In the transformation process to a smart city, all departments of an administration and, in addition, areas that lie outside their immediate scope are addressed. For this reason, many cities form their smart city strategy as an umbrella strategy with objectives, guiding principles or funding vehicles for the smart city transformation process. The measures are then implemented in the individual areas of responsibility. A monitoring system is being developed to track and discuss the progress of the transformation and to derive new measures.
Challenge an goals
In 2020, novatlantis and Smart Community conducted a preliminary study with the help of interviews with experts to demonstrate the need of cities for a Smart City (SC) monitoring system and its feasibility. The goal is to develop a practicable, flexible and yet meaningful SC monitoring system. In order to make optimal use of synergies and to be able to map complex issues, the monitoring system will be located on a superordinate (meta) level: Indicators of established (specialized) programs and tools are used. Already published data is used and these are placed in the SC context. Examples: An evaluation in the area of “Communication” in “Green City” flows into the SC area “Open Government”, the one in the area of “Mobility” from “Energy City” into the SC area “Mobi- lity” or the “Child-friendly Community” finds its way into the SC area “Living”. Depending on the question, individual indicators or aggregated evaluations of these programs can be included. Additions to digitalization are made according to international systems (such as the International Telecommunication Union (ITU)) and according to the needs of the partner cities.
Advantages of this approach are:
- complex systems do not have to be mapped by monothematic metrics, but by an assessment of the specialized programs,
- Data collected in a specialized program is used for SC monitoring and vice versa: if data is collected in SC monitoring, it can be used later in the specialized program,
- Reduced workload for the cities due to data delivery from the sectoral programs and less duplication of data collection.
The results are presented in a visually appealing way in the SC Performance Wheel. Indicators, processes and framework conditions are defined and clarified in the project.