The need for insights

Never before has analytics, transparency and accountability been such hot topics for local governments. Both citizens and legislators are holding city leaders accountable for public spending as well as their performance on citizen services. With depleting budgets city leadership must not only manage their assets and processes better but additionally stand up to the scrutiny of other stakeholders.

Some of the key functional areas that come under the ambit of urban local governance include:

1. Urban Planning including Town planning

2. Regulation of Land Use and Construction of Buildings

3. Roads and Bridges

4. Water supply for domestic, industrial and commercial purposes

5. Public Health, sanitation conservancy and solid waste management

6. Fire Services

7. Urban Forestry, protection of the environment and promotion of ecological aspects

8. Provision of urban amenities like parks, gardens and playgrounds

Saddled with stove-pipe applications that manage a few of these assets and processes, city leadership is being challenged to find new ways to get the big picture as well as manage the details that make that big picture. They need tools and methods to be able to provision, approve, monitor and maintain these assets.

The days of paper-based, local spreadsheet based methods of reporting are numbered – not only is it undesirable but also unaffordable. It is undesirable because a disjointed view of data completely distorts both planning and execution perspectives. Unaffordable because citizens and legislators are not willing to live with answers that are not anchored on facts.

How can Analytics help?

Analytics can help urban local bodies bring together departmental data silos and provide consistent information and insights across the board. Armed with the right Analytics tools city leaders can now

1. Analyze patterns of past, present and future infrastructure projects in relation to its Development Plans

2. Analyze the results of spending and gain insights for better

3. Model the outcome of future spending and programs and ensure better utilization of development funds

4. Communicate results to legislators, ministries, funding bodies and citizens

Enabling Building Plan Approval and Works Management

Building Plan Approval Dashboard

SoftTech is a company with innovative software products for Building Plan Approval and Works Management. It has now taken these products to the next level by integrating IBM’s Cognos as the Reporting and Analytics Engine. Customers can gain new and dynamic insights on their building plan approval process and their works management activities. They are able to dynamically configure reports, configure role based dashboards and scorecards and drill down to any level of detail. This will in multiple ways transform the way infrastructure projects are governed in cities.

Through Cognos city authorities can monitor the entire lifecycle of planning, approval, procurement and maintenance. They get perspectives and insights that they never got before. Project approvals are measured against thresholds, accountability pinpointed by drilling down to where the process is stuck, patterns emerge when roads and bridges are provisioned, inter departmental conflicts are resolved through workflows and insights are obtained around potential delays in works and their impact on city life

Moving to an Analytics Culture

As these tools become more available, they will help enable a paradigm shift to a culture of analytics- A culture which enables and nudges agency officials to think more analytically, to embrace accountability and focus on outcomes. With the kind of spending taking place in the infrastructure sector, this seems only logical and immensely pro-active.

Is there a case for democratization of smart applications?

Cities across the world are vying to be smarter. Ageing infrastructure and spiraling population are jostling with each other in a progressively destructive way. Upping the ante for provisioning of newer and better services is often a futile cry for enabling the change.

Public procurement and management of cities are not exactly geared to foster innovation. The process of transformation into smarter cities needs to first look into how innovation is managed in those cities. Open innovation although widely “talked” about in the private sector, is not even heard about in public governance. The potential for open innovation of smarter applications is huge. It is leapfrogging the chasm between this potential to their performance on the ground, which needs attention. Living Labs is demonstrating how to grow the long tail of smart applications.

Living Labs in EU – showing the way

Living Labs was founded in November 2006 under the auspices of the Finnish European Presidency.  To this date, 5 Waves have been launched, resulting in 274 accepted Living Labs. The ENoLL international non-profit association, as the legal representative entity of the network, is headquartered in Brussels, at the heart of Europe.

“A Living Lab is a real-life test and experimentation environment where users and producers co-create innovations. Living Labs have been characterized by the European Commission as Public-Private-People Partnerships (PPPP) for user-driven open innovation. A Living Lab employs four main activities:

1. Co-Creation: co-design by users and producers

2. Exploration: discovering emerging usages, behaviors and market opportunities

3. Experimentation: implementing live scenarios within communities of users

4. Evaluation: assessment of concepts, products and services according to socio-ergonomic, socio-cognitive and socio-economic criteria.”

