When Governments Go Social, Positive Citizen Experiences Can Follow | A Smarter Planet Blog Today a growing number of cities and counties are embracing social technologies to create “Smart Communities.” According to the World Foundation for Smart Communities, these are communities that make a “conscious effort to use information technology to transform life and work within a region in significant and fundamental, rather than incremental, ways. This transformation is beneficial to the community and attracts local participation and cooperation among community groups, government, business and education.”

When Governments Go Social, Positive Citizen Experiences Can Follow | A Smarter Planet Blog

Today a growing number of cities and counties are embracing social technologies to create “Smart Communities.” According to the World Foundation for Smart Communities, these are communities that make a “conscious effort to use information technology to transform life and work within a region in significant and fundamental, rather than incremental, ways. This transformation is beneficial to the community and attracts local participation and cooperation among community groups, government, business and education.”

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African Bus Routes Redrawn Using Cell-Phone Data | MIT Technology Review Researchers at IBM, using movement data collected from millions of cell-phone users in Ivory Coast in West Africa, have developed a new model for optimizing an urban transportation system. The IBM model prescribed changes in bus routes around the around Abidjan, the nation’s largest city. These changes—based on people’s movements as discerned from cell-phone records—could, in theory, slash travel times 10 percent.

African Bus Routes Redrawn Using Cell-Phone Data | MIT Technology Review

Researchers at IBM, using movement data collected from millions of cell-phone users in Ivory Coast in West Africa, have developed a new model for optimizing an urban transportation system.

The IBM model prescribed changes in bus routes around the around Abidjan, the nation’s largest city. These changes—based on people’s movements as discerned from cell-phone records—could, in theory, slash travel times 10 percent.

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Cities are finding useful ways of handling a torrent of data | The Economist Many cities around the country are accumulating data faster than they know what to do with. One approach is to give them to the public. For example, San Francisco, New York, Philadelphia, Boston and Chicago are or soon will be sharing the grades that health inspectors give to restaurants with an online restaurant directory.

Cities are finding useful ways of handling a torrent of data | The Economist

Many cities around the country are accumulating data faster than they know what to do with. One approach is to give them to the public. For example, San Francisco, New York, Philadelphia, Boston and Chicago are or soon will be sharing the grades that health inspectors give to restaurants with an online restaurant directory.

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Creating a More Efficient Streamlined Government with Citizen Collaboration | Citizen IBM 

The ever-growing pace of urbanization brings many challenges to government organizations, including increased demands for services with reduced sources of revenue, and calls for more accountability, openness and transparency. Forward thinking public sector leaders know that they can – and must – convene the right people, technologies and strategies to support growth and prosperity. Simultaneously, they also must ensure a safe and healthy environment in which their citizens may enjoy a high quality of life.

Enabling growth and prosperity requires collaboration – across boundaries and among organizations and departments – in ways that might have been previously unthinkable. Technological improvements are enabling governments to share not only big machines like backhoes and emergency vehicles, but also services, big data analytics and computing capabilities.

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citycollaboration: Are the municipal leaders capable? According to a recent study by IBM’s Institute of Business Value, “A Vision of Smarter Cities: How Cities Can Lead the Way into a Prosperous and Sustainable Future,” municipal leaders need to think about three things in order to transform their region into a “smarter” city. To take advantage of this vision, city leaders should: Assemble a team: City administrators need to work seamlessly across their own organizational boundaries and partner effectively with other levels of government to tackle issues that require significant collaboration among city, state or provincial leaders, as well as national levels of government. In addition to formulating new policies themselves, cities must be able to articulate challenges they may face when policies are made elsewhere. Think revolution, not evolution: Building a next-generation city requires a municipality to be more than focused or efficient. City leaders need to look at systems, most of which are interconnected, and enable people and objects to interact in entirely new ways. These systems can use instruments to analyze and report on the exact condition of individual parts, such as city traffic systems that re-route vehicles around automobile accidents. By using “intelligent” systems, cities can respond to changes quickly and accurately, and better predict and plan for future events. Target all city systems, not just one: Cities obviously must prioritize their challenges, but the inter-relationships between the various systems operating in a city means that solving problems in just one system is not a viable long-term option. A holistic strategy that looks at all of a city’s systems, and builds in system-wide feedback mechanisms, is a better way to deliver sustainable prosperity to its citizens. Photo via; http://vi.sualize.us/amy_casey_brown_art_red_connect_picture_pK5j.html

citycollaboration:

Are the municipal leaders capable?

