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Determining what data is in your city’s best interests to control, being able to prioritise value over quantity, and being able to respond agilely within council to new opportunities as they arise requires a depth of understanding in key business areas across the administration.
Some larger cities have been able to invest in their data and digital resources with strategic leads in place and governance strategies well-evolved. Others are less able to invest and could benefit from a more collaborative approach. Working out what data your city owns, what it wants to control or manage, and what it would prefer others to manage is key to getting optimum value from your data.
G20:
There’s no place like the top, and so it is worth mentioning the G20 Global Smart Cities Alliance and its newly launched Open Data Model policy. OASC was pleased to be a founding partner of the Alliance which was launched at the G20 in Japan in 2019 ‘around a shared set of principles for the responsible and ethical use of smart city technologies’. The G20 GSCA adopted this Open Data Model Policy in 2020.
London
London is a good example of a city that has had the capacity to invest from the top down - with a Chief Digital Officer and team to support a strategic approach as well as a city-wide resource to wrangle data - the London Office of Technology and Innovation - a collaboration between London governments that offers a range of resources available for others to use.
The Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions
The Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions provides a prime example of what smaller cities can do when they collaborate, combining their resources to create a governance structure and infrastructure to support their shared open data goals. The work is in the context of a root and branch approach taken by the Swedish government nationally, and reflects a deep integration of open data principles.
Smart Flanders Checklist
Smart Flanders checklist is an excellent place to start if you are looking to understand what might be missing from your city approach. Both pragmatic and comprehensive, it addresses all the key elements for a city looking to open its data as part of a smart city strategy. If you are looking for something a little more detailed, the Smart Flanders Open Data Charter might fit the bill.
Smart Flanders Checklist https://smart.flanders.be/kennis-en-instrumenten/checklist
Eindhoven Smart Society IoT Charter
Eindhoven’s smart society IoT charter provides a clear set of principles to support cities in adhering to values when working with data from external sources and all that cities subsequently do in the data economy.
https://data.eindhoven.nl/explore/dataset/eindhoven-smart-society-iot-charter/information/
While internal challenges can be all-consuming, external challenges for cities are also very real and include:
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Working in spaces where there is an evolving regulatory and standardisation environment - legislation, regulation, standardisation… the MIMs are all evolving, which is great news for better defining the so-called rules of the road, but cities are keen for greater clarity about what to expect and when. Working in isolation is particularly tough for smaller cities – or for those where the challenges are less common.
OASC
OASC is a key source of guidance for its members on standards, MIMs and regulations.
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The new challenges thrown up through the process of innovation – including disruptive tech; this, alongside a changing regulatory environment, makes innovating more risky than it needs to be.
Cities are looking for ways to de-risk innovation so that they do not fall foul of ethical and legal principles. Working with Living Labs and other learning and deliberative structures that are designed to sandbox risk is a helpful way to overcome this.
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Living in EU |
The Living in EU programme will provide information and support on digital transformation, and currently offers the opportunity to join groups for collaboration on shaping ethical and legal principles for Europe. |
European Network of Living Labs (ENoLL) |
At a more applied level, the European Network of Living Labs (ENOLL) offers a way to work with innovators with the know-how to do so safely and ethically. |
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If cities thought things were fast-moving, communities are also under a veritable tidal wave of new information and ways of transacting everyday life that threatens to swamp all but the most able and aware.
The digital divide is such a serious concern that it is being taken up at national and international government levels - with worries that it is impeding productivity and worsening inequalities. Cities are no exception, and with a focus on citizen-centric innovation, they must find ways to keep people engaged and involved, without tech and data becoming a barrier.
Digital Innovation Hubs
Reach out nationally to see what is available near you - and if you are in Europe, a good place to head to is your nearest Digital Innovation Hub. https://s3platform.jrc.ec.europa.eu/en/digital-innovation-hubs-tool
CITYxCITY Academy
The CITYxCITY Academy is one way to help cities work with communities to share knowledge and engage people in different walks of life and sectors.
Data-driven innovation is throwing up a raft of new ethical dilemmas with which cities are having to wrangle. Data that is consumed by AI or machine-learning devices to generate further insight is a hot topic right now. AI-informed operations are being particularly deployed at spatial level, for example, via traffic cameras or to better understand crowds.
