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1 ICT for City Management ICT for City Management Using information and communications technology to enable, engage and empower city stakeholders A research project conducted by the Economist Intelligence Unit Sponsored by Siemens

ICT for City Management: Using information and communications technology to enable, engage and empower city stakeholders

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1ICT for City Management

ICT for City ManagementUsing information and communications technology to enable, engage and empower city stakeholders

A research project conducted by the Economist Intelligence UnitSponsored by Siemens

3ICT for City Management

Foreword

This study by the Economist Intelligence Unit, sponsored by Siemens, focuses on the role of ICT in four areas crucial to effective city governance: competitiveness, physical infrastructure, the natural environment and public administration. It explores how the use of ICT helps cities reap the benefits of agglomeration while mitigating the costs of increasing urbanization that can hinder economic activity and damage the natural environment.

This study draws our attention to sev-eral important characteristics of ICT. Firstly, the virtual world reflects the realities of the physical world, so leveraging ICT for improved city governance requires orga-nizational change in city administrations. Conflicting regulations, complicated proce-dures, and silo mindsets must change be-fore e-government can deliver on its poten-tial. Secondly, the medium of technology is interactive: as many of the case studies included in this report indicate, the average citizen has an important role to play, not just in contributing data anonymously but also in developing applications for anything from spotting trees to crime prevention measures. The creativity and contribution of citizens must be tapped.

Lastly, it is important to remember that in networked technology, the road to

Recent research by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Develop-

ment (OECD) indicates that a little more than half the population of OECD countries lives in cities, and that capital cities account for about half of gross domestic product.1 In developing countries, cities are often even larger relative to national econo-mies. Globally, urban centers account for an overwhelming proportion of national population, employment, output, industry clusters and patents. This is not a new phe-nomenon. Since the Industrial Revolution in the nineteenth century the importance of cities has been growing steadily. The vi-sionary social observer Jane Jacobs noted many years ago that cities are the engines of national economic development.2

A much more recent development is the emergence and proliferation of informa-tion and communications technology (ICT). In the past half century ICT has already changed our lives and our behavior in nu-merous ways. With the advent of 24-7 con-nectivity and cloud computing we are start-ing to get a glimpse of how this technology can achieve significantly more, and reach its true potential. Indeed, it is fast becom-ing the “fifth utility” (after electricity, water, gas and telephony), in that some basic level of service is increasingly considered essen-tial to meet citizens’ everyday needs.

Foreword

1) “Competitive Cities in the Global Economy”, OECD (2006)2) Jane Jacobs, Cities and the Wealth of Nations: Principles of Economic Life, Vintage Books, New York (1985).

ubiquity is a long one, riddled with uncer-tainties. For instance, I first encountered intelligent vehicle highway systems as a researcher for the Canadian Royal Commis-sion on National Passenger Transportation in the early 1990s. Nearly twenty years have passed but the technology is not in common use; far from it. This is because a sponsor of new technology must play two games: a game of value and a game of perceptions. This study is important be-cause it addresses the latter: by adminis-tering surveys to public officials, business and private individuals it can help city of-ficials get a sense of the perception gaps between city stakeholders that often put the brakes on the adoption of new tech-nologies.

I feel fortunate to be associated with this effort, albeit in a very small way, and I am confident that it is of value to private citizens, business and public officials to ap-preciate not just the challenges but also the opportunities that ICT can provide for urban governance.

Ashish LallAssociate Professor Asia Competitiveness Institute Lee Kuan Yew School of Public PolicyNational University of SingaporeJune 2010

4 ICT for City Management

Foreword 03

Executive Summary 06

01 Enhancing Competitiveness 12

02 Managing Physical Infrastructure 20

03 Protecting the Natural Environment 28

04 Improving Public Administration 34

Conclusions 42

About the Research 46

Chapter

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

5ICT for City Management

Case Studies

Abu Dhabi’s Masdar City: A Sustainable Metropolis

Berlin: Controlling Green Buildings

Buenos Aires: Capacity Building

The Copenhagen Wheel

Delhi’s Mission Convergence: Welfare to the People

Dubai: Saving Time, Saving Money

Istanbul: Safer Streets Through Technology

London: Adaptive Signalling

Madrid’s Modern Metro

Mumbai’s Citizen Services Portal: Power to the People

Munich: Efficiency Through E-Government

New York: Dial 311 in a Non-Emergency

Shanghai: Smart City, Smarter Transport

Singapore: Smarter Grids, Cleaner City?

Vienna: Public Transport Information on the Move

50

52

53

54

55

56

57

58

59

60

61

62

63

64

65

66

6 ICT for City Management

Executive Summary

7ICT for City Management

Executive Summary

More than half the world’s population lives in cities. This level of urbanization

is unprecedented in human history—and it is expected to keep increasing. By 2050 the world’s total population is forecast to grow by 3.1bn people while the urban popula-tion is expected to grow by 2.5bn, reach-ing nearly 70% of the total.3 Urbanization on this scale brings numerous governance challenges. Increasingly, information and communications technology (ICT) is help-ing to meet these challenges.

A revolution in city management is underway, comparable to the adoption a

century ago of widespread electrification. Systems to collect and analyze data are enhancing the safety, security, usability and efficiency of city infrastructure. Mobile phones, the Internet and wireless technol-ogy are transforming the way citizens and businesses interact with city officials, en-abling them to monitor the impact of their actions on the natural environment.

The nature of this revolution in city governance warrants closer examination. Previous research sponsored by Siemens, “Megacity Challenges”4, investigated the three overriding concerns that city manag-

ers must balance: achieving a high quality of life for all citizens, maintaining economic competitiveness and protecting the natural environment. Traditionally, the provision of an effective and efficient infrastructure system was the principal tool used by pub-lic administrations to meet these gover-nance challenges, and this was the focus of the first report. But it is only one side of the story. ICT is becoming as vital a tool in the governance balancing act as buildings, transport networks and utilities systems.

The chapters of this report therefore examine the importance of ICT in four ar-

3) World Urbanization Prospects, the 2007 Revision, UN Population Division, Department of Economic and Social Affairs4) “Megacity Challenges: A stakeholder perspective”, GlobeScan/MRC McLean Hazel, 2007

8 ICT for City Management

Executive Summary

eas crucial to effective city governance (and therefore, indirectly, to a high quality of life). The first is Enhancing Competitive-ness. Basic ICT infrastructures like broad-band and Wi-Fi are vital to making a city an attractive investment destination. But so too are e-government services, such as online portals and processes, that can be used to drive efficiencies and make interac-tions between businesses and city officials quicker and more transparent. These are all areas that business executives claim have a major impact on competitiveness.

The second chapter, Managing Physical Infrastructure, looks at ICT’s crucial role in making the operation of cities’ transport, buildings and utilities systems more ef-ficient. This includes technologies such as congestion charging, traffic-flow manage-ment, smart payment systems and video surveillance. Here, new technology can be applied to old infrastructure, for example

Competitiveness

Governance

EnvironmentQuality of life

9ICT for City Management

managing traffic flow more efficiently in older transport systems creaking under the strain of population expansion.

The third chapter, Protecting the Natu-ral Environment, examines how technolo-gy is enabling stakeholders to keep track of their use of scarce resources and their im-pact on the natural environment. The provi-sion of knowledge about energy and water consumption—combined with the right fi-nancial incentives—could lead to more en-vironmentally sound behavior on the part of all stakeholders. Meanwhile, online envi-ronment monitoring tools are empowering citizens to hold city managers accountable for substandard air and water quality, two pressing quality-of-life concerns.

Finally, Improving Public Administration looks at the role of services like e-govern-ment in improving the efficiency and trans-parency of public administration. Here the role of ICT in making life easier (for example

when filing taxes or applying for licenses) is obvious. But the research demonstrates the importance of changing people’s attitudes in order to make the most of what ICT can offer.

To ascertain the opinions of each stake-holder group of the role of ICT in city gov-ernance, research for this paper involved surveys of public officials, residents and businesses in 15 cities across the world. The cities were chosen to represent a broad mix of size, economic maturity, level of devel-opment and importance to national econo-mies. The report compares the survey re-sults across three city archetypes related to their economic development: emerging, transitional and mature (explained in more detail on page 48). Examples of successful deployment of ICT solutions in cities world-wide across the four topic areas are also described in case studies at the end of the report.

The key findings of the research include the following:

Businesses and public officials think a strong Internet network is crucial for a city’s competitiveness. Some 77% of busi-nesses surveyed think an improved broad-band network would have a significant im-pact on city competitiveness, making it the most important ICT technology for attract-ing private-sector investment. City authori-ties therefore need to consider that such technologies are as fundamental to a city’s infrastructure as are its buildings, transport networks and utilities.

Businesses feel that government ineffi-ciency and opacity are among the biggest constraints to a city’s competitiveness—but expect e-government to help. More than half the businesses surveyed cite a lack of efficiency, transparency and account-

10 ICT for City Management

Executive Summary

ability in government; complex and over-lapping regulations and policies; and lack of engagement with businesses and investors as major barriers to city competitiveness. These are all problems that e-government can address to some degree. More than 89% of business respondents picked “High-er efficiency” as an expected key benefit of using electronic service delivery. However, businesses also see “silo mentalities” be-tween public-sector agencies as a barrier to the adoption of electronic services. Though connecting departments through common technology platforms and sharing data can help resolve this, organizational change is equally as important.

