General (Political Science) Articles

Cheat Sheet / Updated 03-01-2022

Urban plans help shape the future of a community by addressing everything from housing and transportation to natural resources, public utilities, and more. You don’t have to be a professional urban planner to get involved in planning your community’s future. Whether you participate in the planning process, serve as a local planning commissioner, or help carry out your community’s plan, you can play an important part.

Cheat Sheet / Updated 02-24-2022

From early Greek political philosophy to current international conflicts, political science is a study in how people come together, interact, become informed, and make decisions that affect everyone. Studying political science allows you to become educated on political issues, make decisions, and discover how politics is made at the local, national, and international level. Take a look at the list of important political scientists and their major works to guide you through the evolution of political science. Also, read through major political science concepts to give you a well-rounded view of political science as a vital discipline.

Article / Updated 12-28-2021

There may actually be no such thing as a smart city. Wait — what? That’s certainly an odd comment coming from an article about smart cities. Okay, let’s explain. There’s no such thing as a completed smart city. It would be difficult to find an example where all the work has been finished and the designers and implementers have, after completing their tasks, washed their hands and said, “We’re done. Voilà! Here’s your smart city.” Nope. Doesn’t exist. After all, is a city ever completed? With a few rare exceptions, cities are in a constant state of change. Whether they’re being updated and improved or expanding upward, downward, and outward (or all of these); our cities are living, evolving entities. Cities are a work in progress. They are shaped by (among many factors) community needs, by societal trends, by crisis, and by better ideas. They shrink and expand, they decline and are reborn, and they are destroyed and rebuilt. They are never finished. And so it’s a logical return to the idea that there’s no such thing as a smart city. Instead, there are compelling and urgent needs, and a necessary response to demands, for cities that function with greater “smartness” to be smarter in all areas and in every way. A smart city isn’t a city that has merely achieved some level of satisfactory smartness. A smart city is one that identifies with the need to be smarter and then bakes that knowledge into its functioning, action-oriented DNA. It doesn’t continue to use obsolete 20th century solutions. A smart city implements 21st century solutions for 21st century problems. If there’s one aspect of smart cities that can be chastised for continuing to cause confusion and excessive debate, it’s the absence of agreement on the definition of the term smart city. Here you get a brief breakdown of what constitutes a smart city and what does not. What a smart city is As Sicinius, the bearded protector of the Roman people’s interests, states in Shakespeare’s play Coriolanus, “What is the city but the people?” Indeed, what is the city but the people? This is the right place to start when discussing the future of cities. After all, cities are defined by the human experience. They exist in support of people, are the invention of people, and deeply reflect a people's culture. In Bangkok and Tokyo, the city landscapes are replete with temples, like Budapest is with hot baths, Amsterdam is with coffee shops, and Vegas is with casinos. The feel, the look, the behavior, the heartbeat of the city — these are all a reflection of people. Cities communicate the history and life of those who live there. (Some like to say that architecture is the language of the city, which is a fitting way to look at things.) Across the planet, cities have emerged for different reasons, and their design has been shaped by various influences. There is no one-size-fits-all solution when it comes to cities. Though they share some common needs, such as energy, transportation, communications, and sanitation, they have as many differences as similarities. Sure, a city can be defined and categorized by such characteristics as its geography, governance, population, and infrastructure, but its purpose, needs, and culture cannot be so easily abstracted and normalized such that you can generalize about their nature. The uniqueness of each city must be viewed through this lens. Many cities suffer the same challenges. Finding a parking space, for example, is a universal pain. But the way problems are solved is often specific to each community. For every challenge that is similar, others are often unique. It’s this backdrop that is essential for an understanding of how to think about smart cities. To be able to confidently say that Barcelona and Dublin are smart cities (or are becoming smarter) means that there would need to be a globally agreed-on definition and an agreed-on set of extensive standards and measurements. These don’t exist, and they may never exist. Okay, to be fair, there are a small number of proposed and voluntary standards for smart cities. Two strong examples are: International Organization for Standardization (ISO), sustainable cities and communities; indicators for smart cities British Standards Institute, smart city standards The term smart city is much less important than the purpose of the work and the outcomes. In fact, to clear up confusion, many other terms are used that are all simply synonyms. They include connected city, hyperconnected city, intelligent city, digital city, smart community, and others. Smart city (or smart cities) is the term that has stuck. A smart city is defined by its people, not by some outside arbiter. If Helsinki believes that it’s creating a better quality of life for its people in its innovative use of technology, it has the right to call itself a smart city. John Harlow, a smart city research specialist at the Emerson College Engagement Lab, states that “smartness in cities comes from people understanding what's important to them and what problems they are experiencing.” The most basic definition of a smart city is one that responds to its citizens' needs in new and improved ways. You’ll learn more regarding this definition shortly, but first, some additional contextual basics. The future of humanity is firmly rooted in cities. For better or worse, as rural communities rapidly decline, immigration to cities is booming. By the end of the 21st century, all things being equal, most humans will live in urban settings. This remarkable shift will define the future more than just about anything else humans do (other than perhaps populating other planets). Despite our many misgivings, on balance, cities are largely a success story. More than anything else, they have lifted billions of people out of poverty, providing jobs, shelter, accessible healthcare, and other support systems and regulations to assist in life’s needs. Edward Glaeser, the American economist and author of Triumph of the City, makes a compelling case that cities are humanity’s greatest invention. But it’s been a tough, ugly journey. The world’s early cities weren’t pleasant places for most people, and suffering was common. Fortunately, cities are now in much better shape, and an urban migrant should find options and opportunities to at least have the choice of a better life. However, though conditions in general are better than they’ve ever been, the challenges presented by cities today are more complex in many ways and are vastly more difficult and expensive to solve. Here’s a list of just a few of the smart city challenges