One key concern is the extent to which algorithmic learning and decision-making is safe, unbiased, accurate and effective. So, too, is the value of individual privacy in an increasingly surveilled world. Innovators are driving towards solutions for many of these challenges by moving the dial from citizens having to be actively across all engagement with actors seeking to use their data, to spaces in which a person’s intentions are effectively carried through myriad interactions online or via other forms of digital/AI engagement.
In the new data economy, cities are asking searching questions about which data is acceptable to monetise, and which is not. It is possible that some unintended consequences could emerge from data exploitation decisions that leave cities in a legally and morally grey area. The ethical debate surrounding data and tech-driven innovation will continue to evolve as new challenges emerge. While cities are unlikely to want to put themselves at the centre of these debates, it is critical that they continue to engage with the conversation, recognising when consensus has been reached on key elements, and being able to respond appropriately.
Some cities are working ahead of the curve - creating principles to guide their interaction with AI-based innovation and applying it to real-world solutions. OASC will soon produce further guidance on AI - watch this space.
Innovation can and does provide enormous new benefits that were hitherto unobtainable: the capacity to seek the wisdom of the crowd through a touch of a button, or to engage in deeper forms of transparent democracy through citizen-centric processes is made possible through the power of data.
The ability to offer profound transparency in what have been largely opaque and complex spatial decision-making processes, for example, is a radical transformation in city governance. There is so much potential to innovate in cities, it is a virtual data goldrush. Data development rights - facilitating ‘airspace’ development over data fields - is one such rich seam of exploitation.
As cities recognise the data they have and the value this brings, there will be opportunities to lock this worth into the city’s future, rather than locking out future generations. OASC will work with cities to help them garner the most value, ethically and safely.
Barcelona |
Amsterdam AI Registry |
Helsinki AI Register |
MIMs |
For our take on transparency, please take a look at MIMs 5 - it’s all about transparency and has been adopted as the common ground for working in a transparent manner. |
Barcelona’s work provides a useful starting point.
Cities are increasingly appreciating that quality data has value collectively. Whether it’s being able to support mobility solutions or asset maintenance, private operators are interested in what we have to share. Unsurprisingly, when we peek over the fence at our corporate neighbours, we can see things that we would also very much like to access. What can mobility data tell us about how our cities are being used? Can traffic sensors give us better insight into air quality? Do nursing home operators collect information about the frequency of family visits - what could this tell us about intergenerational cohesion and support in the wider community?
‘I like to think of data in terms of people and place: there’s the people kind of data and there’s the place kind of data’. Adrian Slatcher, Manchester City Council
However, data sharing - and making data open for sharing - brings one particular thing into question: how much control do cities have over their own data; over the data they manage and that which they choose to share? Place-based data is sometimes the easiest to share, whereas people-based data is generally sensitive, if not completely off limits. Increasingly though, the two are intertwined, with new disruptive technology being deployed such as facial recognition software in public open spaces. The path to ethical and transparent, open data and data sharing can seem littered with privacy and ethical concerns.
Cities are finding that, even where sensitive data is not involved, it is not always straightforward to manage data as a valuable resource - with a number of internal and external barriers preventing a smooth exchange of data as and when it is needed (from internal skills deficits to legal issues when dealing with outside agencies).
Smart Flanders Checklist
Starting with the Flanders checklist might help to develop your own data maturity model.
CITYxCITY Catalogue
Be sure to check out what is available on the CITYxCITY Catalogue.
Cities have reported being relatively deskilled when it comes to the detail of data manipulation - often contracting out the task to third parties like learning institutions; while this works for some, others want to take a more nuanced approach - ensuring in-house staff have a range of both technical and strategic data skills to enable a varied approach dependent upon the context.
Broadly, these challenges can be classified into the ongoing issues cities have in managing their data resource, including a focus on internal challenges, and in working with partners, citizens and other cities, such as:
CITYxCITY Academy
Free online learning resources on data, data-driven innovation and tech for cities. https://citybycity.academy/
Strategy and insights go hand in hand and, for cities that have outsourced data management, they are often caught in a defined loop of insights production - unable to vary the demands without cost implications. The power of data is in the insights it can bring, particularly when integrated with more than one source, and cities want to have more flexibility in understanding highly complex issues through different lenses.
