More Power to the People: How Cities Are Letting Data Flow

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Stephen Taylor at People4SmarterCities: “Smart cities understand that engaging the public in decision-making is vital to enhancing services and ensuring accountability. Here are three ideas that show how cities are embracing new technologies and opening up data to spur civic participation and improve citizens’ lives.

 City Texts Help Keep Food on the Table
In San Francisco, about a third of the 52,000 people that receive food stamps are disenrolled from the program because they miss certain deadlines, such as filing quarterly reports with the city’s Human Services Agency. To help keep recipients up to date on their status, the nonprofit organization Code for America worked with the city agency to create Promptly, an open-source software platform that sends alerts by text message when citizens need to take action to keep their benefits. Not only does it help ensure that low-income residents keep food on the table, it also helps the department run more efficiently as less staff time is spent on re-enrollments.
Fired Up in Los Angeles Over Open Data
For the Los Angeles Fire Department, its work is all about responding to citizens. Not only does it handle fire and medical calls, it’s also the first fire agency in the U.S. to gather and post data on its emergency-response times on the Internet through a program called FireStat. The data gives citizens the opportunity to review metrics such as the amount of time it takes for stations to process emergency calls, the time for firefighters to leave the station and the travel time to the incident for each of its 102 firehouses throughout the city. The goal of FireStat is to see where and how response times can be improved, while increasing management accountability….(More)”

Driving Solutions To Build Smarter Cities

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Uber Blogpost: “Since day one, Uber’s mission has been to improve city life by connecting people with safe, reliable, hassle-free rides through the use of technology. As we have grown, so has our ability to share information that can serve a greater good. By sharing data with municipal partners we can help cities become more liveable, resilient, and innovative.
Today, Boston joins Uber in a first-of-its-kind partnership to help expand the city’s capability to solve problems by leveraging data provided by Uber. The data will provide new insights to help manage urban growth, relieve traffic congestion, expand public transportation, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions….
Uber is committed to sharing data, compiled in a manner that protects the privacy of riders and drivers, that can help cities target solutions for their unique challenges. This initiative presents a new standard for the future development of our cities – in communities big or small we can bridge data and policy to build sophisticated solutions for a stronger society. For this effort, we will deliver anonymized trip-level data by ZIP Code Tabulation Area (ZCTA) which is the U.S. Census’ geographical representation of zip codes….

How Can This Data Help Cities?

To date, most cities have not had access to granular data describing the flows and trends of private traffic. The data provided by Uber will help policymakers and city planners develop a more detailed understanding of where people in the city need to go and how to improve traffic flows and congestion to get them there, with data-driven decisions about:

  • Vision Zero-related passenger safety policies
  • Traffic planning
  • Congestion reduction
  • Flow of residents across the City
  • Impact of events, disasters and other activities on City transportation
  • Identification of zoning changes and needs
  • Creation or reduction of parking
  • Facilitation of additional transportation solutions for marquee City initiatives

uber_SafeCities_BlogInfographic

This data can be utilized to help cities achieve their transportation and planning goals without compromising personal privacy. By helping cities understand the way their residents move, we can work together to make our communities stronger. Smart Cities can benefit from smart data and we will champion municipal efforts devoted to achieving data-driven urban growth, mobility and safety for communities (More).”

E-Governance for Smart Cities

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

New book edited by Vinod Kumar, T. M. : “This book highlights the electronic governance in a smart city through case studies of cities located in many countries. “E-Government” refers to the use by government agencies of information technologies (such as Wide Area Networks, the Internet, and mobile computing) that have the ability to transform relations with citizens, businesses, and other arms of government. These technologies can serve a variety of different ends: better delivery of government services to citizens, improved interactions with business and industry, citizen empowerment through access to information, or more efficient government management. The resulting benefits are less corruption, increased transparency, greater convenience, revenue growth, and/or cost reductions.
The book is divided into three parts.
• E-Governance State of the Art Studies of many cities
• E-Governance Domains Studies
• E-Governance Tools and Issues”
Download Table of contents (pdf, 1.4 MB)

Selected Readings on Cities and Civic Technology

Curated on Posted on by Julia Root

By Julia Root and Stefaan Verhulst

The Living Library’s Selected Readings series seeks to build a knowledge base on innovative approaches for improving the effectiveness and legitimacy of governance. This curated and annotated collection of recommended works on the topic of civic innovation was originally published in 2014.

