Global Resources and Promising Practices for Building and Refining Accessible and Inclusive Smart Cities from Darren Bates LLC.
Connect Chicago aligns citywide efforts to make Chicago the most skilled, most connected, most dynamic digital city in America. It is a unique collaboration of dynamic partners centered at The Chicago Community Trust, the region’s community foundation and led by Smart Chicago, an organization serving as a center of gravity for investments around digital excellence since its inception. The Connect…
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Tel Aviv at the Smart City Expo 2017 Tel Aviv was awarded the title Best Smart City in the World in the Smart City Expo World Congress in Barcelona In 2014. Tel Aviv won the award based on the DigiTel project, which is a civic engagement project focused on Smart engagement with the residents. Since then, Tel Aviv has developed…
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Why Smart Nation Advances in digital technology have opened up new possibilities to enhance the way we live, work, play, and interact. Singapore strives to become a Smart Nation to support better living, stronger communities, and create more opportunities, for all. And “smartness” is not a measure of how advanced or complex the technology being adopted is, but how well…
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Smart City in Greater Copenhagen The smart city Copenhagen is a living laboratory for testing smart technologies to handle the challenges of urbanisation and climate change. Unique access to data and efficient public-private sector partnerships attract many multinationals. Greater Copenhagen is a smart city front-runner. Here, a multitude of new smart city technologies and solutions are being tested and…
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The Smart Dubai initiative is anchored in the vision of His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, to make Dubai the happiest city on earth. OUR MANDATE Collaborating with private sector and government partners, Smart Dubai was established to empower, deliver and promote an efficient, seamless, safe and impactful city experience for residents and visitors. To achieve its strategic…
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The Dallas Innovation Alliance (DIA) is a public-private partnership dedicated to the design and execution of a smart cities plan for the City of Dallas. Our mission is to develop a scalable smart cities model for the City of Dallas that leverages our distinctive strengths for the benefit of Dallas that leaves a legacy of innovation, sustainability and collaboration for…
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Defining “digital equity” and “digital inclusion” In May 2016, digital inclusion practitioners, advocates, academics, Internet service providers, and policymakers gathered in Kansas City at Net Inclusion: The National Digital Inclusion Summit and a funny thing happened on our way to the library: we discovered we were speaking different languages. We were gathered to discuss current and potential local, state, and…
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While digital divide and digital literacy have entered into common use – and into discussions by policy makers – the term digital inclusion is still quite new. Digital inclusion is a much broader category that addresses the other two. Importantly, “digital inclusion” has been articulated specifically to address issues of opportunity, access, knowledge, and skill at the level of policy.…
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This article was first published on The World Bank’s Governance for Development blog. Over the last couple of years a small team of us have worked on an initiative to incorporate the regular, systematic feedback of citizens into the design and execution of World Bank programs. I would like to share some of our experiences working together with governments, civil society…
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In the public sector today, citizen engagement and participation are crucial, as shown by the vast array of state and local governments on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Google Plus. As GovLoop reports, when citizen participation programs are implemented effectively, more citizens are brought into the decision-making process, which means government can ultimately be more responsive to community needs. But as with…
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Accessibility in the News—12/01/17. Does the Americans with Disabilities Act, enacted before the word “internet” became part of our daily vocabulary, require businesses to make their websites accessible? This year’s federal decisions say it does. This week covers a great deal in how that requirement is affecting various industries. The debate continues on whether or not “ADA compliance” is a…
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Smart City San Diego is a broad public-private collaboration that includes the City of San Diego, San Diego Gas & Electric, General Electric, the University of California, San Diego, and CleanTech San Diego. The objective of the collaboration is to improve the region’s energy independence, to empower consumers to use electric vehicles, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and to encourage…
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TRANSCRIPT 00:00 smart cities provide us with living 00:03 breathing data that can help improve our 00:05 lives by leveraging new technologies the 00:08 Internet of Things sensors and mobile 00:10 devices 00:11 we can truly make a city more 00:13 sustainable and responsive revealing 00:15 information for things like how we 00:17 commute energy efficiency and even 00:20 creating…
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Smart Cities Smart, data-driven City Seattle has grown by 70,000 people in the past five years and will grow by 120,000 more by 2035 – a 31 percent population increase. Our city government staff will likely not increase at a similar rate, although the city’s needs will continue to grow. This includes everything from sustainability and energy use to safety…
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n the Government, digital services projects too often fail to meet user expectations or contain unused or unusable features. Several factors contribute to these outcomes, including the use of outdated development practices and, in some cases, overly narrow interpretations of what is allowed by acquisition regulations. OMB is developing tools to significantly upgrade the ability of Government digital services to deliver better results to our citizens and improve the way we capitalize on information technology (IT [1]) to better serve the American people.
One tool is the Digital Services Playbook, which identifies a series of “plays” drawn from proven private sector best practices to help agencies successfully deliver digital services. Another tool is the TechFAR, which highlights flexibilities [2] in the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR [3]) that can help agencies implement “plays” in the Playbook that would be accomplished with acquisition support.