Emerging cities are integrating ICT into their new infrastructure, while mature cities can make use of ICT to prolong the life of existing systems. A higher propor-tion of public officials in emerging cities than in mature cities (67%, compared to 57%) agree or strongly agree that investing in ICT to manage infrastructure is as impor-tant as building the infrastructure itself. Though these cities are often more likely

to invest heavily in new transport systems, buildings and other physical infrastructure, doing so from scratch enables them to in-corporate cutting-edge ICT systems from the outset. In mature cities, the basic foun-dations of the physical infrastructure were often put in place before ICT was available, and hence the key application of ICT is to enhance the efficiency (and prolong the life) of legacy infrastructure.

While solutions like congestion charg-ing are known to be effective, citizens may not necessarily see their value. Residents in all cities agree that road traf-fic congestion has a severe negative impact on quality of life (cited by 50% of respon-dents, making it the most commonly cited quality-of-life problem). And in cities where they have been implemented, ICT solutions like congestion charging have been shown to be effective. Yet transport does not rank highly in terms of citizens’ priorities for ICT investment—nor do many citizens think congestion charging in particular will have a major impact on their quality of life or the natural environment. While this contradic-

11ICT for City Management

tory view is doubtless due to the financial penalties that congestion charging impos-es, getting public support for such schemes requires more from public officials in the way of education and information sharing. This also applies to other “top-down” ICT infrastructure management solutions, such as video surveillance systems.

Citizens feel that ICT can influence behav-ior towards environmental conservation by giving them more information about their usage of resources such as energy and water. Some 74% of citizens globally claim that they would be likely to change their energy and water consumption if their access to information about their own us-age improved. Some 61% of businesses say the same. ICT technologies that provide such information therefore have the poten-tial to help city stakeholders moderate their consumption of natural resources. How-ever, citizens admit that changing behavior ultimately depends on the right financial incentives and disincentives being in place. This admission suggests that public officials need to play a leading role in driving the

adoption of such innovations, as well as put in place the right policy and pricing frame-work to encourage environmentally sound behavior.

Stakeholders blame each other for the slow adoption of electronic service de-livery. Businesses perceive the attitude of public officials to be the biggest barrier to the more widespread use of online public services. A majority of citizens surveyed also think public officials would not respond to them online. By contrast, public officials in the survey cite citizens’ resistance to online transactions as one of the greatest chal-lenges to e-government (second only to a lack of appropriate technology in the first place). Such finger-pointing reflects the fact that the successful adoption of elec-tronic service delivery requires attitudinal shifts on the part of all stakeholders. This is recognized to some degree: citizens ad-mit that for many transactions they would still rather interact in person (although email is by far the most preferred form of communication with public officials), and public officials admit they lack training and equipment. Public officials need to address the organizational and attitudinal barriers that may prohibit the adoption of e-govern-ment, which are as important to address as getting the right hardware and software in place.

Citizen-developed applications are an emerging trend around the world. The proliferation of citizen-designed ICT ap-plications to improve urban living is phe-nomenal, demonstrating the real power of

citizen engagement though ICT. Though much of this is convenience-related, it may have direct benefits for city authorities. For example, platforms enabling citizens to contribute their own assessments of envi-ronmental factors could lead to a more ac-curate assessment (and closer scrutiny) of urban environmental conditions. For mu-nicipalities with limited budgets, citizen-designed apps are a cheap source of inno-vation: some city governments have been launching competitions for applications that not only increase transparency but also improve city services.

These findings show that while ICT has the power to address the four city governance challenges described in each chapter—and thereby improve quality of life for city residents—the successful use of ICT is about far more than merely invest-ing in hardware and software. City officials must understand the needs of citizens and businesses to ensure they are effectively meeting them. They must educate and in-form stakeholders about contentious (but effective) technologies. They also need to be aware of the attitudinal and organiza-tional change needed to make the most of e-government.

Finally, municipal governments can use citizens’ engagement (and creativity) to their own advantage, whether by collect-ing data or promoting the development of citizen-designed applications. Unlike other technologies that have transformed city life in the past, ICT enables stakeholders to in-volve themselves directly in how cities are run, and thereby play a part in meeting the challenges of urbanization.

12 ICT for City Management

Enhancing Competitiveness

01 Public-sector officials and businesses think a strong Internet network is crucial for a city’s competitiveness

Businesses also think an ICT-savvy workforce is vital to competitiveness

Businesses feel that government inefficiency and opacity are the biggest constraints to a city’s competitiveness, and

want interactions with officials to be quicker

Businesses feel that public sector officials are still averse to electronic service delivery. But online government

services can improve efficiency and help break down bureaucratic silos

Key findings

13ICT for City Management

Enhancing Competitiveness

Considerations of competitiveness are crucial in the city governance balancing

act. In the “Megacity Challenges” report, 81% of city managers cited the economy and employment as key issues driving their decision-making.5 ICT has a dual role in this aspect of municipal governance. Firstly, a city needs to provide core ICT infrastructure (or allow the private sector to provide it) to enable businesses to function effectively. Secondly, authorities need to be able to of-fer streamlined and efficient public services to business through online e-government platforms.

A strong Internet network is crucial for a city’s competitiveness. Access to uni-versal high-speed broadband services is now seen by business as a prerequisite for competitiveness. In the survey, 77% of businesses globally think an improved broadband network would have a major or significant impact on competitiveness, while 65% thought the same of citywide Wi-Fi coverage. The latter is increasingly important in enabling seamless connectiv-ity to broadband services. Public officials in fact prioritize this: 71% think citywide Wi-Fi coverage would have a significant impact

on competitiveness while 60% think the same of an improved broadband network (see Figure 1).

The importance of high-speed Internet connections for business is difficult to over-state. In an increasingly 24-7 professional world, to be competitive means being able to pitch for contracts, make deals, and de-liver goods and services regardless of the day of the week or the time of day.

Sara Draper, head of knowledge econo-my at the Confederation of British Industry (CBI), the UK’s leading business lobby, cites the example of one of its member compa-

5) “Megacity Challenges: A stakeholder perspective”, GlobeScan/MRC McLean Hazel, 2007

14 ICT for City Management

Enhancing Competitiveness

nies, which would like to run all sales pre-sentations from a central database to which its sales agents can connect remotely. “They don’t do this because they can never guarantee that their reps can log on to re-trieve the presentation,” she says. “So each sales rep has different versions on different laptops—and from a quality control point of view that’s not great.”

Such is the fundamental nature of In-ternet infrastructure in modern globalized economies that there is very little differ-ence between the views of businesses in emerging, transitional and mature cities on the importance of broadband—although it is notable that a higher proportion of execu-

tives in emerging cities (60%, compared to 46% elsewhere) give this the highest rank in terms of its impact. It is no surprise that, in general, countries that are more geared towards attracting services investment tend to place a higher emphasis on upgrad-ing the communications infrastructure.

Cities that are rapidly expanding have the chance to include such vital ICT infra-structure from scratch (or put in place the regulations and guidelines to allow the pri-vate sector to do so), rather than upgrad-ing legacy technology piecemeal. From a planning perspective technologies such as broadband should be treated as part of city infrastructure, not separate from it.

ICT with biggest expected impact on competitiveness

% respondents expecting each technology to have a major/significant impact on city competitiveness (ranking 1/2 on 5-point scale of expected impact, where 1=major impact and 5=no or negative impact)

Public officials 60%

77%

71%

65%

Businesses

Public officials

Businesses

Figure 1

Improved broadband network

Citywide Wi-Fi coverage

15ICT for City Management

“ICT needs be considered in the same category as water, electricity, roads and public transport,” says Peter Siggins, a mobile business expert at PA Consulting Group. “And if business is being attracted [by improved connectivity], governments need to consider what speeds and capacity are needed and how that can be built into the urban planning process.”

An ICT-savvy workforce is also vital to competitiveness. In the surveys 71% of business executives globally say greater public use of ICT in education, training and development of the workforce would have a major or significant impact on city com-

petitiveness. This is to be expected, since installing world-class ICT infrastructure is pointless unless employees know how to use it. Having a workforce that is skilled in the use of ICT is another crucial component to attracting investment.

Singapore recognizes the complemen-tary relationship between ICT infrastruc-ture, education and competitiveness. As a city-state it is in the fortunate position of being able to marry municipal and national goals: building a workforce with good tech-nology skills will attract businesses to the city, while also enhancing the competitive-ness of Singapore’s own national ICT indus-try. Ronnie Tay, chief executive of Singa-

pore’s Infocomm Development Authority, cites a number of specialized training plans for high-school students to postgraduates that aim to create “a pipeline of experts in high-end, niche areas” such as cloud com-puting and ICT security that will ensure an available supply of highly-skilled employ-ees.

Cities that are aiming to become high-tech clusters will need to follow a similar strategy. Even those that do not have such lofty aspirations need to ensure that, at the very least, to maintain their competi-tiveness their workforces are ICT-savvy. National education curricula, over which individual cities may not have much con-

16 ICT for City Management

Enhancing Competitiveness

trol, often dictate core workforce skills. And budgetary limitations often hinder the ex-tent to which ICT can be used in education, training and development. But municipal authorities nonetheless need to ensure that the workforce is trained in using ICT effec-tively.