What is most encouraging to note about this initiative is

1. Growth of the Living labs

2. It’s laser focus on solving “relevant” issues on the back of a thematic approach for addressing the bigger problems of health, safety, transportation, rural development and governance. See their fact sheets on pilot projects here.

3. A well-defined framework for engagement (defining know-how and do-how for participation)

“Living Labs are helping bridge the gaps between technology ideation and development on the one hand, and market entry and fulfillment on the other. They are providing a demand-driven ‘concurrent innovation’ approach by iteratively engaging all the key actors across the phases, and putting the user in the driver’s seat.

Small groups of Living Labs in different regions join forces by sharing knowledge, services and even developments based on win-win strategies to pave the way for co-selling developments and services on the European or global market rather than just on their local regional market. An approach which is of particular interest for SMEs and micro-entrepreneurs, who do not have the expertise and resources to expand their activities to other regions or across Europe.”

To ensure interoperability of smart applications across locations, it has created an open source based SmartcitySDK for aspiring developers. The CitySDK provides a socio-technological platform which enables developers to build of existing smart applications and best practices without having to invest in new technologies or hardware.

The Life2.0 project aims at addressing a very critical area of Europe’s senior citizens – enhancing their ability to interact with their social surroundings through helping them locate people that are relevant to them (friends, relatives and care-givers)

The take away for India

With a vibrant mix of large companies, startups and students and in some cases city authorities (that are receptive to new ideas), the concept of living labs holds great promise. To keep this promise however we need concerted action and even greater sense of purpose.

Simply put, we need an ecosystem in place of an egosystem.

If the Rio Story penned by Gartner Analyst, Bettina Tratz-Ryan is anything to go by then it appears “signals” are at the heart of any smart city. Signals as defined by Web2.0 guru Tim O’Reilly, was about the use of syndication technology such as RSS to notify users of content changes.

Amplify that thought to conceptualize a myriad signals being emitted from a plethora of devices and other sources. When news feeds, weather feeds, intelligence feeds, traffic surveillance data, seismic and topological data, social media buzz all converge onto a single platform, it’s a lot of signals.

The Victoria Memorial - Kolkata : Photo courtesy : Tapesh Mukherjee

Signals & Orchestration

But signals by itself would be “noise”. When the same content is put in context of geo-location or adverse weather conditions or crowds build up, they become signals of a smarter kind. It tells city authorities what pre-emptive action has to be taken.

Knowing what is to be done is not enough. It’s the do-how that matters. Bettina writes “Bringing agencies under one roof and develop standard operations procedures sounds initially so trivial but represents a real game changer for many cities, considering that different public and private entities have always worked with different premises in their “day to day” activities or in their crisis resolutions. For Rio, the cooperation model has enabled the city to deal with their worst case scenario: heavy rainfalls that will threaten Favellas with mudslides. The center has now the ability to warn residents, through text messages and sirens, of the pending dangers and evacuations can be ordered almost immediately.”

Orchestrating different agencies is indeed a pain several cities across the world could do without.

The Smart Long Tail

At the back of this Star Trek environment however, another revolution is under way. The long tail of citizen engagement is beginning to happen and presenting itself in many forms. Open data and smart phones are enabling citizens to contribute to development plans, recommend improvements, develop initiatives to raise awareness and call to action on heritage structures, engage in contests to build a better and smarter city, and more.

Citizen engagement is not just about the potholes and traffic snarls; it is increasingly about the long tail of aspirations and interests.  Public access to data and the ease of application development through open source platforms will spur development of new applications and services.  As a result, specific groups large or small can develop an application to serve their purposes- for example a student led GIS project or an NGO led Green City Project or an executive-led car-pooling project.  They may even provide sources of gainful employment and entrepreneurship.   The promise of Web2.0 of enabling people to share their perspectives, opinions, thoughts and experiences through multiple tools seems to have found a totally new dimension, when applied to smart cities.

The key will be how smartly can we make data available to citizens, provide the tools to create smart applications and create a new breed of smart prosumers. If we do that the promise of the long tail of smart applications does not seem to be too far ahead.

