Data is key to helping cities manage services

At today’s UCLG Congress, IBM led a panel discussion on the impact of technology on cities and how understanding the nexus between different services could help cities to better manage their service delivery.

Opening the morning session on Smarter Cities, UCLG Secretary General Josep Roig set the tone for the discussion by emphasising the need for public-private cooperation in the field of information and communication technology. “We need to start a dialogue so that the needs of citizens can be met by new technologies,” said Roig.

Five years ago, UCLG made a conscious policy decision to work with IBM in order to develop the right infrastructure for cities.

“There is one point I would like to emphasise that local authorities and public administrations should be governed and managed with the logic of a businessman,” said Kadir Topbas, Mayor of Istanbul and President of UCLG. “In 2008, we made a decision to work with the business world, specifically IBM, and we wanted to involve them in our work to share their experience and to solve problems together.”

Michael Dixon, General Manager at IBM Smarter Cities, said city leaders had to realise that the public expected the same level of connectivity, the same level of service, and the same level of value-for-money from the public sector as the private sector.

Taking into account that fact-based management relying on data and predictive analytics rather than individual judgment was becoming accepted practice for business managers, city leaders needed similarly to look at the potential of ICT to assist them in managing city services.

“What we are seeing today is not obvious, as we are seeing city functions change dramatically but we cannot see the change as it is taking place as the result of an invisible infrastructure, which is being quickly added to cities,” said Dixon. “We are seeing the integration of cities for the first time around function.”

He presented several examples of how understanding the nexus between different services was important to delivering better services.

“Water is an integral part of health, energy and transport systems with 50 percent of the world’s hospital beds occupied by people with water-related illness and energy production accounts for half of all water usage in the US and only slightly less in the EU,” said Dixon. “Transport is affected by water with drought causing problems for infrastructure and of course issues around coastal flooding.”

Similarly, health care is fast being seen as having a very strong relationship between education, social services and health services themselves.

“As a result, governments need a level of instrumentation and interconnection that is unprecedented and we are seeing for the first time the ability for government entities to provide services at cost-effective capability in a way that hasn’t been done before,” commented Dixon. “The electronic implementation of some government systems has given leaders the ability to innovate over government services.”

Examples cited by Dixon included flood control and water management in the Netherlands; mapping relationships between individuals in fighting organised crime in Asia; and analysing data for traffic and congestion management in China. China is also making great strides in using data to assist in health care.

“The Chinese health system is undertaking very focused analysis of patient-related data and there are many benefits to be gained from direct decision-making based on the statistics, which enables health services to move health care away from acute care hospitals except where it is needed,” explained Dixon. “Increasingly, we will see services being delivered in future by online monitoring provided in homes.”

Dixon closed his presentation saying that despite globalisation, there is a strong trend back to local capability and the importance of city leadership. “Leadership is what makes the difference between a city that is working hard on everything and a city that has priorities and is focused on making them a reality.”

Josep Roig agreed saying that as part of that leadership, cities need to look at hiring a Chief Innovation Officer. “When we started our Commission on Innovation and we asked if there was a CTO or CIO in the city, we knew from the answer to the question how much innovation there was in the city.”