Businesses feel that government inef-ficiency and opacity are among the big-gest constraints to a city’s competitive-ness, and want interactions with officials to be quicker. If a modern ICT infrastruc-ture is a major enabler of competitiveness, then slow and inefficient interactions be-tween authorities and businesses are ma-

jor barriers. A majority of businesses see complex and overlapping regulations and policies and a lack of efficiency, transpar-ency and accountability in government as the biggest constraints on city competitive-ness (see Figure 2). These could be seen as symptomatic of old-fashioned bureaucratic inefficiency—as well as more serious issues like corruption, which is unsurprisingly seen as a bigger problem in emerging cities.

To be sure, complex rules and regula-tions often have deep legislative roots not easily untangled through the mere appli-cation of technology. But many practical problems related to interactions between businesses and city authorities can be re-

Biggest barriers to competitiveness

% business respondents mentioning in their top three competitiveness constraints

Lack of efficiency, transparency and accountability in government

Complex and overlapping regulations and policies

Corruption

Poor physical infrastructure (roads, airports, ports, etc)

Poor air quality/environmental standards

47%59%

58%

58%64%

43%

49%23%

7%

44%14%15%

23%5%4%

Figure 2

Emerging cities

Transitional cities

Mature cities

17ICT for City Management

Registration of new business/ application for approvals and

licenses

Filing of taxes

Trade (export-import) approvals, licenses and clearances from

customs/ border agencies

Procurement by the government

61%32%

22%

46%27%

22%

37%34%

19%

28%18%

37%

solved through making processes simpler and quicker. Business executives cite “Re-ducing process time or complexity” as the most important factor where improve-ments should be made by the government and regulatory authorities. This was true of all business-government transactions with the exception of procurement, where “Im-proving transparency and accountability” came top. (Figure 3.)

There are some straightforward ways that municipal governments can reduce process time and complexity by moving services online. Businesses expect signifi-cant competitiveness benefits from doing so. More than 89% of business respon-

dents globally pick “higher efficiency” as an expected key benefit of using ICT in the delivery of public or regulatory services to businesses—followed by lower costs (67%) and improved transparency and ac-countability (55%). In emerging cities, 75% of businesses think ICT will improve trans-parency and accountability, which is sig-nificant given their greater concerns over corruption.

There are numerous examples of this sort of improvement in efficiency. In Dubai, where a high proportion of business execu-tives are non-residents, the city has used ICT to make it easier for expatriates to book the medical tests and obtain the certifi-

cates needed to renew their visas. Putting the application process online has reduced the time taken to do this from seven work-ing days to an overnight service. (See the case study on Dubai on page 57.)

Meanwhile, in Barcelona, the city coun-cil is making efforts to streamline govern-ment-to-business procedures. Pilar Conesa, chief information officer and e-government director of the Barcelona City Council, ex-plains that the goal is to make government-to-business transactions far quicker and simpler. For example, the city believes that a new e-licenses service—available online or through self-service machines—will cut the processing time for obtaining licenses

Businesses want clearer, quicker cheaper interaction with authorities

% business respondents mentioning in their top two most sought-after improvements

Figure 3

Should be quicker/simpler

Should be cheaper

Should be more transparent

18 ICT for City Management

Enhancing Competitiveness

and permits by 70% and reduce the need for businesses to travel into city offices. The time taken to obtain public road occupancy permits (used by companies such as con-struction firms) should fall from 35 days to 15 days.

Businesses feel that public sector offi-cials are still averse to electronic service delivery. The solutions discussed above depend on public officials being willing to adopt online service delivery. But business-es are not sure that they are ready to do so. Figure 4 shows that, when asked to iden-tify the key challenges in driving the use of online administration services targeted at

businesses, executives picked “Public sector is averse to online transactions with busi-nesses (e.g., insisting on paper documents)” and “Lack of inter-departmental connectiv-ity and communication in the government”, in equal measure. The latter suggests con-tinuing problems with the “silo mentality” that can afflict bureaucracies—exemplified in the need to deal with multiple agencies or offices, each of which often has little idea of what the others are doing.

Two examples serve to underline the frustrations that such a mentality can pro-duce. One is when trying to implement cross-departmental initiatives targeted at a broader goal, such as climate change.

Top barriers to usage of business-related e-government

% business respondents mentioning in their top three barriers to usage of online administration services targeted at businesses

Public sector is averse to online transactions with businesses (eg, insisting on paper documents)

Lack of inter-departmental connectivity and communication in the government

Lack of suitable training and skill development for public-sector executives

Lack of strong leadership within the government/regulatory authorities

Lack of appropriate technology in the public sector

Businesses are averse to online transactions with public agencies (eg, concerns over privacy security, complexity, etc)

31%

23%

22%

42%

42%

33%

Figure 4

19ICT for City Management6) “E-Government Models: Cases from European Cities”, Barcelona City Council, 2007

“Some of these [city] systems have grown up without central control so the transpor-tation system is not necessarily controlled by one department and lighting systems might be controlled by different boroughs,” says Molly Webb, head of strategic engage-ment at The Climate Group, an internation-al non-profit organization that promotes environmentally sound policy and tech-nologies.

This can be a particular frustration for the private sector, notes Ms Webb. “Com-panies like IBM, HP, Cisco, Siemens and GE all have systems integration capabilities or large-scale software deployment capability but there isn’t one owner [at city govern-

ment level] so green initiatives become complex to deliver.”

A second example is with procurement, in which keeping track of opportunities can be a headache given the involvement of many different jurisdictions. “There are still some difficulties [in the UK] in that there are thousands of portals that agencies use,” says James Fothergill, head of public ser-vices at the CBI. “So it’s difficult for a small company to monitor all the opportunities coming out.” Business respondents cite better transparency as the most sought-after improvement relating to procurement (picked by 37% of respondents).

The adoption of ICT systems can help drive bureaucratic connectedness and improve communication between de-partments. For example, the Vienna City Administration has networked all its busi-ness-related administrative departments, and the local chamber of commerce is also part of the system. This means that busi-ness customers only need to deal with a single entity when conducting tasks such as applying for a business license, register-ing the appointment of a new managing director or changing a business address in Vienna. The system, launched in 2001, has proved popular. Online business registra-tions rose sevenfold in the four years after it was introduced.6

Installing systems that require the use across different departments of common data can also help improve bureaucratic connectedness. Shanghai, for example, is working to enable several departments to use a common database (see the case study on page 64). Another example of such inte-gration is evident in Munich. When the city was developing its e-government services, public agencies had to agree upon single data standards to facilitate seamless data exchange with other registration offices

in the federal states, and a single online interface was adopted as a national public agency standard for transactions. (See also the case study on page 62.)

Broadly, therefore, the biggest boost to competitiveness can come from city agencies transforming themselves from departmentally confined institutions to being customer-driven service providers. Barcelona’s government recognizes this. “It’s not enough to simply switch paper to electronic documents,” says Ms Conesa. “To reduce the number of signatures, you need to change the process inside the city coun-cil and take account of the external actors that take part in the process.”

ICT can help drive this process but it is far from easy. “We should never underes-timate the power of entrenched organiza-tional cultures,” says Mitchell Moss, profes-sor of urban policy and planning at New York University’s Wagner Graduate School of Public Service. “There’s still an amazing capacity of different public service agencies to try to act as if they’re monopolies.” If mu-nicipal agencies can temper this mentality they will improve their city’s competitive-ness.

The research therefore suggests ICT’s role in urban competitiveness is twofold. First the provision of ICT infrastructure, par-ticularly high-speed Internet connections, is crucial to attracting investment. This is no longer a matter of convenience—it should be considered equally vital to a city’s smooth operation as its transport networks and utilities. Secondly, public agencies can use online service delivery to speed up and simplify government-to-business interac-tions, while common data platforms can help inter-departmental connectedness. But organizational change is necessary if such ICT solutions are to yield their full ben-efits.

20 ICT for City Management

02

Managing Physical Infrastructure

Emerging cities are integrating ICT into their new infrastructure, while mature cities make use of ICT to prolong the life

of existing systems

While solutions like congestion charging are known to be effective, citizens may not necessarily see their value

Key findings

21ICT for City Management

Managing Physical Infrastructure

A city’s core physical infrastructure in-cludes its buildings, transport networks

and utilities. The emergence of ICT allows city managers to manage this infrastruc-ture more efficiently. Data from transport systems (for instance traffic lights or con-gestion charging cameras) can help au-thorities manage passenger or traffic flow and prioritize transport investments. Sen-sors that gather data and send it wirelessly to central databases can monitor the use of buildings and public spaces. Systems con-nected to CCTV around the city can track security threats. Municipal authorities are

increasingly aware that investment in such technologies is needed as much as invest-ment in the built environment.

Emerging cities are integrating ICT into their new infrastructure. In emerging and transitional cities, ICT appears to be taking on a greater role than in more mature cit-ies. A higher proportion of public officials in these cities than in mature cities (66-67%, compared to 57%) agree or strongly agree that investing in ICT to manage infrastruc-ture is as important as building the infra-structure itself. (Figure 5.)

