How did we get here? Simply put - we’ve invented loads of data-producing tech that is clogging up our digital arteries. And, as the pace of tech innovation accelerates, data production will continue to grow accordingly. New data generating applications are coming on stream at a faster pace every day. In the 127 years it took the landline to be the communication tool of choice in 95% of US homes, the mobile phone could have reached market saturation six times over - and the smart-phone 15-fold for that matter[^2].
Some cities are locking down data storage - preventing downloads from external emails and many websites[^3] partially in response to security concerns - but this understandable response serves to only delay the problem and may lock city teams out of important conversations in the meantime. The projections are grim for those hoping for a reprieve: by 2025, it was widely estimated pre-pandemic that global data storage will have increased by 400% from 2018 (for the geeks among you, that’s a rise from 33 zettabytes to over 175 zettabytes)[^4].
The story doesn’t stop there. The pandemic triggered a new wave of rapid tech adoption - not just in relation to our integrated health responses - but in a whole host of ways that enable us all to adapt to this new world: checking how busy your local street is[^5], for example - or creating improved ways to contact friends and family for virtual face-to-face time - and, of course, the now ever-present remote working video calls[^6]. The pandemic experience underscores the immense power of system-wide shocks to provoke dramatically altered ways of working and living (and therefore intense periods of innovation). The rate of growth in both innovation and the ensuing data being generated is seemingly exponential and has serious implications for cities - both positive and concerning.
Let’s take a look at the positives: new applications will take data sophistication to a new level at pace. Innovations beckon cities with much opportunity to truly transform service delivery, while enabling them to ‘talk’ to these applications so that the circle is fully complete. Innovations like smart materials that produce and generate quantities of data about the environment around them, increasing rates of automation, smart vehicles and road infrastructure, smart waste technologies and more could revolutionise the way we live - and cities are eager to be part of the innovation process.
It is clear that with innovation comes demand for data. Innovators want access to city data in order to create new applications that will improve urban areas. Cities are also thirsty for data - looking for insights into how to find increased value from existing data, new ways of integrating different streams, and from new sources, such as AI-enabled machine learning applications.
There’s a problem though: as new technology comes on board, those that can afford to embrace its benefits are able to race ahead, while those less able to are in danger of falling short of the economic, environmental and social edge that it brings.
Data is, of course, the currency of this new tech-enabled economy, both feeding and deriving in ways that could only be dreamed of a few years ago. Less affluent towns and smaller cities are therefore at an increased disadvantage.
It is not an exaggeration to characterise the tech and data crunch as a serious threat, in spite of the opportunities it also brings. There is a real risk that cities - particularly the small and less affluent ones - will be effectively cyber-buried under a mountain of data, increasingly excluded from digital conversations as the 2020s progress[^7].
An overview of how data can be collected and used in a city, from capturing data from sensors to aggregating and analysing it to create insights for the city manager.
Cities at the beginning of the data journey are often confronted with myriad choices about where exactly to begin: is it carrying out a root and branch review; carving out ‘priority’ data; enabling random innovation to drive direction, or something else?
While approaches will vary from city to city, there are many factors at play and there is no one-size-fits-all solution.
One question that crosses the minds of urban managers is how much data is enough?
We now recognise that the question is better framed around matching priorities and challenges to solutions. What data is needed to provide an appropriate solution for the priority at hand, and how do we draw as much value from it? This approach can be a strategic and agile starting point - and also work for bigger cities as an ongoing, cut-through strategy.
Amid all the hype, and a market in which the pace of innovation continues to accelerate, it is easy to get lost between the technology pathways available now, what is being admired like a mature cheese (great now, but wait too long and its pull will definitely wain), and what is just around the corner that will most effectively harness and provide insights on much-needed urban data. From 5G to blockchain, it can be a confusing minefield to negotiate and one with long-term consequences for procurement, servicing, skills and more.
In a bid to find the best solutions, cities have dipped their municipal toes into the murky waters of dingy labs and grungy student digs, hackeries and maker spaces, and even into the plush offices of the big players to find solutions. Sensors and bits of kit have seemingly sprung up in urban spaces everywhere as we experiment with possible solutions, with some cities devoting time and effort to being urban-wide living labs. Cities have also dived into the well of information within their own estate: from rates payments to maintenance schedules and social care to kindergartens, councils have been exploring how they can get better value from exploiting and sharing data internally across operational and data silos.