awaiting solutions: Overburdened and inefficient social support systems Transportation congestion and poor public-transport options Inequality Poverty Crime Homelessness Environmental damage Poor air quality Aging and broken infrastructure Lack of jobs Weak civic engagement Food insecurity Inclusiveness This list is only a small reflection of the massive number of unique challenges that cities on every continent have to address. But it should be suggestive to you of the type of work that lies ahead. An obvious question right now is this: Why haven’t humans solved these types of problems? Some of the answer lies in leadership priorities and insufficient budgets as well as in the scale and complexity of the problems involved. Clearly, if these problems were cheaply and easily solved, they’d have been addressed by now. They are neither. However, the history of innovation is a reminder that humans have the capacity to solve big, intractable issues. Improved sanitation changed the trajectory of healthcare, for example, and fertilizer made food abundant. Might innovation also help with the current challenges of the world’s cities? Many would argue yes, and technology powered innovation might offer some of the best opportunities. This kind of thinking may draw you closer to a definition of what a smart city is. The Smart Cities Council, a network of companies advised by universities, laboratories, and standards bodies, maintains that smart cities embody three core values: livability, workability, and sustainability. Specifically, the council states that using technology to achieve improvements in these three areas is the definition of what a smart city needs to be. So, considering everything you’ve learned so far, including researching the literature on the topic, what might a definition look like? Here’s a proposal: A smart city is an approach to urbanization that uses innovative technologies to enhance community services and economic opportunities, improves city infrastructure, reduces costs and resource consumption, and increases civic engagement. Fair? Many smart city definitions include references to specific technologies — often this is a mistake. The definition should be about outcomes, and it should outlive technologies that come and go. There will always be better tools in the future. Limiting a definition to tools that exist now will make any definition quickly outdated. Finally, don’t lose sight of these two important qualities that are essential for smart cities: Technology use: There are many ways to address city issues, but when technologies are used as the primary tools, this helps to make the city smarter. A smart city is a system of systems that optimizes for humans. People first: Don’t become too enamored by the use of technology. When deployed correctly, technology is largely invisible, or at least non-intrusive. What matters are the outcomes for people. A smart city is ultimately a human-centric endeavor. After all, what is the city but the people? What a smart city is not Establishing the definition of a smart city is vital because it helps you comprehend the scope of the topic. But recognizing what a smart city is not also has value. Here are five things that a smart city is not: An upgrade from a dumb city: There are many smart cities events each year, and inevitably a speaker or panelist makes a joke about cities being dumb before they were smart. The joke usually draws a chuckle. Fair enough — the notion of “smart” isn’t precise enough for what it is, but it’s the title that has stuck. All cities are complex, amazing feats of human creativity. They aren’t dumb and have never been — quite the opposite. Becoming a smart city is more about becoming smarter in the use of technology to make what the city does better and to provide solutions to problems that traditionally have been difficult to solve. One last, related point on this topic. One point of view is that a smart city can exist only with smart people. This perspective is far from fair or inclusive. Communities are made up of all types of people, and everyone, if they choose, has something to contribute. When building smart cities, ensure that all your efforts and experiences embrace the majesty of all people. You should, in fact, add this as a goal in your strategy. A surveillance city: Implementing a smart city should not mean the end of privacy for its residents, businesses, and visitors. It’s true that smart cities deploy sensors in support of their efforts — possibly for monitoring air and water quality, improved traffic management, noise detection, energy management, and much more. It’s important to acknowledge privacy concerns where they arise, and city leaders need to listen carefully and respond with assurances. However, you should recognize that these efforts are made to improve services, not to impinge on privacy or create a surveillance city where everyone is being monitored. In developing and executing on a smart city strategy, stakeholders must ensure that privacy is upheld, data is anonymized, and the community is engaged in the process to provide transparency and build confidence. Deploying smart city technology that includes sensors should be specifically and carefully regulated by rules — even legislation — in order to protect the community. Make that a priority. A strategy about gadgets and apps: Yes, technology is definitely at the center of developing a smart city, but if you look at many of the vendors in this emerging space, you can easily believe that the subject is really all about cool new toys and apps. Sure, plenty of those are available. However, transforming a city, solving complex challenges, and creating a higher quality of life for the greatest number of people are goals that require comprehensive changes in processes, rules, technologies, and the talent and skills to plan and implement it. Don’t be distracted by novel, piecemeal solutions. Sure, consider those factors in the mix, but recognize that creating a smart city is an undertaking that requires a significant focus on technology strategy, extensive solutions architecture, and systems integration. Remind yourself (and others) often that smart cities are about people, not technology. A temporary technology trend: You might believe that the smart city movement is a recent development, perhaps just two or three years old. In reality, applying technology to make cities operate better has been under way for several decades. It isn’t possible to determine the first-ever use of the term smart city, but it certainly has references at least to the early 1990s. Even with a reasonably long history already, the real action of smart cities is happening now, and the most significant results will be seen in the years ahead. More than some sort of temporary trend, for cities to function well and bring a high quality of life to as many people as necessary, the smart city movement will last for multiple decades. Though the smart city concept may change over time, the goal doesn’t really have an expiration date. For many skeptical city leaders, it’s time to shrug off the belief that it’s a passing fad and get on board to embrace the benefits of urban innovation. A concept that matters only to big cities: If you review the literature on smart cities, it certainly would appear that only big cities can be smart cities. The same names pop up all the time: London, Paris, Moscow, Melbourne, Dublin, Vienna, Barcelona, San Francisco, and others. Sure, these incredible cities have impressive smart city initiatives, but any city can pursue the goal of becoming smarter. After all, most cities in the world today are small. The big ones are the outliers. Interested in learning more? Check out our Smart Cities Cheat Sheet.