At first take this is a surprising result: one of the key characteristics of emerging cities is the incredible level of investment in physical infrastructure that has taken place as they have expanded. This has often been driven by the needs of competitiveness. In-deed, businesses themselves in these cities (59%) are far more likely to agree with the statement “Investment in roads, buildings and physical infrastructure should be priori-tized ahead of ICT” than businesses in ma-ture cities (27%; Figure 6). And in emerging cities, not surprisingly, far more businesses (44%) cite poor physical infrastructure as a

22 ICT for City Management

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100

Managing Physical Infrastructure

barrier to competitiveness than in transi-tional or mature cities (14% and 15%).

Nonetheless, public officials in emerg-ing cities are surer than their counterparts elsewhere of the power of ICT (nearly 80% agree that ICT can solve competitiveness problems, compared to 60% in transitional and mature cities). This may be because they often have the opportunity to include cutting-edge ICT systems within the physi-cal infrastructure they are building from scratch.

E-payment systems for public transport are one example. Such payment methods

are certainly more popular in emerging cit-ies, where public transport systems are new-er, than in more mature cities (particularly in Western Europe and the US), where they have been grafted onto older systems, and more antiquated payment methods persist. Some 57% of respondents in emerging cit-ies say they used smart cards or e-payment for public transport, compared to 33% in transitional cities and 25% in mature cities.

Transport systems are not the only kind of physical infrastructure that can benefit from the application of ICT. Shanghai, for example, is taking a broad approach that in-

“Investing in ICT systems to manage infrastructure is as important as physical infrastructure itself”

Figure 5

* % public officials agreeing or strongly agreeing with the statement

Emerging cities 66%

67%

57%

Transitional cities

Mature cities

“Investment in roads, buildings and physical infrastructure should be prioritized ahead of ICT”

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100

Emerging cities 59%

35%

27%

Transitional cities

Mature cities

Figure 6

* % business respondents agreeing or strongly agreeing with the statement

23ICT for City Management

volves the aggregation of data on the usage of a variety of buildings and public spaces (as well as transport systems). The munici-pal government has a bureau dedicated to collecting, collating and using this data, part of the Shanghai Municipal Commis-sion of Economy and Informatization. Ac-cording to the Commission, its priority is a “grid-style public management information system” that integrates information across various city departments—including land and housing development, environmental protection, and public safety agencies (for example in the reporting and handling of

criminal cases and residents’ complaints). The Commission is planning to use the data it collects to manage the city’s entire built environment.

A key focus of the integration of infor-mation across departments is space man-agement, the target of a project known as the “Shanghai Digital Space” initiative. In this program, the city has installed wireless sensing devices to gather and report data on issues such as building management and traffic flow. The Commission keeps a central database that can be shared among the city’s various departments—including

the transportation, housing and land de-velopment, and environmental protection agencies. The goal is to integrate public-space-related information both for day-to-day management purposes and to inform policymakers’ long-term decision-making. (The transport-related aspects of this plan are examined in more detail in a case study on page 64.)

Mature cities need ICT to support lega-cy infrastructure. Shanghai’s holistic ap-proach may be contrasted to the situation facing mature cities. In some of them, es-sential systems—from water supply net-works and sanitation systems to under-ground rail transport—were designed and installed more than a century ago and are deeply embedded in the fabric of the city, making it difficult to replace or upgrade them except on a piecemeal basis.

Information technology can still en-hance the efficiency of older systems in a variety of ways. For example, micropro-cessors such as remote telemetry units that connect the physical infrastructure to monitoring systems help companies and municipalities manage the water supply or wastewater collection and disposal. In wa-ter management, this kind of information flow enables the detection of leaks remote-ly without the need for manual inspections, while software allows companies to control water pressure to minimize the occurrence of leaks.

Among the systems coming under most pressure in mature cities is transportation. Here, building roads or railways may not be physically, financially or politically possible, whereas investing in ICT to help manage the situation is.

“The real change in transportation is not the building of new infrastructure but the use of information to make the infrastruc-ture more efficient,” says Mitchell Moss of

24 ICT for City Management

Managing Physical Infrastructure

New York University. “In Western countries we’re going to be relying more and more on information technology to manage existing infrastructure—especially if we can’t afford to build new systems.”

London, for example, has deployed various ICT systems to optimize the use of its roads, the layout of some of which dates from the days of horse-drawn transport. “It’s about having the technology in the road to gather information,” says Alan Bristow, di-rector of traffic operations at Transport for London. He says about 1,400 cameras on London’s streets help build up a picture of what is happening on the road network. At the same time, Scoot (Split Cycle Offset Op-

timization Technique), a traffic light control system, has road sensors on the approach to a junction to monitor the traffic and set the appropriate duration of the green light. This can result in a 12% reduction in delays, says Mr Bristow. (See also the case study on page 59.)

While solutions like congestion charging are known to be effective, citizens may not necessarily see their value. The ap-plication of information technology to the management of passenger and vehicle flow is essential if urban transport systems are to continue to support the growing number of citizens using them. However, implement-

Citizens don’t necessarily see the value of ICT solutions to congestion

Figure 7

* % respondents mentioning in their top three quality-of-life concerns ** % respondents ranking impact on quality of life 1 or 2 out of 5, where 1=major impact and 5=no or negative impact

Road traffic has a big negative impact on quality of life in the city*

Congestion charging will have a major or significantly positive impact on the natural

environment**

50%

40%

33%Congestion charging will have a major or

significantly positive impact on quality of life**

25ICT for City Management

ing such systems is not always straightfor-ward. The survey suggests that even with proven solutions for addressing some of the most pressing urban infrastructure prob-lems, not all stakeholders recognize their value. This is often because technologies for managing a city’s physical infrastructure are invisible, or may put a financial burden on the end user.

A good example of conflicting priorities is road traffic congestion. In the surveys, residents in all cities agree that traffic con-gestion has the most severe negative im-pact on quality of life—especially in those emerging cities experiencing the fastest population growth. Some 54% of citizens

7) Figures in this paragraph cited in “Transit and Congestion Pricing: A Primer”, US Department of Transportation, Federal Highway Administration, April 2009

in emerging cities, 58% in transitional cities and 44% in mature cities pick this in their top three quality-of-life concerns.

There are numerous examples of ICT being deployed effectively to combat con-gestion and carbon emissions. One solution is to impose restrictions or disincentives such as road pricing and tolls to reduce the flow of traffic into the city centers. These systems can be highly effective, often persuading citizens to change their sched-ules, embark on car-sharing schemes with friends and colleagues or use public trans-port more often.

For example, in Singapore between 1998 (when it upgraded its system from

paper permits to electronic tags) and 2003, road traffic was reduced by 13% and vehicle speed increased by 22%. In Stockholm, dur-ing a trial period from January to July 2006, use of public transport rose by 6%, with 97% of this increase occurring at times when the congestion tax was charged, while use of park-and-ride systems increased by 23%. By the end of the trial, traffic was down by almost 25%. Meanwhile, in San Diego, rev-enues from a toll—which varies based on the congestion level that is analyzed every six minutes—have allowed the city to make improvements to public transport, contrib-uting to a 25% increase in bus ridership.7

Despite these impressive results, con-gestion charging is not widely deployed. And the surveys in this report show that transport does not rank highly among citi-zens in terms of priorities for more informa-tion via ICT. Nor do many people think con-gestion charging in particular will have a major impact on the natural environment. Transport-related technologies, for exam-ple, were seventh (of 14) on the list of ICT investment priorities for citizens globally. In emerging and transitional cities, transport services ranked 12th and eighth respective-ly—although in mature cities they ranked fifth on aggregate.

In addition, congestion charging itself is not regarded as having (or likely to have) a positive quality-of-life impact, doubtless because of the financial penalties it im-poses. One in five citizens globally think congestion charging has either no impact or a negative impact on quality of life, while only a third see it as having a significantly positive impact—making it by far the least popular ICT technology among those in the surveys. (Figure 7.)

City governments planning to imple-ment such systems (or that have already adopted them) therefore need to do a bet-ter job of selling their benefits. The survey

26 ICT for City Management

Managing Physical Infrastructure

shows that lack of awareness about such technologies is common. When asked whether or not congestion charging was available in their city, and whether they used it if so, some 45% of citizens on aggre-gate responded “don’t know/no opinion”. Even in the cities where congestion charg-ing has been adopted, a surprising number of people picked this option.

Financially punitive systems like road charging are never likely to be popular. But better awareness of their benefits could influence the way citizens perceive them. The surveys show the potential power of information to change behavior is signif-icant—particularly when it comes to en-

vironmental issues (discussed in Chapter 3). Some 65% of citizens, for example, say they would change their driving behavior given better access to information about public transport options. Sharing informa-tion is therefore important to getting broad stakeholder support for contentious ICT so-lutions like congestion charging.

Keeping citizens informed is important. The principal benefit of such ICT systems is that they enable more efficient manage-ment of infrastructure through the collec-tion of better usage data. But there is no reason why they cannot also be used to keep citizens informed about contentious

“Public safety and security concerns should always be prioritized ahead of citizens’ privacy concerns”

Emerging cities 75%

65%

46%

57%

Transitional cities

Mature cities

Global

Figure 8

* % respondents agreeing or strongly agreeing with the statement

27ICT for City Management

issues like traffic management and securi-ty—and thereby help them understand the benefits ICT can confer.