The last five years have seen a wave of new organizations, entrepreneurs and investment in cities and the field of civic innovation.  Two subfields, Civic Tech and Government Innovation, are particularly aligned with GovLab’s interest in the ways in which technology is and can be deployed to redesign public institutions and re-imagine governance.

The emerging field of civic technology, or “Civic Tech,” champions new digital platforms, open data and collaboration tools for transforming government service delivery and engagement with citizens. Government Innovation, while not a new field, has seen in the last five years a proliferation of new structures (e.g. Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics), roles (e.g. Chief Technology/Innovation Officer) and public/private investment (e.g. Innovation Delivery Teams and Code for America Fellows) that are building a world-wide movement for transforming how government thinks about and designs services for its citizens.

There is no set definition for “civic innovation.” However, broadly speaking, it is about improving our cities through the implementation of tools, ideas and engagement methods that strengthen the relationship between government and citizens. The civic innovation field encompasses diverse actors from across the public, private and nonprofit spectrums. These can include government leaders, nonprofit and foundation professionals, urbanists, technologists, researchers, business leaders and community organizers, each of whom may use the term in a different way, but ultimately are seeking to disrupt how cities and public institutions solve problems and invest in solutions.

Selected Reading List (in alphabetical order)

Annotated Selected Readings (in alphabetical order)

Books

Goldsmith, Stephen, and Susan Crawford. The Responsive City: Engaging Communities Through Data-Smart Governance. 1 edition. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 2014. http://bit.ly/1zvKOL0.

  • The Responsive City, a guide to civic engagement and governance in the digital age, is the culmination of research originating from the Data-Smart City Solutions initiative, an ongoing project at Harvard Kennedy School working to catalyze adoption of data projects on the city level.
  • The “data smart city” is one that is responsive to citizens, engages them in problem solving and finds new innovative solutions for dismantling entrenched bureaucracy.
  • The authors document case studies from New York City, Boston and Chicago to explore the following topics:
    • Building trust in the public sector and fostering a sustained, collective voice among communities;
    • Using data-smart governance to preempt and predict problems while improving quality of life;
    • Creating efficiencies and saving taxpayer money with digital tools; and
    • Spearheading these new approaches to government with innovative leadership.

Townsend, Anthony M. Smart Cities: Big Data, Civic Hackers, and the Quest for a New Utopia. 1 edition. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2013. http://bit.ly/17Y4G0R.

  • In this book, Townsend illustrates how “cities worldwide are deploying technology to address both the timeless challenges of government and the mounting problems posed by human settlements of previously unimaginable size and complexity.”
  • He also considers “the motivations, aspirations, and shortcomings” of the many stakeholders involved in the development of smart cities, and poses a new civics to guide these efforts.
  • He argues that smart cities are not made smart by various, soon-to-be-obsolete technologies built into its infrastructure; instead, it is how citizens are using ever-changing and grassroots technologies to be “human-centered, inclusive and resilient” that will make cities ‘smart.’

Reports + Journal Articles

Black, Alissa, and Rachel Burstein. “The 2050 City – What Civic Innovation Looks Like Today and Tomorrow.” White Paper. New America Foundation – California Civic Innovation Project, June 2013. https://bit.ly/2GohMvw.

  • Through their interviews, the authors determine that civic innovation is not just a “compilation of projects” but that it can inspire institutional structural change.
  • Civic innovation projects that have a “technology focus can sound very different than process-related innovations”; however the outcomes are actually quite similar as they disrupt how citizens and government engage with one another.
  • Technology is viewed by some of the experts as an enabler of civic innovation – not necessarily the driver for innovation itself. What constitutes innovation is how new tools are implemented by government or by civic groups that changes the governing dynamic.

Patel, Mayur, Jon Sotsky, Sean Gourley, and Daniel Houghton. “Knight Foundation Report on Civic Technology.” Presentation. Knight Foundation, December 2013. http://slidesha.re/11UYgO0.