Cheat Sheet / Updated 03-14-2021

Human destiny is tied to cities. If we humans are going to have a happy and prosperous future, we need new ideas, skilled talent, and informed leaders to build the cities of tomorrow. Everyone deserves a good quality of life. Smart cities can help make that happen. Find out how.

Article / Updated 09-18-2020

Technology is the heart of a smart city. But, where there’s technology, there’s data. And knowing how to manage that data in a smart-city context is absolutely essential. Cities with technology create a lot of data. With more systems and devices coming online every day, the volume of data produced, collected, and stored is growing rapidly. It’s not just information such as your Facebook posts, Instagram photos, Google searches, and online forms you fill out — it’s also all the data produced by the myriad of processes taking place behind the scenes. For example, just one self-driving car generates over 4,000 gigabytes of data for each hour of driving. Now multiply that by the millions of autonomous vehicles that will come online in the next few years and it’s clear that just this one type of urban activity will create a colossal amount of data. This colossal amount of data is called data exhaust. Though that’s an appropriate term for vehicles, it applies to all the data that spins off electronic transactions. Between this data exhaust and the growing number of interactions that people have with all their devices, data growth is headed off the charts. In fact, right now it’s over 2.5 quintillion bytes of data every day. The technical phrase for that scale is, “Dude, that’s a lot!” Here’s another mind-blowing fact. Considering all the data that’s been produced since people started using computers many decades ago, remarkably, 90 percent of all data ever created has happened in just the past two years. Technologists have come up with an appropriate term for this scale of data: big data. That isn’t exactly an inspired choice, but at least it's accurate. Every type of organization is now producing, collecting, and storing big data. The clever ones are using it to run their businesses better, to more deeply understand their customers, and to build new products and services. When organizations use data in a way that improves operations, increases their bottom lines, and helps them to outperform their competitors, they’re called data-savvy. This term indicates that they have recognized the value of data, developed the relevant skills to manage that data, and implemented a strategy to use data as a core instrument of organizational success. Kudos to them. The popular role of data today has created a marketplace with a broad range of software tools that help with analysis and decision-making. It has also created a high demand for data-related skills and has even helped establish a new branch of study and expertise, called data science. The private sector has recognized the value of data and data-savviness; rejecting the value of data is hardly conceivable in a for-profit organization. Other sectors of the economy have been slower to fully embrace their data love. Government has been a laggard, but those days are coming to an end. Today, government agencies — and cities, in particular — are jumping head-first into the realm of data science. In a field where everything is scarce, governments have an abundance of data. Governments create, collect, and store a wide variety of data sets that include ingredients such as crime reports, permits, library lending information, demographics, pavement conditions, geospatial features, tax information, project status, and so much more. With the addition of digital sensors across a city landscape, the amount and variety of data is set to explode in the years ahead. Using this government data to improve operations, make better decisions, build trust and transparency, and enable innovation solutions has the power to build better and smarter cities. The smart use of data is a fundamental aspect of a smart city. Enabling data-driven decision-making in a smart city When you learn to fly a single-engine plane, part of the training process requires you to rely on the instruments regardless of what your brain might tell you to do. You wear a special cap that prevents you from looking outside. The instructor puts the plane into an usual configuration — let’s say a climb with low power —in order to create the conditions for an emergency situation. The instructor then tells you to use only the instruments to recover the flight orientation to a safe flying configuration. What happens is that your brain receives signals from the body, such as information about balance, that tell you to take actions that are wrong. But if you rely on what the instruments are saying, you make the correct maneuvers. The first few times you do this exercise, you have to fight your brain. In other words, you have to trust what the instruments are telling you versus what your brain wants you to believe. This example is analogous to how you must treat data. Good data tells the truth. Even though you might often want to believe something else based on how you believe something should be or on instinct relative to experience, you need to become comfortable with using data to make organizational decisions. Data will provide important insight, but it won’t necessarily tell you what action to take. That part still largely remains a human function. You will need to consider context, politics, and economics, amongst many other factors. There’s room for tacit knowledge, intuition, and experience, but they should be used sparingly and likely only in combination with what story the data tells. In fact, you must become hungry for exceptionally good data. The more you have and the richer it is, the higher the likelihood of a more informed data-driven decision. Data leads to information that then becomes knowledge. This knowledge provides essential insights. It’s not uncommon now for leaders to feel constrained by not being presented with sufficient information to make an informed decision. A smart city cannot exist without the smart use of data. Managing data in a smart city It’s hard to think of an organization today that doesn’t use data in some capacity.: But, the existence of data within an organization doesn’t equate to any evidence that it’s being properly managed. Making a city smarter by using data as the rich, valuable asset it is requires the deliberate use of specialized tools, talent, and processes. Data has a lifecycle, from creation to retirement, and to glean its optimum value, this lifecycle must be managed — a process known as data management. Data management typically includes these activities: Having the ability to collect, create, update, and remove data across disparate systems Possessing the capability to retain data in various formats across different types of storage systems Ensuring the high availability of data to authorized users Maintaining disaster recovery options consistent with organizational needs Supporting data's utilization across different types of systems and solutions Managing data privacy and security Being able to archive and destroy data according to policy and compliance requirements These minimum data activities must be addressed in your data strategy. You can easily test whether data is being well managed in a smart city. Consider the following basic questions: Does every data set have an owner? Can authorized people access the right data when they need it? If a disaster — such as a cyberattack, a fire that destroys systems, or an accidental loss or deletion of files — occurs, is service restored quickly and without a headache? Can data move securely between people and systems in order to best leverage its value? Is talent readily available to produce reports, identify insights, and perform research with data? If the answer to these questions is generally yes, you’re in a better position than most. On the other hand, if any of these questions can’t be answered with high confidence, there’s a good chance you don’t have a data management strategy, or the existing strategy needs to be reworked. Many larger cities have already embraced data management, but many still need to elevate this competency to the mature level it deserves. Smaller cities, while recognizing its value, struggle with this topic because of challenges with insufficient budgets to afford data scientists and specialized tools. Some good advice is for all city agencies to create a data strategy that rightsizes it against needs and the available budget. For example, for a large city, hire a chief data officer (CDO), and for the smaller ones, find staff that are interested in the topic who can carry out data roles as part of their other responsibilities. Developing a data strategy for a smart city Cities must have a data strategy if they want to have operational excellence, increased quality of life, and better performance results. The purpose of a smart city strategy is to have a plan designed to achieve some desired outcomes. Recognizing that data is your friend and that it can provide enormous value in every aspect of building and