Some cities are beginning to recognize this. For instance, the information collected by Transport for London’s road cameras is posted on the website, given out through third parties such as the BBC’s local radio stations, and broadcast by the Highways Agency via a digital radio station, while 150 “JamCams” can be viewed by the pub-lic. New York City’s 311 service, through which citizens can register their complaints or concerns on a host of public services—examined in the case study on page 63—is another example. In both cases, data is

used both to make better decisions about city management and to inform the public.

Even in areas such as safety and secu-rity, some cities are using ICT to keep the public informed. This has become an espe-cially sensitive issue, with authorities need-ing to maximize safety and security while addressing citizens’ privacy concerns. In recent years, with cities such as New York, London, Mumbai and Madrid targeted by terrorist attacks, ensuring safety and se-curity has become stakeholders’ topmost priority.

Poor public safety is cited as a key quali-ty-of-life concern by a third of citizens in the survey (and 40% in emerging cities). Some 57% of citizens globally (and 75% in emerg-ing cities) also say public safety and secu-rity should be prioritized ahead of citizens’ privacy concerns. (Figure 8.) Despite vocal opposition in some Western cities—such as London—about the implications for pri-vacy, such results tend to support the intro-duction of technologies like CCTV. Indeed, some 51% of citizens (60% in emerging cit-ies) say more remote CCTV surveillance of public areas would have a positive impact on their quality of life.

Some cities recognize the need to share information when introducing such tech-nologies. In Istanbul, for example, the city’s

police department has been rolling out a scheme called Mobile Electronic Systems Integration to manage its security infra-structure (examined in more detail in a case study on page 58). The system is accessible to the general public.

“Cameras, pointing to 175 different points in Istanbul, are accessible for the citi-zens whenever they want via our website or using the IMM Mobile application,” says Hakki Tok, head of the information technol-ogies department at the Istanbul Metropol-itan Municipality. Clearly Istanbul is having some success in engaging its constituents. “Lack of transparency in government or en-gagement with city residents” is cited as a problem by only 1.3% of its residents.

ICT is therefore playing a dual role in the management of physical infrastructure: enabling the more efficient use of physical systems but also informing citizens. Surpris-ingly, it is the emerging cities in the survey that seem to recognize the power of ICT in this regard more than their counterparts elsewhere. Given they are experiencing the most rapid growth, it is as well that authori-ties in these cities are aware of the ICT tools available to cope with the challenges of ur-banization. It also suggests that in the fu-ture technology in these cities may surpass that used in richer countries.

28 ICT for City Management

Protecting the Natural Environment

03 Citizens feel that ICT can influence behavior towards environmental conservation by giving them more information

about their use of natural resources such as energy and water

Citizens are increasingly engaged in environmental initiatives via ICT, particularly those in emerging cities

Key findings

29ICT for City Management

Protecting the Natural Environment

Managing a city’s impact on the natural environment was not always seen as

being as important as managing its economic environment or physical infrastructure. This is no longer the case: protecting the natural environment is a key part of the governance balancing act. Citizens across the world cite “poor air quality” as a major quality-of-life concern, for example (picked by one-third of respondents in the survey). City officials are also increasingly seeing this as vital for the viability of the urban economy: globally “poor air quality and environmental stan-dards” is the second-most-frequently identi-

fied constraint on city competitiveness.From a global perspective it is also par-

ticularly important that cities manage their impact on the environment. The C40, a global group of cities united in tackling cli-mate change, estimates that cities account for 75% of energy consumption and 80% of the greenhouse gas emissions worldwide.8

Often, reducing cities’ impact on the environment means encouraging citizens and businesses to change their behavior—particularly in their use of scarce resources. Here, ICT can play a vital role in gathering and providing information. Water meters,

for example, can track water consumption and also relay information remotely to water authorities to manage leaks. Smart energy grids can track energy usage data and allow flows of energy to as well as from the grid, encouraging the use of renewable energy sources by households and businesses. And importantly, the Internet and connected wireless devices allow citizens to monitor air and water quality—and provide their own feedback on the natural environment—thereby holding authorities accountable in their bid to manage the natural environ-ment.

8) “C40 Large Cities Climate Summit, Seoul Declaration”; http://www.c40cities.org/news/news-20090522.jsp

30 ICT for City Management

Protecting the Natural Environment

meters, ranking above smart cards and e-payment systems for public transport as the most-used ICT initiative. Additionally, 28% of citizens say that, although smart en-ergy grids are not available they would like them to be (Figure 10).

Such promises are encouraging, but in practice changed behavior only comes through the application of sufficient incen-tives and disincentives. Citizens recognize this point: 40% agree that when attempt-ing to change peoples’ behavior towards environmental protection, financial incen-tives and disincentives must be given more weight than education and awareness. Only 20% think it’s the other way round.

In some cases the technologies them-selves provide this incentive. The reason why water meters are popular, for example, is doubtless because in the long run they

Citizens and businesses feel that ICT can influence behaviour towards environ-mental conservation. The surveys show strong awareness among stakeholders that ICT can play a significant part in helping them reduce their impact on the environ-ment, in particular by giving them greater access to information. Some 74% of citi-zens globally claim that they would be likely to change their energy and water consump-tion if their access to relevant information improved. Some 61% of businesses say the same (Figure 9).

Promises to act are encouraging and suggest that ICT solutions that provide such information to stakeholders might be ex-pected to have a significant impact. Indeed, citizens’ use of water meters is already high in the cities where they are available. Some 36% of citizens globally claim to use water

0%

20%

40%

60%

80%

100%

10%

30%

50%

70%

90%

“Which of the following initiatives are available in your city, and do you use them?”

34%23%

28%

18%

23%

23%

14%

36%

Figure 10

“Smart” electricity grids that allow greater control over energy usage

Water meters

Available, and I use it

Not available but I would like it to be

Don’t know/ no opinion

Available but I don’t use it

* Survey totals may not add to 100% because of rounding.

* Survey totals may not add to 100% because of rounding.

“We are likely to change our energy/ water consumption if given better access to information about usage levels”

Figure 9

Citizens

Businesses

31%

16%

43%

45%

21%

27%

4%

12%

1%

1%

Strongly agree

Neither agree nor disagree

Strongly disagree

Agree

Disagree

31ICT for City Management

save money for the business or consumer involved (even if initially they may bear the costs of purchase or installation). For instance, research commissioned by the UK’s Consumer Council for Water showed that in 2007, 70% of households with water meters said they paid less for their bill than before, with 56% paying a lot less.9 Water meters also offer the opportunity for great-er capture of data—and hence efficient use of scarce water resources and management of leaks. In many urban environments pub-lic authorities are making water metering compulsory.

Smart grids and power meters have sim-ilar potential. In California, the Pacific Gas & Electric Company (PG&E), for example, of-fers smart power and gas meters for house-holds and businesses in the state. These meters are connected to PG&E’s systems

nesses’ behavior. Globally, when asked to weight the extent to which environmental initiatives should be driven by public au-thorities or the private sector, more public officials (59%) placed a heavier weighting on themselves than on the private sector (12%). Businesses also weight the public-sector responsibility more highly, with 45% of executives saying the public sector must drive green initiatives, compared to 27% seeing it as more the private sector’s re-sponsibility (Figure 11).

Given public authorities’ regulatory powers it is natural that they should take the lead in driving initiatives to reduce a city’s environmental footprint. But while officials and business executives plainly recognize the need for such leadership, citizens are more ambivalent (with approxi-mately equal proportions in the survey say-ing either it is their responsibility, the public sector’s, or a joint burden).

As noted, to drive more environmen-tally conscious behavior citizens do see the need for financial inducements of the kind that only regulatory authorities can impose. Importantly, though, citizens themselves are playing an increasingly important role in addressing urban environmental issues. Open source-style tools are emerging for gathering and analyzing data on these is-sues, and these tools are no longer the pre-serve of city governments.

Citizens are increasingly engaged in en-vironmental initiatives via ICT. Individuals are already able, for example, to monitor resources essential to quality of life such as air quality and water. (Poor air quality is cited by one-third of citizens globally as a major quality-of-life problem.) One example is an online portal developed by Microsoft and the European Environment Agency which has given 500m citizens access to real-time information on the quality of air and water.

9) “CCWater Charging Research 2007”, ORC International, April 2008, available at http://www.ccwater.org.uk/upload/pdf/Charging_Final_Report.pdf

on a dedicated radio frequency network and provide a two-way flow of informa-tion. PG&E claims that 70% of the users of the system saved money on their summer energy bills in 2009. Smart grids, which in theory allow the greater usage of renew-able energy sources and real-time pricing based on energy demand, are not yet com-mon, but are being investigated by various national and municipal governments. (One such trial, in Singapore, is examined in the case study on page 65).

The public sector needs to drive initia-tives to reduce a city’s environmental footprint. Attractive though such savings may be, the surveys suggest that public au-thorities do need to wield regulatory power to make the most of such initiatives—es-pecially when it comes to changing busi-

Who should drive green initiatives?

% respondents weighting responsibility of different stakeholders in driving initiatives to reduce a city’s environmental footprint.

* Survey totals may not add to 100% because of rounding.