  • This reports aims to advance the field of civic technology, which compared to the tech industry as a whole is relatively young. It maps the field, creating a starting place for understanding activity and investment in the sector.
  • It defines two themes, Open Government and Civic Action, and identifies 11 clusters of civic tech innovation that fall into the two themes. For each cluster, the authors describe the type of activities and highlights specific organizations.
  • The report identified more than $430 million of private and philanthropic investment directed to 102 civic tech organizations from January 2011 to May 2013.

Open Plans. “Field Scan on Civic Technology.” Living Cities, November 2012. http://bit.ly/1HGjGih.

  • Commissioned by Living Cities and authored by Open Plans, the Field Scan investigates the emergent field of civic technology and generates the first analysis of the potential impact for the field as well as a critique for how tools and new methods need to be more inclusive of low-income communities in their use and implementation.
  • Respondents generally agreed that the tools developed and in use in cities so far are demonstrations of the potential power of civic tech, but that these tools don’t yet go far enough.
  • Civic tech tools have the potential to improve the lives of low-income people in a number of ways. However, these tools often fail to reach the population they are intended to benefit. To better understand this challenge, civic tech for low-income people must be considered in the broader context of their interactions with technology and with government.
  • Although hackathons are popular, their approach to problem solving is not always driven by community needs, and hackathons often do not produce useful material for governments or citizens in need.

Goldberg, Jeremy M. “Riding the Second Wave of Civic Innovation.” Governing, August 28, 2014. http://bit.ly/1vOKnhJ.

  • In this piece, Goldberg argues that innovation and entrepreneurship in local government increasingly require mobilizing talent from many sectors and skill sets.

Black, Alissa, and Burstein, Rachel. “A Guide for Making Innovation Offices Work.” IBM Center for the Business of Government, October 2014. http://bit.ly/1vOFZP4.

  • In this report, Burstein and Black examine the recent trend toward the creation of innovation offices across the nation at all levels of government to understand the structural models now being used to stimulate innovation—both internally within an agency, and externally for the agency’s partners and communities.
  • The authors conducted interviews with leadership of innovation offices of cities that include Philadelphia, Austin, Kansas City, Chicago, Davis, Memphis and Los Angeles.
  • The report cites examples of offices, generates a typology for the field, links to projects and highlights success factors.

Mulholland, Jessica, and Noelle Knell. “Chief Innovation Officers in State and Local Government (Interactive Map).” Government Technology, March 28, 2014. http://bit.ly/1ycArvX.

  • This article provides an overview of how different cities structure their Chief Innovation Officer positions and provides links to offices, projects and additional editorial content.
  • Some innovation officers find their duties merged with traditional CIO responsibilities, as is the case in Chicago, Philadelphia and New York City. Others, like those in Louisville and Nashville, have titles that reveal a link to their jurisdiction’s economic development endeavors.

Toolkits

Bloomberg Philanthropies. January 2014. “Transform Your City through Innovation: The Innovation Delivery Model for Making It Happen.” New York: Bloomberg Philanthropies. http://bloombg.org/120VrKB.

  • In 2011, Bloomberg Philanthropies funded a three-year innovation capacity program in five major United States cities— Atlanta, Chicago, Louisville, Memphis, and New Orleans – in which cities could hire top-level staff to develop and see through the implementation of solutions to top mayoral priorities such as customer service, murder, homelessness, and economic development, using a sequence of steps.
  • The Innovation Delivery Team Playbook describes the Innovation Delivery Model and describes each aspect of the model from how to hire and structure the team, to how to manage roundtables and run competitions.

Smart citizens. How internet facilitates smart choices in city life

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report by Ericsson Consumer Lab: “The idea of smart cities is an intriguing concept. However, the future will partly be a story of how the architects defining the way our future cities operate are going to be citizens themselves. As the internet makes us more informed, we are in turn making better informed decisions.
We are becoming smart citizens and through our changing behaviors, efficient practices and smarter social norms are developing in our cities.”

Smart cities: the state-of-the-art and governance challenge

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

New Paper by Mark Deakin in Triple Helix – A Journal of University-Industry-Government Innovation and Entrepreneurship: “Reflecting on the governance of smart cities, the state-of-the-art this paper advances offers a critique of recent city ranking and future Internet accounts of their development. Armed with these critical insights, it goes on to explain smart cities in terms of the social networks, cultural attributes and environmental capacities, vis-a-vis, vital ecologies of the intellectual capital, wealth creation and standards of participatory governance regulating their development. The Triple Helix model which the paper advances to explain these performances in turn suggests that cities are smart when the ICTs of future Internet developments successfully embed the networks society needs for them to not only generate intellectual capital, or create wealth, but also cultivate the environmental capacity, ecology and vitality of those spaces which the direct democracy of their participatory governance open up, add value to and construct.”