People are the smart units

No one knows more about a city and how it functions than the people who live and work there. Ask the auto-rickshaw driver to take you from one place and the other by the shortest possible route and he will do so without needing a GPRS device. Ask the postman about an address and he will tell you the exact address.

For example, Pune is a melting pot of diverse cultures. It is also a city of skilled and talented people. On the back of a flourishing engineering and IT industry, are highly qualified city dwellers that can bring to bear their collective intelligence and expertise that would be unrivalled. The Oxford of the East also has a population of bright, young students who pursue degrees in management, engineering and liberal arts. And yet, does the city know what the city knows?

The true smartness of a city is in providing opportunities to them for greater involvement in city improvements.

Degrees or smartness?

But is just the presence of smart people in any city make it any smarter? You could have a whole lot of smart people in one place that do not interact with each other, or get involved in city development initiatives. It takes creation and nurturing of platforms to give people the voice, the tools to contribute and acknowledgement for their contributions.

With a large population of city dwellers now possessing smart phones, how difficult would it be to report infrastructure failure, road rage, security breaches, errant auto drivers and more? Every day, city dwellers encounter difficulties and they know the clear apathy and failure of conventional complaint systems. They need a specially purposed platform to listen, analyze and act.

Diversity and social participation

Everyday a city receives new entrants. These new and existing populations support the growth and sustainability of creative, knowledge-based cities. They provide connections to new ideas, networks and knowledge. People feel more connected to their city and community when that diversity is reflected visibly in the city and they are included in the city’s growth. People are the biggest asset of a smarter city.

City leadership and corporates need to come together to provide that meeting place, listen to what citizens have to say about quality of life, analyze conversations, prioritize actions  and then engage the community in finding solutions.

The year of the protestor

The Times dedicated the year 2011 as the Year of the Protestor. From Tunisia to Tahrir square, from Syria to Seattle and finally from Ralegan Siddhi to Jantar Mantar, resolute citizens came together around common causes.

Poor governance, dysfunctional institutions, endemic corruption and the appalling indifference of governments in the provisioning of public goods and services brought together generations brought up on Facebook as well as their less tech-savvy counterparts. We saw the digital communities report what happened on the ground in real-time.

Crowds versus communities

Sandy Carter (VP of IBM’s Social Business Evangelism, author of “Get Bold”) wrote an interesting piece on Crowds versus Communities. She said “Numbers of members are not the key metric and does not equal a strong community. A crowd mentality is driven by the broad set of people that you have access to, not a relationship with. A community is about having passionate members that belong; and as a result, drive more value for their common goals.” The key point here is moving beyond campaigns to create a groundswell of collaborative action.

Communities in action

One of the worst disasters of our times in Japan, brought out the character of a whole nation – that of resilience and compassion in the face of insurmountable loss and sorrow. Communities such as patientslikeme.com are enabling patients of some of the world’s dreaded diseases combat their illness.  Through peer support and experience sharing, they are helping each other as well as helping drug companies develop better lines of treatment. I just got invited to Cowbird, a small community of storytellers, sharing heartfelt, personal stories. They tell me that I can use Cowbird to keep a gorgeous diary of my life, and to help them document the major “sagas” taking place in the world. The return of the slow, deliberate storytellers who can help shape the world we live in – how wonderful is that!

Transforming crowds into communities

Earlier this year I wrote that Communities will be at the heart of every significant human action. If one studies the significant movements of 2011, we see crowds rallying around causes.  In my post, the core of a community, I identified 6 building blocks i.e. Cause, Content, Contract, Curators, Capability and Commitment. We saw a lot of the seeding taking place in 2011. With social platform fatigue setting in, what will be interesting to see what new experiences current and emerging social platforms have to offer beyond mere connections and personal broadcasting stations.

Transforming crowds into purposeful communities is a significant opportunity – an opportunity for technology and other sciences (like psychology) liberal arts to come together.

Going into 2012, what will be asked for in terms of sustained human action will be the nurturing of crowds and connections into communities of action.

That is the timeline, I would be interested in – what about you?