Report by the World Economic Forum: “… provides a benchmark for cities looking to establish policies for ethical and responsible governance of their smart city programmes. It explores current practices relating to five foundational policies: ICT accessibility, privacy impact assessment, cyber accountability, digital infrastructure and open data. The findings are based on surveys and interviews with policy experts and city government officials from the Alliance’s 36 “Pioneer Cities”. The data and insights presented in the report come from an assessment of detailed policy elements rather than the high-level indicators often used in maturity frameworks….(More)”.
How to predict citizen engagement in urban innovation projects?
Blogpost by Julien Carbonnell: “Citizen engagement in decision-making has proven to be a key factor for success in a smart city project and a must-have of contemporary democratic regimes. While inhabitants are all daily internet users, they widely inform themselves about their political electives’ achievements during the mandate, interact with each other on social networks, and by word-of-mouth on messaging apps or phone calls to form an opinion.
Unfortunately, most of the smart cities’ rankings lack resources to evaluate the citizen engagement dynamic around the urban innovations deployed. Indeed this data can’t be found on official open data portals, focused instead on cities’ infrastructure and quality of life. These include the number of metro stations, the length of bike lanes, air pollution, and tap water quality. Some of them also include field investigation such as the amount of investment in this or that urban area and communication dynamics about a new smart city project.
If this kind of formal information provides a good overview of the official state of development of a city, it does not give any insight from the inhabitants themselves and sounds out the street vibes of a city.
So, I’ve been working on filling this gap for the last 3 years and share in Democracy Studio all the elements of my method and tools built for conducting such analysis. To do so, I have notably been collecting inhabitants’ participation in a survey study in three case study cities: Taipei (Taiwan), Tel Aviv (Israel), and Tallinn (Estonia). I collected 366 answers by contacting inhabitants randomly online (Facebook groups, direct messages on LinkedIn, and through messaging apps) and in-person, in events related to my field of interest (Smart-City and Urban Innovation Startups). The resulting variables have been integrated into machine learning models, which finally performed a very satisfying prediction of the citizen engagement in my case studies….(More)”.
Helsinki invites cyclists to collect data on street conditions and earn money
Article at the Mayor.eu: “From Saturday 10 July, cyclists in Helsinki will be able to earn money doing what they love whilst simultaneously helping the municipality repair damaged streets. This was announced on 28 June when the City of Helsinki shared that all residents are invited to take part in a game to map out 300 kilometres of cycling paths in the capital.
In a press release, the City of Helsinki reports that anyone can participate as long as they have a bicycle and a smartphone. To take part, one must simply download the free application Crowdchupa and attach their phone to their bicycle. The device will then record footage of the streets and Artificial Intelligence will be used to identify damage that must be repaired.
To make this even more interesting, the Crowdchupa application will allow participants to earn money. The application features a map which depicts various objects (such as coins and berries) on the streets. Cyclists must drive over these virtual objects to collect them and earn money….(More)”.
Human behaviour: what scientists have learned about it from the pandemic
Stephen Reicher at The Conversation: “During the pandemic, a lot of assumptions were made about how people behave. Many of those assumptions were wrong, and they led to disastrous policies.
Several governments worried that their pandemic restrictions would quickly lead to “behavioural fatigue” so that people would stop adhering to restrictions. In the UK, the prime minister’s former chief adviser Dominic Cummings recently admitted that this was the reason for not locking down the country sooner.
Meanwhile, former health secretary Matt Hancock revealed that the government’s failure to provide financial and other forms of support for people to self-isolate was down to their fear that the system “might be gamed”. He warned that people who tested positive may then falsely claim that they had been in contact with all their friends, so they could all get a payment.
These examples show just how deeply some governments distrust their citizens. As if the virus was not enough, the public was portrayed as an additional part of the problem. But is this an accurate view of human behaviour?
The distrust is based on two forms of reductionism – describing something complex in terms of its fundamental constituents. The first is limiting psychology to the characteristics – and more specifically the limitations – of individual minds. In this view the human psyche is inherently flawed, beset by biases that distort information. It is seen as incapable of dealing with complexity, probability and uncertainty – and tending to panic in a crisis.
This view is attractive to those in power. By emphasising the inability of people to govern themselves, it justifies the need for a government to look after them. Many governments subscribe to this view, having established so-called nudge units – behavioural science teams tasked with subtly manipulating people to make the “right” decisions, without them realising why, from eating less sugar to filing their taxes on time. But it is becoming increasingly clear that this approach is limited. As the pandemic has shown, it is particularly flawed when it comes to behaviour in a crisis.