operating a smart city means that you have to create a deliberate set of actions to achieve results. A data strategy is an agreed-on plan that all appropriate stakeholders sign off on. A mistake that many organizations make after developing a strategy is to blindly follow it, even as circumstances change. The right way to deal with a strategy is to regularly confirm with stakeholders that the desired outcomes are still relevant and, if appropriate, modify the actions periodically. After all, nothing stays the same. Organizational agility is a valued 21st century characteristic. The worst type of strategy is one that’s created and never acted on. Creating a strategic plan isn’t the goal — achieving your outcomes is. Many excellent strategic plans are sitting on the shelves of executives, simply gathering dust. A data strategy must include, at minimum: A description of the roles and responsibilities that various leaders and staff play in the management of data The capabilities desired from the supporting systems Any policy, legal, or regulatory requirements An articulation of how data value will be derived Creating a strategy for a smart city usually follows a sequence similar to this one: Agree on the vision for the smart city. Document and agree on the desired results (the vision) of the plan. It’s defining what you want the future to look like. Often, this is the hardest step. You might be surprised to discover the degree to which stakeholders aren’t on the same page when this exercise first begins. However, after all the arm wrestling and debating end, it’s gratifying when everyone does finally agree on the vision. Perform a gap analysis. A what? A gap analysis is the result of identifying the difference between where the organization’s current performance is and where you want it to be. For example, you might look at business metrics and determine where you are versus where you want to be. Only by completing a gap analysis can you take the next step and identify and define your objectives. Identify the objectives for the smart city. To reach your desired outcomes, often called goals, means that you need to have actions to get there. These are the plan’s objectives. They should be SMART: specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time-bound. Define how the plan and the outcomes will be measured. Okay, here’s another truism: What gets measured gets managed. Without metrics, how do you know whether you’re winning? Define those targets. Don’t overlook this essential part of the strategy. Get the right people to sign off on the smart city strategy. This step is important. Without the right people putting their signatures on the plan, you’ll experience issues later on. It’s much harder for a leader to argue that they didn’t support or agree with a plan if there’s evidence that they have endorsed it. Making the final sign-off less difficult can be achieved by engaging those leaders throughout the strategy creation process. Execute the strategy and evolve as necessary. Yup, do the work. During this essential phase you’ll be obtaining funding, identifying project resources, running projects, and training or recruiting the right talent to manage the outcome. Though this set of steps is applicable to creating a data strategy, it can be applied to any strategy. Use it every time you identify a goal and need to come up with a plan. Want to ensure your smart city is successful? Avoid these ten mistakes.

Article / Updated 09-18-2020

Smart cities are well known for their ability to use data to their advantage. Any smart city worth its salt will have a solid data governance strategy. Data management is concerned with how you use data to run your organizations and make good decisions. Equally important is that you also need to ensure that agreed-on data policies and processes, accountabilities, decision structures, and enforcement rules are in place. The implementation of these qualities is called data governance: It’s the difference between poor data management and excellent data management. Many organizations manage data —well, maybe all do —but far fewer manage it well. Data governance is the science of managing data well. If it doesn’t already exist, data governance must be part of the smart city’s data strategy. Focus areas of data governance in smart cities Data governance is a large, complex, and important topic; a whole book is required in order to fully appreciate how to successfully implement it. Without data governance, a smart city will not be ultimately successful (don’t forget to avoid these ten problems). To quickly understand its scope, these four areas address the major themes of data governance: Policy: With policy, you’re creating guidelines for particular data situations that everyone must follow. An example is backup and retention, which may in fact be required by law. A policy might state that certain types of data must be backed up every day and that it’ll be stored for at least three years. A policy typically describes how such guidelines will be enforced as well. Quality: In data governance, quality refers to the degree of confidence you have in the data to help with a particular objective. If you’re basing important decisions on data, you had better be confident that it’s at least accurate and complete. In data governance, you want to have processes and practices that can support the integrity of the data you've collected. Compliance: Compliance ensures that data is handled in a way that meets not only organizational policies and rules but also industry and governmental policies, rules, and laws. In particular, many governments have specific laws governing data use and management. For example, if a community member requests access to some city data, a formal process might have to be followed — including the time allowed to respond and the rights that the requestor has to view and use the data. Business intelligence: Business intelligence is one of the hot terms in data these days. You could say that business intelligence is another term for data management, or an umbrella term for all the things an organization does to glean value from data. Both are acceptable. In a smart city context, business intelligence is about the strategies and technologies used for analyzing data. Applying data governance to business intelligence means ensuring that the right people have access to the right data at the right time. It’s also about the rights people have regarding each data set. Data ownership in a smart city A central requirement of data governance is having an identified owner for every major data set in an organization. It might seem intuitive, but it continues to be rare. In the context of a smart city, it becomes especially important. Organizations have no problem taking at face value the fact that the human resources department is responsible for the hiring process or that the facilities manager is responsible for taking care of issues with buildings. However, when it comes to data, seldom does anyone know who is responsible. A data owner is the person who will worry each day that the data is backed up, kept current, and secured from unauthorized users, and who will — perhaps most importantly — be the expert when it comes to determining what the data is and how it might be used. If there’s only one thing you do regarding data governance, make it identifying data owners and providing them with specific responsibilities. Smart cities and the data governance board (DGB) Okay, so you’ve created a data governance strategy as part of your overall smart city data strategy. Congrats! You now need a team of people who meet regularly to provide oversight for data governance and who will continue to evolve the policies and rules for the organization. They also need to capture metrics to monitor progress and report on data value. This team is known as the data governance board. The members and the responsibilities of this board are determined by each organization. It makes sense for this board to consist of at least A few data owners and staff who are passionate about data Data analysts from different departments The chief data officer or equivalent The chief information officer or equivalent or subordinate A member of the city clerk’s office Someone from the city manager’s or administrator’s office Possibly one or two members of the public who possess data skills The board must be given appropriate authority by leadership. A team with documented responsibilities helps ensure better-quality data and better outcomes with data use. It might feel like there’s some level of redundancy here between data management, data strategy, and data governance. In truth, you’ll see overlap but all are ultimately separate and important aspects of developing a mature approach to handling and optimizing the data of a smart city. Each one is also highly complementary. If you like the topic of data governance, a little research will quickly show you that it actually encompasses much more than just the items introduced here. Check out the Data Governance Institute for more on the topic. No sure if a smart city is the way to go. Learn more about the case for smart cities.