Figure 11

12%

29%59%

34%36%

30%

27%

29%

45%

Public officials think

Citizens think

Businesses think

Initiatives must be driven more by the private sector/citizens themselves

Equal responsibility

Initiatives must be driven more by public authorities

32 ICT for City Management

“[The Urban EcoMap] brings government closer to the citizens,” explains Nicola Villa, global director of Cisco’s Connected Urban Development, an initiative designed to show how ICT can enhance the efficiency of the urban infrastructure to reduce carbon emis-sions. “So government is developing a more granular view of what the issues are at a neighborhood level.”

The idea is that, armed with this informa-tion, citizens can not only make more informed decisions about the use of natural resources in their daily lives, but also start to initiate group efforts or competitions between different neighborhoods to reduce carbon emissions. “We want the citizens to create content and services,” says Ms Villa. “It’s an open architec-ture with a bottom-up approach as opposed to a top-down enterprise.”

Protecting the Natural Environment

Known as “Eye on Earth”, the system maps more than 22,000 swimming sites and 1,000 stations monitoring air quality across Europe. Citizens can make their own assess-ments and log comments, with standardized descriptions such as “clean” or “irritating.” More than 64,000 environmental reports have so far been logged.10

Meanwhile, in San Francisco and Am-sterdam, Cisco Systems has worked on the Urban EcoMap, an interactive website that helps raise awareness among citizens about the carbon emissions in their area. On the site, users can look up emission levels by neighborhood. The site also makes sugges-tions as to what actions citizens can take in areas such as transport, energy and waste management, with users able to set their goals and chart their progress.

10) http://eyeonearth.cloudapp.net/

Figure 12

Expected impact of ICT on a city’s natural environment

% respondents expecting each technology to have a major/significant impact on natural environment (ranking 1/2 on 5- point scale of expected impact, where 1=major impact and 5=no or negative impact)

More data available on individual households’ energy usage

More data available on air and water quality

Water meters

“Smart” electricity grids that allow greater control over energy usage

53%75%

65%

51%72%

63%

49%68%

65%

73%65%

52%

Mature cities

Transitional cities

Emerging cities

33ICT for City Management

Citizens in emerging cities are taking the lead. Despite such ground-breaking initia-tives in the West, the surveys suggest that, contrary to expectations, stakeholders in emerging cities are making more regular use of ICT to monitor the natural environ-ment and their impact on it. More than three-quarters of citizens surveyed in these cities use communications technology such as the Internet or SMS and mobile phones for energy supply services, such as check-ing energy use online. This figure drops to half among respondents from transitional and mature cities. A higher proportion of re-spondents in emerging cities also use ICT to access environmental information, such as air pollution data: four-fifths do so in these cities, compared to 67% and 36% in transi-tional and emerging cities respectively.

Moreover, citizens in emerging cities are more likely than those in mature cities to see ICT initiatives such as smart grids, water meters and online data about air and water quality as likely to have a positive impact on the natural environment, with those in transitional cities the most optimistic about such technologies (perhaps skewed some-what by the predominance of state wealth in cities like Dubai and Abu Dhabi that can be brought to bear to implement such tech-nologies, as the latter is doing in Masdar City—examined in the case study on page 52). (See Figure 12.)

The surveys did not reach the poorest sections of the population in emerging cit-ies, which often lack access to basic ameni-ties—let alone modern ICT—so the results should be interpreted with this in mind. But there are a number of common expla-nations for the apparently higher level of stakeholder engagement in green ICT initia-tives in these cities. For instance, pollution in these conurbations is more severe than in mature cities, driving awareness of the is-sue. In emerging cities some use of ICT may also be driven by necessity—for instance with monitoring energy usage, which may relate to the more widespread use in poorer cities of prepaid energy supplies.

Citizens in mature cities, by contrast, may be motivated to monitor their power consumption by broader concerns about their impact on the environment. Notably, citizens in mature cities are equally as con-cerned as those in emerging ones about air pollution as a quality of life issue, despite far better standards in these cities.

Regardless of the driver, the engage-ment of citizens in these issues is paying off—and in some cases superseding the efforts of public authorities. In Hong Kong,

for example, high pollution levels are near the top of the list of worries for citizens. In 1995, the city’s Environmental Protection Department responded to growing envi-ronmental concerns by launching an online air quality index showing air pollution lev-els on a daily basis.

However, the index has been criticized as not providing an accurate picture of actual air quality, as it differs widely from international benchmarks, and for under-playing related health risks. So in 2008, Anthony Hedley, a University of Hong Kong professor, launched an alternative index—the Hedley Environmental Index—to pro-vide real-time assessments of the health and financial impacts of the city’s air pol-lution. Unfortunately for Professor Hedley, however, in the trade-off in policymakers’ priorities between economic competitive-ness and clean air, the former remains su-perior.

In conclusion, ICT can play a crucial enabling role in managing a city’s environ-mental impact. It is encouraging that citi-zens and businesses say they will change their behavior if given better information about their energy and water usage. It is also encouraging that there is a growing trend of citizens using ICT to monitor the urban environment. But promising action and actually changing behavior are two dif-ferent things. The reality is that the public sector needs to drive green initiatives and tie them to suitable financial inducements to maximize ICT’s potential impact. Some-times the right infrastructural solutions (for instance water meters and smart grids) can do this. In other cases public authorities will need to ensure suitable policy and financial frameworks are in place to drive sustain-able urban living.

34 ICT for City Management

Improving Public Administration

04 Citizens are still unsatisfied with the efficiency of public services but think ICT can help speed up and improve service

delivery

Some emerging cities have made great strides in adopting e-government

Stakeholders blame each other for the slow adoption of electronic service delivery

Citizen-developed applications are an emerging trend around the world

Key findings

35ICT for City Management

Improving Public Administration

ICT is transforming the way residents and businesses interact with city authorities.

The most crucial ICT innovations in public governance can be described under the umbrella term e-government, described by the World Bank as “the use by government agencies of information technologies (such as Wide Area Networks, the Internet, and mobile computing) that have the ability to transform relations with citizens, business-es, and other arms of government.” It adds that the goal of e-government is “to make the interaction between government and citizens (G2C), government and business

enterprises (G2B), and inter-agency rela-tionships (G2G) more friendly, convenient, transparent, and inexpensive.”11

Are cities reaching this goal? Many cit-ies, as discussed in Chapter 1 above, have implemented comprehensive web portals to make “G2B” services more convenient. For citizens, traditionally the only way to contact city officials (short of writing a let-ter or taking to the streets) was to wait in line in an office or at a window. Now the first port of call for many services is an In-ternet site. But the successful use of ICT in a city’s public administration depends on

all stakeholders being willing and able to engage with new technology. Here the re-search suggests that there is still some way to go.

Citizens are still unsatisfied with the effi-ciency of public services but think ICT can help speed up and improve service deliv-ery. Citizens are certainly not happy about the efficiency of public services: in the sur-vey, just 11% globally strongly agreed that “In my experience the city administration is efficient in its provision of public services.”

To take another example, in a recent

11) The World Bank, available at http://go.worldbank.org/M1JHE0Z280

36 ICT for City Management

Improving Public Administration

citizen experience study conducted by Ac-centure, more than 50% of respondents said it was essential or extremely important that government provides an easy way for individuals to access government infor-mation. But “only about 17% thought that government was doing that very well,” says Steve Rohleder, group chief executive of Accenture’s health and public service oper-ating group. “So it’s a huge gap in terms of expectations.”12

Like business executives, citizens de-mand efficient and prompt delivery of pub-

12) “Accenture Citizen Experience Study: Measuring people’s impressions of public service value”, Accenture Institute for Public Service Value, 2009

lic services. They also expect that the au-thorities should provide public information in an easily accessible manner. Especially for routine procedures, citizens dislike pro-cesses that take time and are unnecessarily confusing. When asked to list the most nec-essary improvements to public administra-tion, 48% of citizens picked speed and 43% ease of use.

As with business services, the provisions of basic time-saving measures through ICT may be expected to resolve some of these efficiency concerns. Although far

“How would e-government initiatives affect your quality of life?”

Figure 13

% respondents expecting each technology to have a major/significantly positive impact on quality of life (ranking 1/2 on 5-point scale of expected impact, where 1=major positive impact and 5=no or negative impact)

Ability to voice complaints/raise grievances or give feedback on

proposed public policy online or by SMS56%

54%Ability to consult public officials directly online

37ICT for City Management

from a cutting-edge example, email has transformed interactions with city depart-ments: 56% of citizens report it is one of their preferred ways to interact with public officials, above doing so in person at an of-fice, counter or window (54%). Other types of e-interaction may remain less popular than physically standing in line (not least because remote interaction rarely offers the opportunity for transaction closure that speaking in person does).

But citizens are optimistic that e-govern-ment services can have a positive impact

13) “E-readiness rankings 2009: The usage imperative”, Economist Intelligence Unit

on quality of life. In the survey, globally a majority of citizens thought that e-govern-ment initiatives such as voicing complaints, giving feedback and consulting officials on-line would have a major or significant im-pact on their quality of life. (Figure 13.)

Some emerging cities have made great strides in adopting e-government. Two things are necessary for the successful adoption of e-government: having the technology in place and training people to use it. On the first point, public officials in

emerging cities are more likely to say that simply not having the equipment is a major barrier to the adoption of e-government, cited by 68% (compared to 51% in mature cities). This is to be expected: while those in wealthy mature cities can get online rela-tively easily, the same may not be true for emerging cities with large informal and mi-grant populations.