In recent years, research has shown that the notion of people panicking in a crisis is something of a myth. People generally respond to crises in a measured and orderly way – they look after each other.
The key factor behind this behaviour is the emergence of a sense of shared identity. This extension of the self to include others helps us care for those around us and expect support from them. Resilience cannot be reduced to the qualities of individual people. It tends to be something that emerges in groups.
Another type of reductionism that governments adopt is “psychologism” – when you reduce the explanation of people’s behaviour to just psychology…(More)”.
The Open Data Policy Lab’s City Incubator
The GovLab: “Hackathons. Data Jams. Dashboards. Mapping, analyzing, and releasing open data. These are some of the essential first steps in building a data-driven culture in government. Yet, it’s not always easy to get data projects such as these off the ground. Governments often work in difficult situations under constrained resources. They have to manage various stakeholders and constituencies who have to be sold on the value that data can generate in their daily work.
Through the Open Data Policy Lab, The GovLab and Microsoft are providing various resources — such as the Data Stewards Academy, and the Third Wave of Open Data Toolkit — to support this goal. Still, we recognize that more tailored guidance is needed so cities can build new sustainable data infrastructure and launch projects that meet their policy goals.
Today, we’re providing that resource in the form of the Open Data Policy Lab’s City Incubator. A first-of-its-kind program to support data innovations in cities’ success and scale, the City Incubator will give 10 city officials access to the hands-on training and access to mentors to take their ideas to the next level. It will enable cutting edge work on various urban challenges and empower officials to create data collaboratives, data-sharing agreements, and other systems. This work is supported by Microsoft, Mastercard City Possible, Luminate, NYU CUSP and the Public Sector Network.
Our team is launching a call for ten city government intrapreneurs from around the world working on data-driven projects to apply to the City Incubator. Over the course of six months, participants will use start-up innovation and public sector program solving frameworks to develop and launch new data innovations. They will also receive support from a council of mentors from around the world.
Applications are due August 31, with an early application deadline of August 6 for applicants looking for feedback. Applicants are expected to present their idea and include information on the value their proposal will generate, the resources it will use, the partners it will involve, and the risks it might entail alongside other information in the form of a Data Innovation Canvas. Additional information can be found on the website here.”
Turning data into public value: European lessons on unleashing the transformative power of city data
Paper by Anushri Gupta and Luca Mora: “The age of big data and smart city technologies provides city governments with unprecedented potential for data-driven decision making. Committed to constantly developing new urban policy and supporting urban operations, city governments have been using data describing the functioning of urban infrastructure assets and public services for a very long time. However, the widespread diffusion of digital systems has now created a remarkable new window of opportunity.
With many digital solutions being introduced into the built environment to improve the sustainability of urban sociotechnical systems, enormous amounts of data are constantly generated at the city level, and at unprecedented speed. City surveillance cameras, government applications for public services, building automation systems, intelligent transport systems, and smart grids are some examples of digital technologies which are contributing to producing an exhaustive stream of data “that can be harnessed to provide urban intelligence and reshape the practices and processes of public administrations”, creating a fertile environment for innovation and entrepreneurial activity. When attempting to tap into these large streams of city data, however, the opportunity to deliver sustainable value is met with significant sociotechnical challenges, which undermine the capability of urban development actors….(More)”.
New Orleans is using sentiment analysis on federal relief funding
Ryan Johnston at StateScoop: “New Orleans is using data and social-media analysis to gauge how residents want the city to spend $375 million in federal stimulus funding, while quelling concerns of corruption or misuse that still exist from the city’s Hurricane Katrina recovery, officials told StateScoop on Tuesday.
The city government is working with ZenCity, an Israeli data-analysis firm that trawls social media to better understand how residents feel about various issues, to research American Rescue Plan funding. New Orleans is set to receive $375 million in relief funding to stabilize its finances and, “directly address” the economic impact that the COVID-19 pandemic had on the city, said Liana Elliot, the city’s deputy chief of staff. But many residents of the city are still wary of how the city squandered its Federal Emergency Management Agency funding following the natural disaster in 2005.
That caution became apparent almost immediately in online discourse, said Eyal Feder-Levy, ZenCity’s chief executive.
“We saw within the data that conversations about city budgets online in New Orleans were five-times more frequent than normal following the ARPA stimulus funding announcement,” Feder-Levy told StateScoop.
Elliot said what she heard about the budget in public didn’t match the conversations she was having with her colleagues in city government. Residents, she said, had an expectation that the money would help them, rather than go to city agencies…(More)”.