Article / Updated 09-18-2020

You’ve decided that a smart city initiative is right for your community. You now have a bold and ambitious vision. It’s time to get started so that you can actually realize this vision. You must initiate a process of translation to move from your smart city vision to a set of actions. For this, you need a plan. Do not let the enthusiasm for progress and results curtail the essential and sometimes tedious upfront work of strategic planning for you smart city. This popular adage is a favorite of mine: Failing to plan is planning to fail. You always increase the chances of success in an effort if you have a plan. (Having a Plan B is a good idea, too.) Most people have some sort of plan in place when they embark on a major work project. But is it a viable and flexible plan? Is it a plan that can actually absorb the pummeling a long-term effort will experience and still succeed in its goals? There’s a big difference between having a plan and having a great plan. What you need in order to get started is a process to define the strategy of how your smart city vision will be realized. You need a systematic process of envisioning and executing the steps to a desired future. Urban planning and development are typically deliberate and detailed activities. A smart city initiative is fundamentally an urban plan and therefore requires much of the same rigor. You’ll make complex decisions that include trade-offs and compromises, and you’ll do all this with many other stakeholders. The art and science of strategic planning is a repetitive, inclusive, often exhaustive exercise, which is a characteristic of much of the work in the public sector. You really do produce better results when you include as many people (those who can add value) as possible in almost any process. People want to be involved, and they want to have a voice in decision-making. After all, decisions that are made that affect the nature of a city have the potential to impact a lot of people. Everyone is better served when input is derived from the broadest set of participants. A strategic plan is a living document. That is, it is never locked down. It must be open to revisiting and to making course corrections as circumstances dictate. The plan must also be an artifact that’s referenced often, and progress must be measured against it. The worst strategic plan is the one that’s developed and agreed on and then never consulted. It’s the one that sits on the shelf, gathering dust. It’s pointless, and even soul-destroying. A strategic plan must be shared widely. It becomes a communication tool that helps stakeholders know what’s happening and when events will take place. The plan must be posted for easy access and made available in both electronic and physical forms. Your smart city initiative should have a dedicated website, or at least a dedicated section of your city’s website. A large number of people — ranging from community members to city staff and from other cities to the vendor community and more — will be interested in what’s coming their way. It’s worth spending the time to create a well-developed strategic plan. From better outcomes to clear directions for all who are involved and impacted, the benefits are numerous. But let’s be sober about this point: Creating a well-developed strategic plan is difficult, and the plan can be contentious. Be ready for the work ahead. Sure, it’s hard, but it’s well worth it. Perhaps this deserves a new adage: Preparing a well-developed plan is planning to succeed. Developing a strategic plan for your smart city Though business books might use different terminology, critiquing several of them reveals a consistent set of logical steps to move from an idea or need to a result. Whether it’s creating an art piece, developing a project, or planning a strategy, the following four steps typically spell out what needs to happen (Let’s call them the four D’s): Define. Design. Develop. Deploy. Some form of measurement should be baked in, too, to hold everyone accountable. Look below to see how this process can be applied to the development of a smart city. Keep in mind that the work of urban planning and development is never done, so by extension, it’s a little misleading to think in terms of completing a smart city. It’s a topic of considerable debate. (Another, similar debate involves determining which city in the world is “the smartest.” It’s not a fair question — each city is smart to the degree that it reflects the needs, culture, and aspirations of its citizens.) Returning to the idea of the process of creating a smart city (assuming the assertion that, by definition, this process can never be completed), it should be clear by now that this may be an iterative process. Thought of another way, smart city efforts may have phases, and they may be redefined as time passes. This topic gets a lot of attention because it directly relates to how you might think of scoping the smart city strategy exercise. Specifically, what are you including in the scope of the process to define, design, develop, and deploy? The answer is that you and your teams must decide what to include. Having a vision that may take a decade or more to accomplish is reasonable, but, realistically speaking, it’s likely a series of shorter actionable and consecutive strategic plans rather than a single big plan. Therefore, you should focus on the activities that are doable, relative to the larger vision, with the understanding that you’re dealing with a shorter time horizon. Take another look at the image above. Strategic planning involves Steps 1–4. The first step is to create your smart city vision. The next step is to define your goals —the desired results of the vision broken into specific, measurable areas. Moving from vision to goals, which is an exercise that is fun and critical, requires what is called the envisioning process. Envisioning a smart city At its core, envisioning is an interactive process for engaging stakeholders in imagining a desired future and identifying the activities in support of realizing it. It can be thought of as a more rigorous brainstorming process. Envisioning takes many forms: It’s performed at the beginning of an initiative but can also be used at various other times during the course of an initiative if it’s deemed valuable. Done well, envisioning can bring with it many of the following advantages. It Gets everyone on the same page Identifies creative ideas Builds cohesiveness in a group Enables all voices to be heard Supports achieving consensus Reduces the risk of pursuing ideas that may not be practical To help guide you through the envisioning process that forms the basis of your strategic plan and goals, follow these steps : Define the scope of your smart city vision. Using the smart city vision that has been already determined, identify and debate (using the tools of your choice) the major city areas within the scope. Though it’s tempting to use only existing challenges to lead the process, turn those challenges into what you want the city to become. For example, instead of saying “Fix transportation congestion,” perhaps consider saying “Implement innovative and efficient transportation options that provide more options and shorter trips.” The details of how you go about achieving these in-scope items come next. Create a short list of goals. Step 1 will likely result in a large number of scope areas. Be sure to validate them carefully against the agreed-on smart city vision. A scope item not aligned with that vision might need to be tabled, or it might mean that the vision needs expanding. Next, group together common scoping areas and consider new language to cover the range of these areas in a single goal statement. For example, many ideas might be related to transportation, but they should roll up to a master goal. Later, you will create objectives for these goals that will define specifics. Here’s an example of a transportation goal: “Create a transportation environment that is friendly to the environment, is efficient, and reduces parking needs by 60 percent.” There’s no hard-and-fast rule on how many goals you should have, but you should be guided by what’s possible. If you have 50 goals for your small city, well, you’re probably kidding yourselves. Each goal generates many objectives, which in turn generate even more projects. Be realistic about what’s achievable at least from the perspectives of capacity and budgeting. Consider a time frame. By definition, executing on a vision takes a long time. You’re certainly looking at several years, but not so long that it becomes impractical. Agreeing on a general time frame around the defined goals in Step 2 creates an important boundary and helps to sharpen everyone’s focus. Though recognizing that a smart city strategy is never finished, you must articulate a time frame for this round of visionary goals. Identify your city's strengths. This step requires some careful and honest introspection. Articulate your city’s qualities that lend themselves to the work ahead. Recognizing these strengths helps you focus everyone’s efforts, understand potential risks, optimize for strengths, and assist in prioritizing objectives. Create a first draft of Steps 1–4. Combine Steps 1–4 into a cohesive narrative. This isn’t an essay. It should begin with the agreed-on vision. Additional support for the vision can be considered — notes on how the vision was derived, including some background and motivation, for example. This is followed by each of the goals, listed in sequence. Under each goal, provide additional supporting details and desired outcomes, and specify how they align with the vision. Include a statement on how city strengths support each goal, give approximate timelines, and provide a proposal on how the goal may be measured. Don’t make the strategic plan document a massive tome. If it is, you’ve done something wrong. Make it succinct enough that most stakeholders are comfortable reviewing it and can recall many of its highlights. Circulate the draft to your smart city stakeholders. The next few steps are what is called rinse-and-repeat. The draft strategic plan for the future of your smart city must be circulated among a broad and diverse community. Create a mechanism to make it easy to elicit feedback and track changes. Review, redraft, and recirculate. The first round of feedback will likely elicit a high volume of comments. In subsequent circulations, you should expect reduced volume. Finalize and socialize. With several iterations completed, it’s time to lock down the document. It’s clear at this point which topics have resonated with your stakeholders. Try to engage the right talent to create the final strategy document. Make this document easy to consume — one that everyone is proud to reference and share. Make the document version-controlled because you’ll create many versions. Be comfortable having the document undergo regular reviews and updates. If changes are requested, follow a similar rinse-and-repeat process. You’ve reached the end of a major milestone in the strategic planning process. Now share it widely and often. With so many channels available for both analog and digital sharing, use them all. For the core online presence — possibly, a standalone website, or separate section of your city’s main website — consider a way for people to provide comments and information on how to reach members of the team. Converting your smart city vision to action Now that you’ve completed a high-level strategy document and it’s been endorsed by all the right stakeholders, you’re ready to move on to how the strategy will be put into action. The document so far includes your city’s vision for what it wants to become, and it lists the major goals that manifest the vision. Each goal is a specific area that articulates a desired future result within some defined period. A goal typically doesn’t provide the level of detail necessary to follow a set of steps. What you need are supporting objectives for each goal. These objectives then tie directly to projects, which is how the work gets done. (The image below should help you visualize the relationship between a vision, goals, and objectives.) What is an objective? It’s a specific action that supports a result in a defined time frame. It’s short-term with a clear definition and is a necessary building block in a strategic plan. Let’s use the example of transportation to explain how you take a goal and create objectives. In the example smart city, Goal 1 is to implement innovative and efficient transportation options. The smart city steering committee or the operations team may designate a group of people who will work on determining the supporting objectives for this goal. In a smaller city, assigning a new group may be impractical, so perhaps the operations team is appropriate to do this work. At minimum, people with the proper expertise should be part of the team. In this area, you definitely want experts in the transportation and planning areas, with input from public safety team members also potentially quite valuable. The team who is assigned should be fully aware of the purpose of the goal, the way it supports the vision, the desired timeline, and the manner it is being proposed to be measured. This content lies in the approved strategy document as it stands. Conducting interviews with relevant stakeholders is a good approach as well — it might mean reaching out to people who haven’t yet been engaged in the process. Stakeholders are both internal and external to the organization. Once the team is comfortable with scope, it’s time to think about objectives. You can follow any number of models, including brainstorming and design thinking. For more on the latter, check out Design Thinking For Dummies, by Christian Müller-Roterberg. The team must always be conscious of available capacity and funding and the timeline. Deviating from this guidance may result in objectives that, when reviewed, are quickly discarded and considered a poor use of everyone’s time. To return to the transportation goal,” here's what the objectives associated with that goal might look like: Goal: Implement innovative and efficient transportation options. Supporting objective 1.1: Support migration to electric vehicles by providing electric charging stations at 60 percent of city-provided parking spaces by 2025. Supporting objective 1.2: Upgrade all traffic signals to enable dynamic signaling based on real-time data by 2024. Examples here are deliberately lightweight for the purposes of simplicity and clarity. Your actual goals and objectives may be more detailed. Let your teams determine what’s appropriate for your agency and for the purpose of increasing understanding. It’s a good idea to include clear details on any mentioned technologies and unfamiliar terms. You want all stakeholders to understand what is being proposed. After all the goals have their associated objectives identified, you enter into a cycle of rinse-and-repeat, when the document is sent out for review and comment and then updated and reviewed again. This process repeats until general agreement is reached. The steering committee then needs to sign off on the approved objectives. Finally, the completed strategic plan should be brought to your elected officials, or the equivalent, for sign-off. Want to ensure your smart city is on the right path? Avoid these ten problems.