City experimentation has produced rich innovation (and not just with the ‘sensed’ world, but with data from other sources as well). This has facilitated ways to share the spoils with other cities, including those that do not have the means to invest at the forefront of urban innovation.
The clear message is that cities no longer have to shoulder the burden of doing all the innovation themselves - we can learn from each other, and cherry-pick what we like from a wealth of solutions.
So, what’s the solution to sharing the gains from innovation while keeping strategic goals on course (as if there was ever only one) and avoiding being buried under a mountain of data?
The experience of cities well advanced in open and agile practices provides a significant clue to how we can share the spoils, which, for now, delivers many benefits and continues to hold much promise: the cloud.
Cloud-operated urban and local data platforms have provided freedom and flexibility for many cities to achieve sophisticated analysis and insights on internal operations, as well as wider urban priorities, without having to invest in siloed infrastructure back at base. Cloud functionality has facilitated smaller cities and towns to access infrastructure for which they would be otherwise priced out, and has created opportunities for substantial savings within municipal operations that can be redirected to other pressing demands. Data lakes, machine learning, analytics, IoT and other tools to help unlock data - turning it from information into insight - are now available at the click of a button at comparatively affordable prices.
While cloud operations are by no means the only answer and - as OASC can attest, many cities are working positively within vendor-specific onsite environments - the cloud provides an opportunity for urban managers to explore addressing priorities in an agile way. Cloud-based solutions are being developed across the world, and many are replicable and interoperable. Access to cloud-based services can be utilised only when needed, so there is no long-term vendor lock-in for either storage or tools. This means we can, as urban managers, pick and choose between solutions with minimal disruption - trying them on for size, and adopting, or moving on to a new innovation where it seems a better fit.
‘OASC helps cities act with universal knowledge in the interests of societies everywhere.’ Davor Meersman, CEO, OASC
You may want an automated solution for managing municipal waste - or maybe it’s controlling moisture levels in parks. Perhaps it’s better managing the turnaround times for voids in housing management. Well, chances are that there’s a city close by or on the other side of the planet that has already implemented a solution that you like. If only your city could pick up this solution and integrate your data… This core need for interoperability between cities and solutions is the primary reason OASC exists and it is where the # Minimal Interoperability Mechanisms (MIMs) come in.
Recognising that innovations coming from publicly-funded projects usually hit a dead-end soon after the funding stops our founders came together in 2015 to create Open & Agile Smart Cities (OASC). What was missing was a market, where solutions could be shared between cities facing similar challenges, but had different cultural, economic, social, and technical structures. An initial group of 30 cities joined the new initiative and, soon afterwards, the movement began to grow - adding more and more members representing a diverse community, with currently more than 150 cities from 31 countries.
OASC embodies a singular, global, demand-side consensus on the minimal common ground for exchanging solutions, services and data between cities. We call this common ground the ‘Minimal Interoperability Mechanisms’ (MIMs). MIMs are used to scale local solutions globally and are adopted by local governments, supported by global institutions, backed by industry, based on open standards, technology agnostic, and universally accessible.
MIMs are catalysts for impact, helping local levels tackle global issues together:
adopted by local, regional, national, and international governments.
supported by the United Nations, the European Commission, and the World Economic Forum, and national governments
based on open standards, technology-agnostic, universally accessible, and cheap to implement.
backed by industry and part of technology platforms and roadmaps worldwide.
A key element to understanding data is recognising that data exists within international frameworks. MIMs have been designed to enable accessibility to data and its use irrespective of where it comes from. Like a superhighway, MIMs create the conditions in which data can be understood from one context to another - to be consumed by tools and applications implemented anywhere else - as long as the data is MIMs-compliant. In basic terms, it means that a cool application (smart route planning models for urban services, let’s say) developed in Brisbane can pick up a MIMs-compliant data stream from Antwerp. For Antwerp, the benefit is that the application can be used locally without further customisation - providing the same functionality it did in Brisbane.
Open and agile cities are attuning their data to align with MIMs, not only to use interoperable tools, but so that their data can contribute to a bigger picture: sharing data with cities right across the globe, using cloud-based services. MIMs are a necessary precondition for scaling up data from city to city, or from region to region, and for genuine replicability and interoperability of solutions.