Closing the Data Gap: How Cities Are Delivering Better Results for Residents
Report by The Monitor Institute by Deloitte: “Better services. Smarter and more efficient use of tax dollars. Greater transparency and civic engagement. These are the results from the data-driven transformation in city halls across the country. The movement that began in just a handful of cities six years ago has now spread far and wide. Hundreds of cities, both large and small and in every region of the country, have embraced a new approach to local governance. Moving beyond old practices based on precedent or instinct, city leaders and staff are instead using data to make more effective operational, programmatic, and policy decisions. And residents are reaping real benefits, from improved services to greater visibility into how their local government works…
- Performance management: The percentage of cities monitoring and analyzing their progress toward key goals has more than doubled (from 30% to 75%)
- Public engagement: The percentage of cities engaging with residents on a goal and communicating progress has more than tripled (from 19% to 70%)
- Releasing data: The percentage of cities with a platform and process to release data to residents has more than tripled (from 18% to 67%)
- Taking action: The percentage of cities modifying existing programs based on data analytics has more than doubled (from 28% to 61%).
The results: greater transparency around how and why decisions are made, more effective and efficient operations, and improved services. For example, 60% of city officials surveyed in the WWC network reported improved emergency response times, and 70% reported that their cities are systematically using data-informed decision-making to respond to the COVID-19 crisis. More than half of survey respondents also reported improving their use of data to make budget decisions, award city contracts and/or shift procurement dollars, and deliver city services more efficiently, effectively, and/or equitably.
This kind of progress builds residents’ trust in government, produces better outcomes, and reflects the broad culture shift underway in city governments across the country — demonstrating that an evidence-informed approach is possible for all U.S. cities. Today, more than 250 municipal governments across the country are changing how they do business and tackling local challenges by putting into place critical data infrastructure and/or improving data skills….(More)”.
Street Experiments
About: “City streets are increasingly becoming spaces for experimentation, for testing “in the wild” a seemingly unstoppable flow of “disruptive” mobility innovations such as mobility platforms for shared mobility and ride/hailing, electric and autonomous vehicles, micro-mobility solutions, etc. But also, and perhaps more radically, for recovering the primary function of city streets as public spaces, not just traffic channels.
City street experiments are:
“intentional, temporary changes of the street use, regulation and/or form, aimed at exploring systemic change in urban mobility”
They offer a prefiguration of what a radically different arrangement of the city´s mobility system and public space could look like and allow moving towards that vision by means of “learning by doing”.
The S.E.T. platform offers a collection of Resources for implementing and supporting street experiments. As well as a special section of COVID-19 devoted to the best practices of street experiments that offered solutions and strategies for cities to respond to the current pandemic and a SET Guidelines Kit that provides insights and considerations on creating impactful street experiments with long-term effects….(More)”.
How can governments boost citizen-led projects?
Justin Tan at GovInsider: “The visual treat of woks tossing fried carrot cake, the dull thuds of a chopper expertly dicing up a chicken, the fragrant lime aroma of grilled sambal stingray. The sensory playgrounds of Singapore’s hawker centres are close to many citizens’ homes and hearts, and have even recently won global recognition by UNESCO.
However, the pandemic has left many hawkers facing slow business. While restaurants and fast food chains have quickly caught on to food delivery services, many elderly hawkers were left behind in the digital race.
28 year-old Singaporean M Thirukkumaran developed an online community map called “Help Our Hawkers” that provides information on digitally-disadvantaged hawkers near users’ locations, such as opening hours and stall information. GovInsider caught up with him to learn how it was built and how governments can support fellow civic hackers…
Besides creating space for civic innovation, governments can step in to give particularly promising projects a boost with their resources and influence, Thiru says.
Most community-led projects need to rely on cloud services such as AWS, which can be expensive for a small team to bear, he explains. Government subsidies or grants may help to ease the cost for digital infrastructure.
In Thiru’s case, the map needed to be rolled out quickly to be useful. He chose to build his tool with Google Maps to speed up the process, as many users are already familiar with it.
Another way that governments can help is through getting more visibility to these community-led projects with their wide reach, Thiru suggests. Community projects commonly face a “cold start” dilemma. This arises where the community tool needs data for it to be useful, but citizens also hesitate to spend time on a tool if it is not useful in the first place.
Thiru jump started his tool by contributing a few stalls on his own. With more publicity with government campaigns, the process could be sped up considerably, he shares….(More)”.