Article / Updated 09-18-2020

So you, your colleagues, and members of the community have decided that increasing the quality of life and solving complex challenges by using technology — coupled with data, new processes, and a progressive disposition toward innovation — is the right path for your city. You want to take a smart city approach going forward. Well done! No, seriously. The decision to act on something, to take a particular path relative to the action itself, can be the hardest part. It’s always possible to become entrenched in debate, to fail to find common ground, or to reach an impasse. But once some form of agreement is reached, even if just marginally directional, you should celebrate. Anyone who has worked on a project of some significance knows the difference between the big decisions and the many small decisions that happen. Without those big decisions, the project team might struggle. But it’s a great relief when direction is given. The project team can then move ahead with their work. One of the most important big decisions that has to be made at the beginning of a smart city effort is the establishment of a vision or vision statement. This vision is a top-level guide for almost all decisions to come. Singularity University has a term for efforts with a bold vision that motivates meaningful change. It’s called massive transformative purpose (MTP). An MTP is aspirational and focused on creating a different future. Realizing an MTP requires a mindset and work environment that leans into complex problems and strives to think big. MTP needs talented and dedicated teams working smartly with a huge amount of motivation. They have successes and sometimes failures. Creating a smart city may not be the equivalent of finding cures for all types of cancer, but the outcomes of smart city efforts are significant and can impact a lot of people. Consider your vision exercise as your MTP. The smart city movement remains largely in its infancy. The vast majority of cities in the world have yet to embark on this journey (assuming that it’s the right direction for many of them). They are starting from zero. As with any initiative, it’s easy to jump directly into the tactics after receiving direction to pursue smart city goals. But that would be a mistake. The first step on any smart city journey needs to be the establishment of an agreed-on vision. That vision guides strategy, and strategy directs the work. Identifying the role of leadership for your smart city Leadership and management are terms that are often used interchangeably. That’s a mistake. Although there are some underlying similarities, they are different. Each requires and utilizes a specific approach and mindset. Management is doing things right. Leadership is doing the right things. It’s an essential distinction attributed to the management guru Peter Drucker. It’s one of the reasons that management can be learned, but leadership has qualities that some fortunate people possess from birth and can’t be easily acquired by training — such as charisma. Sure, many aspects of leadership can be learned, but it’s obvious that remarkable leaders don’t necessarily acquire their skills from books. It’s a little frustrating for those trying to be great leaders when they realize that they can learn and practice most skills but will always have a deficit relative to those unique leadership qualities that require something special. That said, the body of knowledge today on leadership is enough to help most leaders acquire the essential skills. Any given leadership team will have some with learned skills and some with natural abilities. That’s the case on city leadership teams, too. Smart city work suffers without great leadership. After all, research from across all industries suggests that projects generally succeed or fail depending on the availability of consistent high -quality leadership support. Who are these city leadership teams, and what might their responsibilities be relative to smart city work? To answer these questions, city leadership has been divided into these four basic parts: Elected leaders: Assuming some form of democratic process, these leaders, which can include the popular role of mayor, are chosen by the city’s constituents via voting and serve for a predetermined period. This is by far the most common process. In some jurisdictions around the world, city leaders are appointed by other bodies. In either case, these leaders typically have the primary function of setting policy, approving budgets, and passing legislation. They may originate an issue to debate, or an issue may be brought to them by any number of stakeholders, from community members to city staff. For example, if city staff proposes the smart city effort, elected officials are responsible for suggesting modifications, requesting more information, and approving or declining the request. Elected leaders absolutely must sign off on the smart city effort — particularly the vision, goals, and, ultimately, budget. A healthy public debate by elected leaders on the merits of the smart city work is valuable, as is eliciting public comment. Appointed leaders: Running a city on a day-to-day basis requires a set of hired leaders. The city inevitably has some form of overall leader — the public agency equivalent of a chief executive officer (CEO), such as a city manager or city administrator. This leader has assistants, deputies, and an executive team that manages the various areas of the city. These areas may include transportation, public works, planning, energy, libraries, healthcare, technology, and many more. Big cities have a large number of managed areas. The city leader and the team have the primary responsibility to implement and maintain policies. They make daily decisions and ensure that the city is operational and responsive to community needs. These leaders also propose initiatives to elected officials. A smart city effort may originate this way. It’s also possible, for example, that a strong mayor will ask for staff to develop a smart city plan and propose it to the elected leaders for approval. Appointed leaders are accountable to elected leaders and, by extension, to the community. Leadership support and oversight: In this category, a small leadership team is tasked with originating a draft policy, recommendations, or other decision-making instruments on behalf of either the elected or appointed leaders. These teams, which have a guiding function, aren’t decision-making bodies. However, they are essential contributors toward city leadership. These teams can be permanent or temporary, depending on their function. For example, the elected leaders may opt to create a committee to oversee and make recommendations and provide reporting oversight on the efforts of a smart city initiative. The team may exist only as long as the smart city initiative continues. Alternatively, a city may have a permanent transportation committee whose role is to make recommendations on matters related to transportation. Because this area is often included in smart city work, it may be the body that’s approached for leadership input. These teams are typically made up of suitably qualified members of the community. Regulatory leadership: This category is a broad one, in order to capture a range of other leaders who may have input in a city’s decision-making process. The most obvious groups include those who make regulations at a regional or national level. For example, a national set of rules on how drones can be deployed in cities may be made by a leadership group outside of a particular city, but that city would be required to adhere to the rules. This can make sense so that all cities in a region or country follow the same set of rules. People often debate how much power a city should have over its operations relative to the power of those at the regional or national level. Cities clearly want as much autonomy as possible, but the benefits of standards at a national and even global level have important merit as well. An example of an area where a city can benefit from national decision-making in the smart city domain is telecommunications. A national commitment to supporting infrastructure standards, and also financial assistance, benefits everyone. An example of global leadership is managing the climate crisis. Even though cities and nations have to sign on, the leadership and guidance may come from a global entity. Creating a vision for your smart city Your city has decided to embark on a smart city journey. Great! Now it’s time to create a vision or vision statement. What is a vision, and how is it created? Here, you’ll see vision and vision statement used interchangeably. There’s little difference between them, other than the number of words. A vision generally takes a few paragraphs to describe. A vision statement is typically only a few words long. The intent is identical. A vision is a statement of what you desire the future to be. It’s not tactics or operations. It’s not projects or deliverables. It’s simply a statement that guides the development of a strategic plan — called the envisioning process — and the decisions made throughout the journey. To help you better understand the role of a vision in the strategic plan, let’s take a quick look at strategic planning: Strategic planning is the systematic process of envisioning a desired future and translating this vision into broadly defined goals or objectives and a sequence of steps to achieve them. Put another way, the strategic plan is the translation of a strategic vision into outcomes. A vision written correctly and agreed on by relevant stakeholders holds the initiative accountable and provides essential guidance in times of uncertainty. Though it’s easy to overlook or omit this step, its value can’t be overstated. Do it. You’ll be happy you did. A vision isn’t the same as a mission. An organization's mission is what it does and how it does it, and it includes its shorter-term objectives. Your vision is none of those things. It’s long-term and future-oriented, and it describes a big-picture future state. It has clarity and passion. Here are ten tips for creating an outstanding vision statement: Think long-term. Brainstorm what a big future outcome would look like. Choose the one that gains consensus. Use simple words. Don’t use jargon. Make the statement inspiring. Ensure that the entire vision statement is easy to understand. Eliminate ambiguity. Anyone should be able to have a common understanding of what's actually involved. Consider making the statement time-bound. For example, use language such as “By 2030 . . .” Allude to organizational values and culture. Make the statement sufficiently challenging that it conveys a sense of ambition and boldness Involve many stakeholders. Here are some brief vision statement examples: Ben & Jerry's: "Making the best ice cream in the nicest possible way." Habitat for Humanity: "A world where everyone has a decent place to live." Caterpillar: "Our vision is a world in which all people's basic needs — such as shelter, clean water, sanitation, food and reliable power — are fulfilled in an environmentally sustainable way, and a company that improves the quality of the environment and the communities where we live and work." Hilton Hotels & Resorts: "To fill the earth with the light and warmth of hospitality." Samsung: "Inspire the world, create the future." Smart Dubai: “To be the happiest city on earth.” Though vision statements are typically short, no rule prohibits a more elaborate vision. As an example, here are the five goals of the San Jose, California, smart city vision: Safe city: Leverage technology to make San José the safest big city in America. Inclusive city: Ensure that all residents, businesses, and organizations can participate in and benefit from the prosperity and culture of innovation in Silicon Valley. User-friendly city: Create digital platforms to improve transparency, empower residents to actively engage in the governance of their city, and make the city more responsive to the complex and growing demands of the community. Sustainable city: Use technology to address energy, water, and climate challenges to enable sustainable growth. Demonstration city: Reimagine the city as a laboratory and platform for the most impactful, transformative technologies that will shape how people live and work in the future. Not convinced a smart city is needed? Check out the case for smart cities.