The vision for the TechFAR is that it will be expanded in future iterations to address many areas of IT. This edition of the TechFAR is aligned with the Digital Services Playbook guidance to use contractors to support an iterative development process. In particular, it emphasizes Agile software development [4], a technique for doing modular contracting and a proven commercial methodology that is characterized by incremental and iterative processes where releases are produced in close collaboration with the customer. This process improves investment manageability, lowers risk of project failure, shortens the time to realize value, and allows agencies to better adapt to changing needs. Agile software development is geared towards projects where significant design and development are needed, such as digital services (e.g., healthcare.gov or recreation.gov) as well as internal digital services and business systems. It is not designed to be used for commodity IT purchases, especially where commercially available off-the-shelf items can be used as-is at a lower cost and lower risk to the Government….
Read More The American people expect to interact with government through digital channels such as websites, email, and mobile applications. By building digital services that meet their needs, we can make the delivery of our policy and programs more effective.
Today, too many of our digital services projects do not work well, are delivered late, or are over budget. To increase the success rate of these projects, the U.S. Government needs a new approach. We created a playbook of 13 key “plays” drawn from successful practices from the private sector and government that, if followed together, will help government build effective digital services….
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The age of the “Smart City” is upon us!
It’s just that, we don’t really know what that means. Or, at least, not yet.
So far, many “Smart City” pilot projects that we’ve undertaken here in Boston have ended with a glossy presentation, and a collective shrug. Nobody’s really known what to do next, or how the technology and data might lead to new or improved services.
We want to change that. We address this playbook to the technology companies, scientists, researchers, journalists, and activists that make up the “Smart City” community. In return for heeding this advice, we commit that we, the City of Boston, will not sit in City Hall and complain about the lack of solutions to our problems. We promise to get out into the City, find ways to help you pilot new ideas, and be honest with our feedback.
Our goal is to create a City-wide strategy for the use of sensor technologies that is people-centered, problem-driven, and responsible.
We need your help to get there.
*This playbook is a living draft being developed by the Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics and is inspired by the US Digital Service’s Playbook. Please send us your thoughts for building it out further, and watch for new updates!
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(This article originally appeared in September 2012 as “Five steps to a Smarter City: and the philosophical imperative for taking them“. Because it contains an overall framework for approaching Smart City transformations, I keep it updated to reflect the latest content on this blog; and ongoing developments in the industry. It was last updated and posted as a blog entry on 8th September 2013).
As I’ve worked with cities over the past two years developing their “Smarter City” strategies and programmes to deliver them, I’ve frequently written articles on this blog exploring the main challenges they’ve faced: establishing a cross-city consensus to act; securing funding; and finding the common ground between the institutional and organic natures of city ecosystems….
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By 2030, 60 percent of the world’s population is expected to live in mega-cities. How all those people live, and what their lives are like, will depend on important choices leaders make today and in the coming years.
A smog-cleaning tower in Beijing is an example of technology improving residents’ lives.
Imaginechina/AP
Technology has the power to help people live in communities that are more responsive to their needs and that can actually improve their lives. For example, Beijing, notorious for air pollution, is testing a 23-foot-tall air purifier that vacuums up smog, filters the bad particles and releases clear air.
This isn’t a vision of life like on “The Jetsons.” It’s real urban communities responding in real-time to changing weather, times of day and citizen needs. These efforts can span entire communities. They can vary from monitoring traffic to keep cars moving efficiently or measuring air quality to warn residents (or turn on massive air purifiers) when pollution levels climb.
Using data and electronic sensors in this way is often referred to as building “smart cities,” which are the subject of a major global push to improve how cities function. In part a response to incoherent infrastructure design and urban planning of the past, smart cities promise real-time monitoring, analysis and improvement of city decision-making. The results, proponents say, will improve efficiency, environmental sustainability and citizen engagement.
Smart city projects are big investments that are supposed to drive social transformation. Decisions made early in the process determine what exactly will change. But most research and planning regarding smart cities is driven by the technology, rather than the needs of the citizens. Little attention is given to the social, policy and organizational changes that will be required to ensure smart cities are not just technologically savvy but intelligently adaptive to their residents’ needs. Design will make the difference between smart city projects offering great promise or actually reinforcing or even widening the existing gaps in unequal ways their cities serve residents….
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The future of the world is urban. By 2030, 60% of the world’s population will live in cities, which will create 70% of the world’s GDP, according to the Pentagon. Many of these will be megacities with populations of ten million or more.
Managing such behemoth cities using traditional infrastructure will be impossible. So-called smart cities, or at least smarter cities, will be a necessity rather than a luxury—for both megacities as well as smaller cities also wrestling with their own set of problems.
Creating smart cities, however, can be exceptionally challenging. Here are some guidelines…
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