Such inequalities are captured in the term “digital divide”. The digital divide be-tween city archetypes in this report is re-flected on a national level in the Economist Intelligence Unit’s 2009 E-readiness rank-ings (which assess national economies on their ability to absorb ICT and use it for eco-nomic and social benefit). All the survey’s mature cities are in countries ranked in the top 25 (of 70). The transitional ones are in countries ranked between positions 34 and 43. The emerging ones are between posi-tions 56 and 58.13

It might be expected that as a result of this division, stakeholders in the survey’s mature cities are most enthusiastic about e-government. But, in fact, citizens in emerg-ing cities say they are more likely to interact with public officials through modern ICT and less likely to prefer doing so in person than their counterparts in mature cities. Indeed, only 40% of citizens in emerging cities (compared to 58% in transitional and 55% in mature cities) prefer interacting with public officials in person. Over two-thirds say they prefer email, compared to just over 50% in the other city archetypes. And even some 17% say that SMS is among their pre-ferred means of communication (far higher than just 1.9% in mature cities) and 16% use Internet message boards (Figure 14).

As mentioned, these results should be interpreted carefully: many of the poorest people in emerging cities (for instance slum dwellers) lack access even to basic amenities like clean water and sanitation, let alone In-

By e-mail

By post

In person (at an office, counter or window)

By voice call on telephone or landline

Via message board on the Internet

65%

39%

22%

20%

16%

52%

58%

37%

6%

24%

14%

56%

55%

40%

17%

8%

56%

52%

35%

15%

Figure 14

Citizens’ most popular forms of interaction with officials

% citizen respondents mentioning in their top three means of interaction with city officialsGlobal

Mature citiesTransitional citiesEmerging cities

38 ICT for City Management

Improving Public Administration

ternet connections. The surveys, given the educational profile of respondents, did not reach such populations.

Nevertheless, there are clear instances of groundbreaking (and inclusive) e-gov-ernment initiatives in cities in developing economies. In Mumbai, for example, one of the largest municipal e-government projects in history was launched in 2007, the Citizen Services Portal (examined in more detail in the case study on page 61). Elsewhere in India, there are examples of ICT in public administration being used to

broaden social inclusion to those beyond the digital divide. In Delhi, for instance, a program called Mission Convergence aims to bring welfare benefits to the city’s poor-est residents through a combination of IT and physical delivery (also examined in a case study on page 56).

Stakeholders blame each other for the slow adoption of electronic service de-livery. City administrators clearly need to be aware of the technological barriers to the adoption of e-government. But attitu-

Figure 15

Lack of appropriate technology

Lack of adequate funding

Citizens’ mindset against online transactions (privacy, security, complexity, etc)

Lack of suitable training and skill development for public-sector executives

Lack of strong leadership

Lack of inter-departmental connectivity and communication

Legal obstacles around data collection and sharing

52%

30%

51%

21%

10%

39%

35%

Public officials’ top challenges to broader adoption of e-government

% public officials mentioning in their top three challenges in driving usage of online public administration services targeted at citizens

39ICT for City Management

dinal barriers are equally as important. As discussed in chapter 1, business executives say one of the top reasons holding back electronic service delivery is that the public sector is averse to online transactions with businesses (see Figure 4). Meanwhile, over half the public officials in the survey (51%) rank citizens’ resistance to online transac-tions (along with a lack of appropriate tech-nology) as the greatest challenge to driving the use of online public administration ser-vices, second only to a lack of the technol-ogy itself. (Figure 15.)

Citizens certainly admit a reluctance to go online in those instances where direct interaction with officials is required: a ma-jority says they still prefer to interact with public officials either by email or in person. Just 14% say they prefer to do so via online message boards, and only a tiny minority (6%) through social media. But this may be because they in turn see public authorities as unwilling to engage in these types of forums—and doubt they would be listened to. Some 53% of citizens agree or strongly agree with the statement: “City officials prefer not to interact with residents on the Internet or via SMS, and are unlikely to re-spond.”

To be fair, public officials admit their own failings: the third-most cited barrier to e-government among city authorities is “lack of suitable training and skill develop-ment for public-sector executives” (cited by 39%). Some cities have installed programs to deal with these failings— Buenos Aires, for example, has undertaken an ambitious training scheme in partnership with Micro-soft to get public officials online (examined in the case study on page 54). Others recog-nize that successful e-government requires wholesale organizational change as well as investments in hardware and software.

Successful e-government requires or-ganizational change. While seamless ac-cess to services and one-stop-shop portals are often the aim of city governments, the challenge goes far beyond the acquisition of IT equipment and software packages. One of the biggest hurdles in many cases is to make the organizational changes and break down internal barriers between de-partments. What may look like a simple web-based procedure for applying for a permit may in fact be a complex network of activity in which different departments have to co-operate to deliver the service.

“It’s easy enough to get people to phone one number,” says Paul Bevan, secretary general of the Brussels-based Eurocities Knowledge Society Forum, a network that brings together the local governments of more than 130 large European cities. “But organizational restructuring and retraining has to take place behind that so that it’s not simply a switchboard, but there’s someone sitting there with ICT at their fingertips to deal with the requests.”

Organizational change is something Barcelona City Council has worked hard to address. The city, known for its advanced use of ICT, has the goal of creating seam-less access to government services, local transportation and cultural activities via a multitude of systems and devices. Citizens can use the Barcelona online portal, SMS messages, smartphone applications and electronic kiosks distributed throughout the city to access services.

But despite such impressive investment in the technology, Ms Conesa of the Barce-lona City Council acknowledges that the human element is crucial, explaining that the council has worked closely with the HR department to lead change management programs. “In some places the training programs and employee support has been more important than the technical side of the program,” says Ms Conesa.

The good news for municipal authori-ties is that cities are in some ways ideal test-ing grounds for such change. Mr Bevan, for one, believes that achieving interoperabil-ity and organizational streamlining is easier for municipal governments than for other public-sector bodies. “I see lots of examples of cities that find it easier than national governments to reorganize themselves to deliver a one-stop shop approach,” he says, “because it’s a more manageable project within a city than within a country.” Which is why it is no surprise to find the most in-

40 ICT for City Management

Improving Public Administration

novative examples of e-government at city level.

Citizen-developed applications are in-creasingly important. Innovations to im-prove urban quality of life are no longer just top-down affairs, however. The unique power of ICT is that it enables citizens to get involved directly in devising solutions to the challenges of urbanization. As discussed in earlier chapters, it is important for city au-thorities to share information with other stakeholders to educate them about “top-down” technologies like congestion charg-ing or CCTV. But it is equally important to

do so to tap into private-sector creativity.Some cities already recognize the po-

tential benefits. In March 2010, Chris Vein, San Francisco’s CIO, talked about the im-portance of sharing information at a Chica-go meeting of CityCamp (which brings to-gether technology professionals and local government officials). “We can’t do every-thing,” he told the audience. “What we’re trying to do is get that data out there to people who are smarter, faster and cheaper at creating the applications that we just can’t get done.”

Mr Vein is not the only government of-ficial with this on his mind. Globally, cities

41ICT for City Management

are recognizing that, armed with govern-ment databases, video and other informa-tion, individual citizens and software de-velopers are coming up with applications for smart phones and other mobile devices that make living in and navigating their city easier and more enjoyable. “We’ll see more and more of (such applications) used by individuals to manage their lives,” says An-thony Townsend, director of technology at Institute for the Future, a California-based research center.

Citizen-generated smart phone appli-cations and websites include everything from spotting trees and helping bike users

find better routes to crime prevention mea-sures. Armed with data derived from road-side scanners, real-time pictures of traffic conditions are being broadcast, while a site called cleanscores.com puts restaurants’ health-inspection scores online. In New York City, an iPhone user (Brett Camper) has taken a government census of more than a million trees to create an application called Trees Near You, allowing iPhone us-ers to point their device at any tree they see and find out its size and species.

“What’s happening is an astonish-ing wave of innovation in reusing sets of city data in ways no one would ever have thought of—especially people in govern-ment,” says Professor Townsend. In some cases, citizen-based applications have developed alongside government gener-ated ones. In Barcelona, citizens can use two different bicycle route services, one developed by the city council and another developed by a citizen. “Our intention is to make more and more information open to citizens and for companies to develop these applications,” says Barcelona City Council’s Ms Conesa.

Governments have been tapping into the appetite on the part of citizens to gen-erate city-related content by launching competitions. Typically, these call for ap-plications that not only increase transpar-ency but also improve city services at a time when many local governments do not have the funds to develop these services them-selves.

One of the latest cities to do so is Port-land, in Oregon. In March it launched a competition called CivicApps for Greater Portland, an open source contest designed to promote collaboration between citizens and government and to create applications from datasets that include information on crime, parks, transportation and building

permits. “There are more obscure datasets as well, such as schedules for the pick up of leaves from the street and high priority routes for the plowing of snow,” says Rick Nixon, program manager at the Bureau of Technology Services, City of Portland.

The CivicApps project is designed to increase transparency, encourage civic in-novation and make government-generated data more useful. “The idea ultimately is for the citizens themselves to be the beneficia-ries of the applications,” says Mr Nixon.