Article / Updated 09-18-2020

A smart city strategy is only as good as the degree to which it is followed. A smart city strategy that is written and agreed on and then never referenced again is worthless. Success in reaching goals relies on having a roadmap and a set of guiding principles that everyone can follow. But even with the best of intentions, individuals and teams can veer off course and, before long, find themselves way off track. Pulling the team and projects back into alignment with the strategy is then expensive and will incur delays. The risk of failure also increases. For this reason, to keep focused and aligned to the strategic goals — allowing, of course, for modifications along the way — requires an agreed-on management framework, a process for decision-making, and methods of enforcement. This is called governance. You can design an organizational structure to support the creation and implementation of your smart city strategy. Each layer of the organizational chart has a mandate and a specific set of roles and responsibilities to execute against it. Each team contributes in some way toward ensuring that the work is being governed. After all, the assumption is that all participants are focused on achieving the same goals and have agreed-on rules to get there. This requires a common understanding of why something is being done, what is being done, how it will be done, and when it will be done. Here, you discover models for both the strategic and project governance of your smart city efforts. Finally, you find suggestions on communicating the status of your strategy. Defining strategic governance The term strategic governance is most often used to describe how entire organizations are managed from the top all the way to the bottom. But it can also be used to help define the management and decision framework of large organizational programs. A smart city strategy falls into this category. As such, the definition of strategic governance runs as follows: It’s the process of envisioning a future and then managing the decisions and efforts to realize that vision. It encompasses the development, implementation, and monitoring of the strategic plan. Strategic governance drives how each team executes the vision, mission, values, policies, and processes of their respective work. It’s a top-down approach, with leadership and guidance coming from the strategy/steering committee. Governance flows down through the various organizational layers and is executed in a way that’s appropriate to each team’s responsibilities. The image you see below summarizes the role of leadership in strategic governance. These are the core responsibilities of strategic governance: Defining, agreeing on, and revising your goals and objectives Creating and enforcing policies that provide guidance on execution Approving and allocating resources Leading and controlling activities and tasks Insisting on accountability for quality delivery Monitoring performance Reporting on progress Managing smart city projects with project governance Though recognizing that creating and governing a smart city strategy is essential work, the real outcomes actually happen through your smart city projects. Even when you use the best strategy, results are bad if projects are poorly managed. Projects must meet the minimum requirements of being on time and on budget and meeting the expectations of users. There’s a vast chasm between simply managing a project and managing a project well. You will be well served by hiring skilled project managers and investing in developing the skills of your existing project managers. Project managers and their team members require the necessary organizational conditions and environment to excel. A priority ingredient when it comes to repeatedly managing successful project outcomes is an agreed-on framework for project decision-making— project governance, in other words. It’s a direct descendant of strategic governance. Though project managers and their team members focus on the details of running a project, project governance provides them with valuable guidance, oversight, and timely decision-making. Think of project governance as a structured system of processes and rules used to manage a project. It provides a decision-making framework to ensure alignment between the project team members, executives, and the rest of the organization. Project governance can also be used to decide the sequence and timing of projects, including the identification and assignment of project managers and team members. This image summarizes the core components of project governance. These are the core components of project governance for smart cities: Team structure: Establish the organizational structure and reporting relationships between all relevant project stakeholders. Role definitions: Provide all stakeholders with detailed information on their role and responsibilities. Decision-making authority can be defined here as well. Project management plan: This formal document gets approved by all who define exactly how the project will be executed, managed, monitored, and controlled. Project schedule: This list of dependent and independent project milestones, activities, and deliverables is coupled with their estimated and actual start and finish dates. Issue review process: This agreed-on guide specifies how different types of issues encountered during the project will be handled. Reporting plan: This plan designates a process and a set of agreed-on methods and channels for ensuring clear and frequent communications to all stakeholders. Risk register: This one acts as a repository for logging and managing project risks. It also documents what actions were taken to mitigate or directly address the risk, if any. Good governance at the societal level of a smart city The United Nations (UN) defines governance as the process of decision-making and the process by which decisions are made or not made. They further define good governance as the processes and institutions that produce results that meet the needs of society while making the best use of resources at their disposal. The UN defines these eight characteristics of good governance: Participation: Decisions must involve both men and women, through either direct engagement or representation. Those involved must be informed and organized. Consensus oriented: Society represents many points of view. Mediation can be used to capture different interests in order to reach a broad consensus on what is in the best interest of the whole community. Accountability: Government organizations, the private sector, and civil society must be accountable to the public and to their institutional stakeholders. Accountability can be enforced only by way of transparency and the rule of law. Transparency: With transparency, decisions and enforcement are made in a manner that follows rules and regulations. Information on such decisions must be available to those affected. Responsiveness: Institutions and their processes must serve stakeholders within a reasonable timeframe. Effectiveness and efficiency: Institutions must produce results that meet the needs of society while making the best use of resources. Processes must be sustainable and also Equity and inclusiveness: All members of society must feel that they have a stake in decision-making and do not feel excluded from the mainstream. Rule of law: This is the requirement that legal frameworks are fair and enforced impartially. Regularly updating and reporting on your smart city project status High-quality communication is a fundamental component of strategy and project success. In fact, 80 percent of a project manager's role is communicating to stakeholders. With poor communication, necessary information may not be exchanged effectively. This can have many negative impacts, including delays, omissions in scheduled tasks, bad decisions, and project errors to your smart city. High-quality communication increases the likelihood of project success. Effective status reporting is a proven method of good communication. Here, you discover the use of project status reporting, but it’s just as applicable to strategy reporting as well. Project status reporting is the regular, formalized reporting on the health of a project. It’s a project management monitoring and controlling function. Project managers typically perform this reporting responsibility, but really large projects can benefit from a dedicated person or team. Reporting is used as a vehicle to communicate to stakeholders in order to keep them informed, solicit feedback and questions, elicit action, and assist with timely decision-making. The frequency of reporting is typically decided on and documented when the project management plan is created. Not every report is sent to every stakeholder. The right report should be created for the right people. As always, know your audience. Keep in mind that electronic project status reporting is one important form of communication, but all other channels should be kept open and used. Project managers can still speak to their colleagues as well. Yes, that means visiting their offices or picking up the phone. Status reports also comprise an historical record of a project. The reports can be used to attain lessons learned, serve as a reference for any questions, and capture the strengths and weaknesses of various aspects of the project. Project status reporting can include Overall project health Schedule and budget status relative to a specific stage of the project Project summary and milestone status Significant-accomplishments status Challenges-and-risks summary Open issues that must be handled Change requests Project metrics Finally, when it comes to writing up a status report, here are some best practices you should follow to keep your smart city stakeholder informed: Consistency: Establish and maintain a uniform format, distribution frequency, and method. Metrics: Create and report on metrics decided during the planning phase of the project. Process: Develop and communicate the reporting process to team members with reporting responsibilities. Simplicity: Ensure that reports are clear and effective. Verify: Regularly confirm that distributed reports are adding value and are reaching all the right people at the right time. Tools: Identify and use reporting tools that lower the burden of report development and distribution.