According to a recent study by IBM’s Institute of Business Value, “A Vision of Smarter Cities: How Cities Can Lead the Way into a Prosperous and Sustainable Future,” municipal leaders need to think about three things in order to transform their region into a “smarter” city. To take advantage of this vision, city leaders should:

Assemble a team: City administrators need to work seamlessly across their own organizational boundaries and partner effectively with other levels of government to tackle issues that require significant collaboration among city, state or provincial leaders, as well as national levels of government. In addition to formulating new policies themselves, cities must be able to articulate challenges they may face when policies are made elsewhere.

Think revolution, not evolution: Building a next-generation city requires a municipality to be more than focused or efficient. City leaders need to look at systems, most of which are interconnected, and enable people and objects to interact in entirely new ways. These systems can use instruments to analyze and report on the exact condition of individual parts, such as city traffic systems that re-route vehicles around automobile accidents. By using “intelligent” systems, cities can respond to changes quickly and accurately, and better predict and plan for future events.

Target all city systems, not just one: Cities obviously must prioritize their challenges, but the inter-relationships between the various systems operating in a city means that solving problems in just one system is not a viable long-term option. A holistic strategy that looks at all of a city’s systems, and builds in system-wide feedback mechanisms, is a better way to deliver sustainable prosperity to its citizens.

Photo via; http://vi.sualize.us/amy_casey_brown_art_red_connect_picture_pK5j.html

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SXSW: Don’t Fight City Hall—Hack It | Time At SXSW: Rachel Hoat, the wunderkind chief digital officer of New York, talked about the way that Gotham has begun to use digital tools to streamline governance and make City Hall quicker and more responsive. Abhi Nemani, the director of strategy at Code for America—a civic-minded startup that lives up to its nickname as the Peace Corps for Geeks—discussed how nimble techies can help even the smallest cities innovate. And Erika Diamond of Recyclebank—a now mature green startup that rewards people for taking green actions, including recycling—addressed the way the private sector can work hand in hand with digitally savvy city governments. Read more: http://science.time.com/2013/03/12/south-by-southwest-dont-fight-city-hall-hack-it/#ixzz2NP8XWj7v

SXSW: Don’t Fight City Hall—Hack It | Time

At SXSW: Rachel Hoat, the wunderkind chief digital officer of New York, talked about the way that Gotham has begun to use digital tools to streamline governance and make City Hall quicker and more responsive. Abhi Nemani, the director of strategy at Code for America—a civic-minded startup that lives up to its nickname as the Peace Corps for Geeks—discussed how nimble techies can help even the smallest cities innovate. And Erika Diamond of Recyclebank—a now mature green startup that rewards people for taking green actions, including recycling—addressed the way the private sector can work hand in hand with digitally savvy city governments.

Read more: http://science.time.com/2013/03/12/south-by-southwest-dont-fight-city-hall-hack-it/#ixzz2NP8XWj7v

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Mayor Emanuel Expands Open Data on City Portal with Executive Order

Today, the City of Chicago expanded its open data efforts with an executive order by Mayor Emanuel.

“An open and transparent administration makes it easier for residents to hold their government accountable, but it also serves as a platform for innovative tools that improve the lives of all residents,” said Mayor Emanuel, in statement on the city website.

“Chicago’s vibrant technology and startup community will leverage this wealth of open, public data to create applications that will improve service delivery and lead to greater quality of service for residents and more public engagement in City government.”

The city released 21 new “high value” datasets today, including real-time traffic data from Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) buses, environmental data, liquor regulation, and recycling programs.

When asked what made these datasets high value, the Mayor’s Office responded via email.

“The datasets released today aren’t necessarily more critical than the more than 400 others that have been released,” wrote Caroline Weisser, a spokesperson for the Mayor’s Office. 

“They continue the commitment the administration has taken to being a leader in municipal open data. The executive order itself codifies the actions that Brett and John Tolva, the CTO, have taken over the past year and a half to pursue both open data policy and detailed analytics in tandem. Making a firm commitment to continue adding writable data to the dataportal about how the city works provides the raw materials for the City to collaborate and innovate with the developer community, which ultimately helps the City do a better job of serving Chicagoans.”

For more context on opening government, the Chicago way, read our feature from 2011 and more recent coverage of how Brett Goldstein, Chicago’s chief information officer and chief data officer, is using data in the public sector.

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The amazing heart of a Smarter City: the innovation boundary « The Urban Technologist

We now have a greater purpose that demands innovation: the need to make our cities and communities more sustainable, vibrant and equal in the face of the severe economic, environmental and demographic pressures that we face; and that are well described in the Royal Society’s “People and the Planet” report

…

All the evidence, including the scientific analysis of the behaviour and sustainability of city systems by the Physicist Geoffrey West, points to the need to create innovations that change the way that cities work.

But where will this innovation come from?

I think innovation of this sort takes place at an “innovation boundary”: the boundary between capability and need.

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