A number of companies, large and small, offer a range of tools that support analysis and insights - either in domain-specific areas or across a range of city data.
CITYxCITY Catalogue |
Be sure to check out what is available on the CITYxCITY Catalogue. |
Cities that have previously invested may find themselves in vendor lock-in for specific services without the financial wherewithal to drive a new back-at-base path - and are therefore looking for ways to reroute data, or wrap legacy systems with less costly cloud-based interfaces.
CITYxCITY Catalogue
CITYxCITY Catalogue offers a springboard into an array of solutions compiled by cities for cities, or products and tools that can help with your city’s data infrastructure needs.
Being able to purchase services linked to data is a specialism in itself and one that all but the larger cities can typically afford. Smaller cities, in particular, struggle to come up to par when buying this level of expertise. Collective solutions, from which smaller towns and cities can benefit, are beginning to emerge. Consider reaching out to cities that have already achieved good results.
London's LOTI Innovation in Procurement toolkit
CITYxCITY Academy:
Free online learning resources on data, data-driven innovation and tech for cities. https://citybycity.academy/
To negotiate with commercial partners
Commercial negotiations are never easy and cities tend to be at a disadvantage as their legal teams are generally not focused on this type of deal. Yet there is hope; cities can learn from innovators and the possibility of pooling wisdom is tantalising.
While the following are just two examples, OASC is looking for ways to broaden cases and support for cities in negotiating with commercial service providers for shared data. Watch this space.
The City of Lisbon
The City of Lisbon is one such authority that has successfully negotiated to receive data from a corporate provider (in relation to a city bike scheme), as part of its urban data platform.
The City of Ghent
The City of Ghent also successfully negotiated to receive data from waste contractors to tackle fly-tipping.
It is perhaps unsurprising to reflect that city priorities for the next 3-5 years all revolve around using cloud-based services to help cut through the ‘noise’ of legacy issues, and being able to take full advantage of innovation as it comes on stream.
Cloud-based approaches are evolving just like other areas of the data and tech-driven innovation revolution.
Core concepts include local data spaces - places where towns and cities (and other organisations) can store data for use by stakeholders, and where data integration occurs on a tactical basis - generally in a user-pays format.
Where to look for more tips and guidance:
Tend to be spaces where an organisation or several can include data within the space or lake - and in a range of formats and states of completion/hygiene. This enables users to work with data at different stages and from a range of different sources. The lake acts in an agile methodology as an unstructured store - meaning that the data is not necessarily curated, but ensures that it can be used randomly in many different applications.
Where to look for more tips and guidance:
Where there’s a lake - there’s a lake house! Along with data lakes, providers are realising that the tools to collate and analyse data are also handy to understand data in various contexts (in essence, supporting its curation).
Open Data Portals provide generally curated data for public consumption. Many cities have established portals, and some cities have worked together to create regional portals. The advantage of portals offering data across more than one town or city is that when a stakeholder is looking for energy-related data for example, they can see data from a range of city contributors - thereby making benchmarking and other interoperability-related tasks far easier.
Where to look for more tips and guidance:
Takes the concept of the cloud and creates the conditions for data to be at least temporarily stored, manipulated and even generated within a local device. This helps to reduce latency in operations and increase cyber-security. A number of applications now deploy edge-to-cloud technology for these purposes.
Urban/local data platforms and open innovation platforms are spaces that combine the benefits of open data portals with the analysis and insights capability of dashboards. Cities are increasingly attracted to the capacity to manage insights generation through platforms and systems offering a way for integrated data to be created and analysed. These can be on a city by city basis, for a region or for multiple cities.
We’ll be collating more detailed information on urban/local data platforms soon - watch this space.