Article / Updated 09-18-2020

Urban innovation is a primary element of the smart city. However, that is often a term that gets thrown around with little understanding of how it truly impacts the development of a smart city. Since there is sometimes disagreement about the term innovation, so here are a couple of definitions to help you understand this topic: Innovation: Converting ideas into value Urban innovation: Discovering and implementing new ideas to meet city challenges Okay, now let’s talk about water. All living things on Planet Earth need water, and wherever you find water, you’ll find life. To survive, humans need regular access to drinking water. In their early nomadic times, as they wandered, they would need to find streams, rivers, and lakes. Later, when humans began to settle in small gathering places, they needed to be close to sources of water. Wells were dug into the water table, which provided a reliable water supply. Cisterns were created that gathered rainwater. In other instances, where water was relatively close, it was transported by people carrying baskets and other containers on their backs or heads or in their hands. Later, animals were used to pull carts. In some parts of the world, water is still transported by humans and animals. As human settlements grew, demand for water for drinking and agriculture also increased. Systems were required in order to bring larger volumes of water predictably from the source. To solve this problem, humans invented the aqueduct — an elaborate combination of tunnels, surface channels, canals, clay pipes, and bridges — to move water to wherever it was needed. Aqueducts that covered short distances were used in the earliest days of civilization, beginning with the Minoans on Crete, over 4,000 years ago. More sophisticated, longer-distance systems were developed during the Assyrian Empire. Later, the Babylonians, the Greeks, and communities across Persia, Egypt, and China all constructed elaborate aqueduct systems, including communal drinking fountains. Finally, it was the Romans who mastered the building of aqueducts. Ambitious projects overcame all kinds of difficult terrain, including engineering, to move water upward. Many forms of aqueduct construction could be seen across the Roman Empire. The water supplied not only all basic needs and agriculture but also large public baths, fountains, and private homes. Many remnants of these systems can still be seen, scattered across the landscape. Aqueduct systems were essential for enabling communities to grow and thrive. In particular, major Italian cities such as Rome were able to prosper over the centuries because of the regular supply of water. Aqueduct engineering can be considered one of the most important urban innovations of its time. Human ingenuity brought to bear on a pressing and essential need resulted in nothing less than a transformation. History is replete with these game-changing innovations in an urban context. Humans have solved many intractable issues over several thousand years (though many more remain to be solved). The results have been nothing less than miraculous, enabling them to design and build dense urban environments such as the greater area of Tokyo, Japan, which now is home to over 35 million residents. Here’s a list of some of the most important urban innovations: Roads and railways Harbors and airports Electricity Skyscrapers The Internet Sanitation systems Traffic signals Street lighting Urban planning Drainage Parks The grid system Public transportation Telecommunications Each one of these items, and many more (alone and together), has made cities smarter, and typically better, places to live. Urban innovation now continues at an accelerated pace. In fact, you can’t separate this topic from the topic of smart cities. Urban innovation is largely driving the pace of change in cities. Relying on urban innovation networks to solve smart city challenges Solving the problems of the world’s communities requires the participation of a wide range of stakeholders. It’s not possible for a local city agency to solve every issue: No single organization has the budget, time, or talent. The challenges are just too large, often regional, and highly diverse for any single entity to tackle. Solving these challenges today requires a network of participants. Fortunately, a movement of urban innovators in cities all over the world are rolling up their sleeves and making things happen. Disparate stakeholders are joining forces to solve some of the world’s most intractable urban issues. Urban innovation networks are clusters of various people and organizations who are connecting and collaborating on solving challenges. They’re interested in, and invested in, game-changing, new ideas, often (but not always) technologically driven. These networks are trying to make a difference in areas such as sustainability, transportation, inclusion, climate, governance, equity and equality, public safety, waste management, and more. Fundamentally, efforts have one large-scale focus: improving quality of life (QoL). Here are just a few of the areas where participants in urban innovation networks come from: Academia Vending Local government Regional and national governments Student General community Specialized institution Regional, national, or international organization The ways in which these disparate players connect and collaborate are as diverse as the cities and participants themselves. An urban innovation network can be a formal organization with a charter and rules or an ad hoc collection of entities that tap into each other’s skills and resources as necessary. It can be centralized by way of city hall or a motivated vendor. Universities have been particularly active in building out urban innovation networks, to tackle a single-focus issue or a suite of challenges. Urban innovation networks reflect an acknowledgment that the world’s biggest urban problems will be solved when people work together. Done right, they are powerhouses for creating and sharing knowledge. If humans are going to create cities that they aspire to live in, their future will be built on networks of motivated, empowered, and talented participants. Cities are now too complex and interdependent for any single entity to lead efforts alone. The best solutions won’t necessarily spring from government buildings (although a few will); instead, support and success for smart city efforts, powered by urban innovation, will come from entrepreneurship, the exchange of ideas, the synergy of resources, and the energy of a diverse community. Creating urban innovation labs to advance smart cities Solving today’s tough urban problems in the years ahead will require a variety of new approaches. Albert Einstein, the German-born physicist, is reported to have said, rightly, “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” To create urban innovation, we humans will need new, dedicated processes and talent to experiment and test original ideas and technologies. One approach is the creation of urban innovation labs, which are entities tasked with developing leading-edge ideas for a city’s most intractable challenges. The labs are typically physical locations that support the experimentation, testing, and — assuming success —deployment of new solutions. They’re laboratories of urban innovation. There’s no agreed-on blueprint for creating an urban innovation lab. The first step for a city is to agree that such a lab has value and then to either build one or collaborate with an external party in delivering its value. Many cities create their own labs and house them in city-owned or -leased buildings. Others collaborate with private entities and universities that partner to provide capabilities as a service. Cities that support these labs share at least two common — and still quite rare — qualities: They have a higher tolerance for risk and are comfortable granting some autonomy and freedom to innovate to these innovation teams. Urban innovation labs can work in alignment with smart city activities or they can be independent of those activities. Either way, their work is typically focused on pressing city issues. Their independence from the requirements to support core city functions gives them the flexibility to experiment and not be constrained by regular city operations. Regardless, the lab gets no free pass when it comes to abiding by all city rules and regulations. To embrace urban innovation labs, cities must have a higher tolerance for risk. This is because innovation, by definition, is riskier. Specifically, innovators must be allowed to try strategies that have a higher likelihood of being unsuccessful. Being able to approach problems with this mindset increases the chance of a unique solution emerging and — in the case of a failure — creates continuous opportunities for learning. Unlike in the private sector, where some amount of experimentation and failure is expected relative to advancing new, proposed products and services, the public sector isn’t historically predisposed to this approach. Public officials have an enormous obligation to be fiscally responsible when managing taxpayer funds, and, with so many priorities to serve a community, the appetite for risky bets is always low. It’s fair to say that the proposal for an urban innovation lab is a hard sell. That’s why you don’t yet see many of them. But the tide is turning: A broader recognition that innovation is essential to solving the world’s greatest challenges is helping communities and city officials recognize the benefits of paying more attention to, and focusing on, processes that are game-changing. In addition, the success of urban innovation labs in several cities is providing good evidence for making the case for smart cities. In developing an urban innovation lab, city leaders must emphasize the focus on experimentation, learning, and efficiency. Though these labs can exist independently of a smart city strategy, there appears to be important value in determining whether they can accelerate and improve the performance of smart city efforts. Aligning their goals may be a good approach for some agencies. Sample case: The Bloomberg Philanthropies i-teams Mike Bloomberg, a former tech CEO and the former mayor of New York City, created the American Cities Initiative as part of his philanthropic efforts. Its purpose is to support US cities in responding to major challenges and moving them and the nation forward. It has these three key themes: Promote bold leadership and effective problem solving. Support critical policy actions. Encourage artists, residents, entrepreneurs, and others to uplift cities and solve problems. A subset of the American Cities Initiative is support for the creation of innovation teams (or i-teams) to help cities achieve their goals. Recognizing some of the core challenges that cities face — dwindling budgets, increased citizen expectations, and evolving societal needs, just to name a few — Bloomberg Philanthropies funds i-teams to help city leaders drive bold innovation. The teams conduct qualitative and quantitative research to assess local conditions and then develop innovative solutions that are measured against goals. These teams have had success in diverse areas, including helping mayors with economic development, customer service, and murder reduction. These teams are now providing value outside the US, from Canada to Israel and France. As of 2019, almost 20 cities were participating. I-teams can be considered a temporary type of virtual urban innovation lab.