A New Taxonomy of Smart City Projects

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

New paper by Guido Perboli et al: “City logistics proposes an integrated vision of freight transportation systems within urban area and it aims at the optimization of them as a whole in terms of efficiency, security, safety, viability and environmental sustainability. Recently, this perspective has been extended by the Smart City concept in order to include other aspects of city management: building, energy, environment, government, living, mobility, education, health and so on. At the best of our knowledge, a classification of Smart City Projects has not been created yet. This paper introduces such a classification, highlighting success factors and analyzing new trends in Smart City.”

Spain is trialling city monitoring using sound

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Springwise: “There’s more traffic on today’s city streets than there ever has been, and managing it all can prove to be a headache for local authorities and transport bodies. In the past, we’ve seen the City of Calgary in Canada detect drivers’ Bluetooth signals to develop a map of traffic congestion. Now the EAR-IT project in Santander, Spain, is using acoustic sensors to measure the sounds of city streets and determine real time activity on the ground.
Launched as part of the autonomous community’s SmartSantander initiative, the experimental scheme placed hundreds of acoustic processing units around the region. These pick up the sounds being made in any given area and, when processed through an audio recognition engine, can provide data about what’s going on on the street. Smaller ‘motes’ were also developed to provide more accurate location information about each sound.
Created by members of Portugal’s UNINOVA institute and IT consultants EGlobalMark, the system was able to use city noises to detect things such as traffic congestion, parking availability and the location of emergency vehicles based on their sirens. It could then automatically trigger smart signs to display up-to-date information, for example.
The team particularly focused on a junction near the city hospital that’s a hotspot for motor accidents. Rather than force ambulance drivers to risk passing through a red light and into lateral traffic, the sensors were able to detect when and where an emergency vehicle was coming through and automatically change the lights in their favor.
The system could also be used to pick up ‘sonic events’ such as gunshots or explosions and detect their location. The researchers have also trialled an indoor version that can sense if an elderly resident has fallen over or to turn lights off when the room becomes silent.”

From the smart city to the wise city: The role of universities in place-based leadership

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Hambleton, R.: “For a variety of reasons the notion of the smart city has grown in popularity and some even claim that all cities now have to be ‘smart’. For example, some digital enthusiasts argue that advances in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) are ushering in a new era in which pervasive electronic connections will inevitably lead to significant changes that make cities more liveable and more democratic. This paper will cast a critical eye over these claims. It will unpack the smart city rhetoric and show that, in fact, three competing perspectives are struggling for ascendancy within the smart cities discourse: 1) The digital city (emphasising a strong commitment to the use of ICT in governance), 2) The green city (reflecting the growing use of the US phrase smart growth, which is concerned to apply sound urban planning principles), and 3) The learning city (emphasising the way in which cities learn, network and innovate). Five digital danger zones will be identified and discussed. This analysis will suggest that scholars and policy makers who wish to improve the quality of life in cities should focus their attention on wisdom, not smartness. Civic leaders need to exercise judgement based on values if they are to create inclusive, sustainable cities. It is not enough to be clever, quick, ingenious, nor will it help if Big Data is superseded by Even Bigger Data. Universities can play a much more active role in place-based leadership in the cities where they are located. To do this effectively they need to reconsider the nature of modern scholarship. The paper will show how a growing number of universities are doing precisely this. Two respected examples will be presented to show how urban universities, if they are committed to engaged scholarship, can make a significant contribution to the creation of the wise city.”

From Information to Smart Society

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

New book edited by Mola, Lapo, Pennarola, Ferdinando,  and Za, Stefano: “This book presents a collection of research papers focusing on issues emerging from the interaction of information technologies and organizational systems. In particular, the individual contributions examine digital platforms and artifacts currently adopted in both the business world and society at large (people, communities, firms, governments, etc.). The topics covered include: virtual organizations, virtual communities, smart societies, smart cities, ecological sustainability, e-healthcare, e-government, and interactive policy-making (IPM)…”