“Challenges of Open Governance and Urban Innovation” Debate Summary.

Speakers:

Minerva Tantoco – CTO – New York City

Aníbal Gaviria – Mayor – City of Medellin – Colombia

Rob Bernard – Chief Environmental and Cities Strategist – Microsoft Corporation – Seattle – USA

Mark Kleinman – Director, Economic and Business Policy – Greater London Authority – London – UK

Charbel Aoun – President, Smart Cities Segment – Schneider Electric – London – UK

Moderated by:

Stephen Goldsmith – Director, Innovations in American Government program and Data-Smart city solutions – Harvard Kennedy School of Government – Cambridge – USA

Here are the highlights of this presentation on governance and innovation:

Aníbal Gaviria – Medellín

The Mayor of Medellín based his speech on highlighting the main initiatives of his city related to open governance:

• Days of life and equity: These are carried out in the different neighborhoods or communes and consist of creating individualized projects for each community, collaborating previously with them and integrating them into the entire process.
• Mi Medellín: An online tool that allows written communication between citizens and the municipal council in order to solve a multitude of problems.
• Pedagogical urbanism: citizen participation in the territories to be intervened, both in the design of the interventions and in their implementation and maintenance.
• Huecosmed: through the telephone, citizens can send a photograph of any urban defect indicating its location to the city council so that from there the order is activated to be fixed in less than two days.
• Online security: Citizens can anonymously report the commission of a crime online so that they do not run the risk of being retaliated against. It is a way of bringing the citizen closer to justice.
• Citizens can obtain all the information in a geolocated manner, in real time of the state of a public work and its characteristics (cost, execution times, etc.)

He concludes his speech by highlighting that “in order to exercise and structure leadership in governance, first of all, citizens must be educated in that culture, in the culture of proposing.

Minerva Tantoco – NYC

She begins by explaining the specific problems of NYC in terms of governance, which lies in coordinating the 60 agencies or independent departments that intervene in the management of the city.

What is the role as director of technology of the city?

The need for a common plan that unites all the organizations with strategic technology planning, coordinate it to be able to transmit it to the whole team, with the main objective that everyone rows in the same direction.

The main objective is for the city to be egalitarian and for this balance to be possible, technology is the key to the process.

Another notable aspect is that “We must work as in a CRM model. The citizen is a client and as such must be treated. It is a priority that you can have centralized in a single channel all access to your needs.

She concludes her speech expressing the idea that “technology is easier than cultural change, we are on the surface at the beginning of the change”.

Mark Kleinman – London

After listening to the first interventions, he highlights the idea that large cities copy each other, and should copy each other, and that is a positive thing.

He continues to break down the details of the London Smart Plan with a view to the year 2050: First, a council of delegates was created that brought together people from all spheres of society (university professors, scientists, educators, technicians, Start up leaders, representatives of culture) to advise the mayor and his team. The infrastructures have been analyzed and a plan has been drawn up, but it has been analyzed in all fields: water, transport, light, etc. quantifying absolutely everything.

He tells us that London is growing at a rate of 100,000 people, generating 30,000 jobs annually as well. This can be a problem that must be faced in the most “smart” way possible so that it is sustainable in every way.

The other fundamental pillar to draw up this plan is the conversation with the citizen. Dialogue with the citizen becomes part of the core of the strategy. This dialogue between the citizen and the government is still very traditional and greater innovation is required. Attempts are made to carry out projects on a smaller scale and then reproduce them on a larger scale.

Another noteworthy aspect is the great boom of startups that have settled in the city. The way to treat this fact has been first to let them try to work freely and then listen to them and give them solutions: Better space, better broadband, cheaper rents. “New ideas are sometimes produced in old buildings and that has to be resolved in an open way”.

Rob Bernard – Seattle

He develops his speech around a series of questions:

How to solve sustainability in the world? The answer is that first of all it must be solved in the context of cities, since all the problems develop from their growth.

What solutions can Microsoft offer? Through local partners who can have a closer relationship with the city to better involve with the environment.

Microsoft, due to its global reach and implementation, can detect great innovation capacity in small sites that can later be replicated on a large scale.

How do we create the scalable and replicable model? The way of working is always the same, Microsoft works to channel all the information between all the areas of action in a city and all the intervening agents. That model can always be scalable.

To conclude, he stated that technological innovation is responsible for breaking down the barriers between the different watertight silos of cities and is the key to working in a cross-cutting and horizontal approach.

Charbel Aoun – Schneider Electric

In the first place, he exposed his ideas through the explanation of several examples implemented in the city of Barcelona: open governance is to empower people, the ideas that emanate from citizens are interesting and in Barcelona he has put it into practice with various applications such as public transport. It marks the need for a data aggregation platform to connect the areas of the city.

It also highlights the change in the way of working through a more collaborative model that includes Open Data: For example, they meet with local SMEs and work with them to know how to proceed, they work in a transversal way.

The challenge of moving to a transversal model is how much the transformation will cost, what data to extract and how to manage it. Open data is collected, but it must be analyzed and filtered. That data has to be converted into value and that has a technological cost. It has already been done in the automotive or financial sector but expresses the need for cities to be prepared and have solid foundations to be able to implement that model of work and management. Otherwise it will not be possible.

Another aspect is that this leadership in the process of change is exercised from the highest part of the institutions (as has been done from Medellín), only then will it be possible to integrate and infect all the agents involved in the process.

He concludes his speech stating, in reference to open governance, that “to complete a puzzle we need a complete picture of it as a reference and for that it is necessary that previously the cities offer an accurate photograph of what they need and what they want is clearly defined”.