Rapid pandemic data analysis
This technique has been used to produce rapid data analysis as part of the COVID-19 pandemic. See, for example, this project from Leeds.
https://lida.leeds.ac.uk/research-projects/local-data-spaces/
ODALA
See the ODALA project to create a data lake for smart cities and communities in Europe.
https://oascities.org/odala-developing-the-future-of-smart-cities-communities/
City of Kiel Open Data Portal:
Istanbul - an example of a mega city's open data portal:
In the course of producing this guide, OASC cities have also highlighted some additional priorities that will bring considerable additional capacity to cities and city networks, including:
The capacity to ‘see’ the city in digital and miniature spatial form as an aid to strategic and spatial planning and decision-making is a goal shared by most cities within OASC, and for the EU as part of the Digital Europe Programme. For some, this is a virtual 3D model of the city, ascribed with core data values, like construction timelines, built form composition, zoning and other planning aids. For other cities, the digital twin is something they hope will enable dynamic decision-making through the integration of data sets from across the city into something that could act as a scenario or diagnostic toolkit. For example, enabling the overlaying of carbon scenarios on new development plans, or the calculation of health benefits from nature-based solutions...and so on. While digital twins have been around on a small scale for a few years now (having been successfully deployed in the engineering world to resolve complex design challenges since 2002), the capacity to create city-wide digital twins is something that is only emerging now as a reality for cities everywhere.
Where to look for more tips and guidance:
Digital twins will be addressed as the topic of a separate white paper - please stay tuned.
Data, application and tech marketplaces offer cities an exciting opportunity to engage with innovators that wish to purchase access to data in order to deliver a product or service. Tools developed to support data integration or data consumption into specific products can also be bought and sold in city data marketplaces - enabling a virtual ecosystem of tradeable virtual goods to exist that supports the strategic goals of cities. They provide one way for cities to have greater control over how data they own is used. Some city conglomerates are looking to create their own marketplaces, often linked to data lakes. In the meantime, the OASC CITYxCITY Catalogue is a good example of a functioning marketplace.
Partnerships with corporations, learning institutions and third sector organisations are key to OASC cities in developing ways to work more smartly with data. Partnerships offer cities the opportunity to do what they do best, while allowing others to bring their best game to the table. Whether this is through data-sharing agreements, skilling, insights development, data lakes or any of the other tools and approaches, cities are recognising that there is no viable option to ‘go it alone’ in the world of data-driven innovation. Cities are looking for ways to best shape partnerships that offer value to both parties without ‘giving away the farm’.
In our view, this is the way forward in securing the best outcomes for cities in the data economy. Rather than competition, which depletes competitive resources, strategic co-operation provides a platform for cities to learn from each other and to collaborate on projects and platforms - facilitating ways to address challenges such as size, budget and skills across a pool of aligned administrations. Many OASC cities are benefiting from city co-operation arrangements, including the Scottish Cities Alliance, Swedish Cities and Regions Association and cities in Finland (eg. Turku and Helsinki).
Where to look for more tips and guidance:
Unsurprisingly, this features at the top of the list for some cities. Whether this is working on how to disentangle from legacy systems, or driving better governance through existing programmes, cities are keen to embrace data-driven innovation with a fresh approach to how they control the data they own, and the data they consume or share.
The opportunity to leapfrog from legacy to cutting-edge is now available, including by taking a tactical approach to priority issues (small cities, in particular, can benefit from laser focus rather than broad-brush when escaping the drag of legacy issues). A key pathway is through cloud-based services.
Where to look for more tips and guidance:
Digital Twins
The Finnish Six Cities Strategy
Open and Smart Services - known as ‘6Aikia’ - is an excellent example of the way in which co-operation is being applied strategically to collectively solve complex challenges with open data at its core. Operating across the six largest cities in Finland, the strategy has three focus areas: Open Innovation Platforms; Open Data and Interfaces; and Open Participation and Customership.
https://6aika.fi/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/6Aika-strategia_päivitys_2015_EN.pdf
Saint Quentin
Saint Quentin is an example of a city that was able to create a cloud-based function to manage water usage in parks and gardens as well as other services across the city. The city decided that it wanted to use a context broker within the cloud rather than via a back-at-base vendor system, enabling a flexible approach.
https://data.europa.eu/fr/news/cef-context-broker-saint-quentin