Strategic Direction and Innovation in Key Services for the City

New theories of public governance and digital governance have reformulated the provision of public services in the context of open systems, giving rise to urban public services that use new emerging technologies, as well as internal and external collaborations, to improve the effectiveness, efficiency, and legitimacy of services. In this session, speakers shared their experiences in managing these new key urban services, focusing on strategy and innovation.

Speakers:

• Lisa Trickett: Sustainability Area of the Birmingham City Council
• Carsten Brosda: Head of the Digital City Steering Centre of Hamburg
• Giacomo Parenti: City Manager of the Florence City Council
• Eduardo Fernández Giménez: R&D innovation and urban sustainability Manager at Urbaser, Madrid
• Carlos Vayas: Metropolitan Director of the Quito City Council

Lisa Trickett

Her presentation is based on the explanation of the model and work system implemented in the city of Birmingham, based on the following graphic:

Carsten Brosda

He raises the particular problem of the city of Hamburg, which, having the commercial port (one of the busiest in Europe) in the center of the city, poses many inconveniences for properly managing road traffic and the transport of goods. He outlines the basic objectives of his organization: “Improve the quality of municipal services; optimize and manage city traffic; open innovation spaces for companies, facilitate innovation.” He raises the challenge of optimizing the large amount of data generated.

He cites as an example to follow, the university hospital of the city, in which everything is managed digitally without the need for paper.

Giacomo Parenti

Florence also presents particularities that are a challenge, it has 378,000 inhabitants, but 560,000 users a day, having a lot of tourism is a great difficulty to manage, because it faces a very high population density daily. “The challenge is to provide a more livable city for those who live there, a better experience for tourists, and the best possible scenario for companies of any size that operate daily in the metropolitan area.”

He also highlights “the profusion of electric transport of taxis, public feet, streetcar and bus.”

Eduardo Fernández

He presents the case of Urbaser, a Spanish waste management company. “The most important thing about the key services: collection and cleaning, water management, green areas is to cover the entire cycle.” Citizens and governments must think and decide whether it is better to invest in collection or in improving and/or increasing recycling plants.”

“Citizen awareness, modifying the legislative framework, improving taxation (better adjusting taxes) is essential. “The citizen wants to make an effort and participate, if that effort is recognized… especially from an economic point of view (reduction of garbage rates).”

He also showed the example of a garbage collection machine patented by them, in which the operators who use it participated in the design of the same. The machine, which is used in Madrid, has saved a lot of collection time.

Carlos Vayas

His presentation is based on explaining the work of the Quito Innovation Laboratory, of which he is the director. “The mission of the laboratory is to promote a culture of innovation and co-creation, facilitating the participation of actors from multiple disciplines who contribute to methodologies and solutions that can benefit citizens in key themes mainly oriented to social, urban and mobility development.” We work under three axes, innovation in mobility, in urbanism and society. the problem of mobility.” “We have been able to create multi-transport routes throughout the city.”

He also mentions the existence of a web platform where citizens can express their suggestions, miquito.com.