Meanwhile, to improve access to data and help citizens create applications, San Francisco has created DataSF, a clearing-house website of datasets that are available from the city and county of San Francisco. “All kinds of information currently gathered for administrative purposes will gradually be used for the benefit of citizens,” says New York University’s Professor Moss. “There’s going to be a remarkable explosion in information about urban conditions de-veloped by people, some of whom will be doing it for profit and some of whom will not.” Whatever their motive, the potential for collaboration with public authorities is considerable.

In conclusion, e-government and other ICT-enabled administrative services have great potential to enhance stakeholder en-gagement in the city, and have been enthu-siastically adopted in many emerging cities, which (at least for those in the survey) may have suffered for generations with distant and opaque bureaucracies. But the success of e-government and similar initiatives de-mands not only a basic level of wealth and education for poorer citizens to cross the digital divide: it also requires recognition on the part of bureaucrats of the organi-zational and human changes that citizens have come to expect from interconnected cities.

42 ICT for City Management

Conclusions

43ICT for City Management

Conclusions

ICT is a new and indispensible tool for meeting urban governance challenges,

whether to ensure competitiveness, help manage the natural environment or im-prove quality of life. Consequently, if there is one overarching conclusion from this report, it is that ICT can no longer be con-sidered in terms of single infrastructure-specific applications or pieces of software. Rather it is increasingly being treated like electricity—an essential architecture that underpins all services and activity in the city.

This can be seen across each of the four

44 ICT for City Management

Conclusion

areas of governance covered in this paper. With regard to competitiveness, getting the right Internet infrastructure in place is one of the most crucial ICT investments. Broad-band technology, above any other single ICT investment, has the largest potential to improve competitiveness.

Moreover, businesses see the power of ICT in streamlining their interactions with city authorities. Nothing undermines city competitiveness as much as inefficiency and opacity in government; complex and overlapping regulations and policies; and lack of engagement with businesses and investors. These are all problems e-gov-ernment can address to some degree. Con-necting departments through common technology platforms and sharing data can also help break down internal bureaucratic barriers.

With competitiveness comes growth, and in addressing the challenges associ-ated with urban growth ICT is vital to help manage the strain on a city’s physical infrastructure—particularly its transport systems. The survey shows authorities in

45ICT for City Management

emerging cities, who have a greater capac-ity for new fixed investment, understand this well.

Older cities may not have the ability to build from scratch, but authorities in these cities must similarly recognize that the only way to support legacy infrastructure systems is to use the power of information technology for their more efficient manage-ment. The issue here is addressing stake-holders’ sometimes contradictory views on technologies like congestion charging, the financial burden of which may outweigh (in citizens’ minds) their benefits for managing traffic flow and carbon emissions.

If there is one area where engaging all city stakeholders is most vital, it is in mod-erating the urban impact on the natural en-vironment—and here ICT innovations are providing the means with which to inform and engage city residents. In particular it has the potential to lead to changed be-havior—whether reducing energy and wa-ter consumption or persuading people to drive less and take public transport more. But here the power of information must

be complementary to financial incentives. Businesses and citizens accordingly place a higher onus on municipal authorities to drive such initiatives.

This is not to deny the importance of “bottom-up” action. ICT offers the oppor-tunity for city residents and businesses to access and provide information on an un-precedented scale, whether through new ways to monitor water quality and carbon emissions or to keep track of their energy and water efficiency. Emerging cities are again driving this trend, encouraged to do so in part by financial necessity and in part by the more severe environmental damage already evident in their cities.

But globally, the rise of “bottom-up” ICT innovation, enabling citizens to contribute their own assessments of environmental factors, demonstrates the importance of citizen engagement on this issue. More broadly, citizen-designed ICT innovations—whether to monitor the environment or improve quality of life in the city for all residents—are an emerging trend that mu-nicipal authorities should make the most of

and encourage, especially given the limits on their own budgets.

In terms of public administration, e-government has the potential to greatly improve competitiveness and enhance quality of life. Here the most important is-sue (after ensuring the appropriate hard-ware is in place) is attitudinal. Currently businesses, public officials and citizens blame each other for the slow adoption of electronic service delivery—underlining the importance of education and citizen engagement when rolling out these ser-vices. While all stakeholders need to accept the new processes and attitudes that such systems require, the onus is particularly on public officials to get up to speed.

If cities can use ICT to enable, engage and empower their stakeholders, they can equip themselves to cope with the future challenges of urban expansion. The future of such cities is illustrated by those that have already mastered the integration of ICT into their governance. Those that fail to recognize the importance of doing so have far less certain prospects.

46 ICT for City Management

About the Research

47ICT for City Management

About the Research

Surveys. In March-April 2010 the Econo-mist Intelligence Unit conducted surveys of three stakeholder groups—public officials, city residents and business executives—on ICT and city management in 12 countries (15 cities). The Economist Intelligence Unit compiled the survey questions in consulta-tion with Siemens Global Centre of Compe-tence, City Management (the sponsors of the research, based in Singapore) and with input from Ashish Lall, Associate Professor affiliated with the Asia Competitiveness In-stitute at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Pub-lic Policy, National University of Singapore.

48 ICT for City Management

About the Research

Public officials

Total : 240

Geography : 12 countries/15 cities (20 per country)

Profile : Non-elected officials only, with knowledge of strategy development or implementation.

Citizens

Total : 2,250

Geography : 15 cities (150 per city)

Profile : Aged 25 or over; resident of city for more than 12 months; completed secondary education.

Business executives

Total : 300

Geography : 12 countries/15 cities (25 per country)

Profile : Businesses that have interaction with public sector

Interviews and case studies. In addition to the surveys, the Economist Intelligence Unit’s research team independently interviewed public officials, executives and experts on the subject of ICT in city management. Some interviews were conducted off the record. From these interviews, and extensive background research, the Economist Intelligence Unit selected a number of innovative case studies to illustrate findings in each section of the report. These are included in a separate section at the end of the report, starting on page 50. Our thanks are due to all interviewees for their time and insights.

The Economist Intelligence Unit bears sole responsibility for the editorial content of this report. David Line was project manager at the Economist Intelligence Unit and editor of this report. Sarah Murray was the principal author. Oliver Jones, Anna Morris, Premila Nazareth, Shikha Shukla, Manoj Vohra, Christopher Watts and Eva Woo contributed additional research and reporting. Brian Lee directed the survey implementation.

Siemens was represented by Klaus Heidinger, the head of the Siemens’ Global Centre of Competence, City Management; Julian Goh, project director; and Ebenezer Thomas, project manager.

A note on survey analysis. In this report, “global” survey findings refer to those aggregating the results across the 15 cities listed below. Not all

survey totals will add to 100%, either because respondents could pick multiple answers or because of rounding.

For analysis purposes the city results were split into three archetypes, “Emerging”, “Transitional” and “Mature” based on their level of economic and social development. The archetypes stem originally from the divi-sion of cities in a previous report sponsored by Siemens: Megacity Challenges: A stakeholder perspective (2007). These archetypes have been maintained to ensure continuity. The present report uses the following definitions. (Note, however, that judgment is necessary in some cases with regard to the speed of development, wealth of the population and use of technology.)

Emerging cities: Emerging cities tend to be characterized by high growth rates driven by migration and natural growth, much of which occurs in informal settlements not served by the installed base of infrastructure and services. Annual population growth rates are on the order of between 3% and 6%. A 3.5% growth rate implies a doubling of population in 20 years. Emerging cities are typically in countries with urban populations of less than 50%. Populations tend to be younger and more male, with a high proportion of poorly educated rural migrants. Social polarity and the gaps in wealth, health, education, and political power between groups are generally highest in emerging cities.

(The Economist Intelligence Unit conducted survey analysis and bears sole responsibility for the text of this report.)

The surveys were conducted according to the criteria below. In the public officials/business executives surveys, respondents were instructed to answer with the target city in mind, or (in the cases of Germany, In-dia and the United Arab Emirates) to specify with which city they were more familiar):

49ICT for City Management

Cities surveyed

City Country 2010 populationa

2025 estimat-ed population

(% increase from 2010)b

Area km2c % of national GDP, 2008 PPPd

Abu Dhabi UAE 1.8m 2.1m (17%) 67,340 51.8%

Berlin Germany 3.5m 3.5m (0%) 892 3.3%

Buenos Aires Argentina 13.1m 13.7m (5%) 4,758 63.4%

Copenhagen Denmark 1.1m 1.2m (9%) 456 24.2%

Delhi India 22.2m 25.6m (15%) 1,484 5.0%

Dubai UAE 1.8m 2.1m (17%) 4,114 24.3%

Istanbul Turkey 10.5m 12.1m (15%) 1,831 18.4%

London UK 8.6m 8.8m (2%) 659 25.9%

Madrid Spain 5.8m 6.4m (10%) 607 15.9%

Mumbai India 20.0m 25.8m (29%) 603 6.2%

Munich Germany 1.3m 1.4m (8%) 310 2.2%

New York USA 19.4m 20.6m (6%) 319 10.0%

Shanghai China 16.6m 20.3m (22%) 6,340 2.9%

Singapore Singapore 4.8m 5.4m (13%) 710 100%

Vienna Austria 1.7m 1.80m (6%) 415 38.6%

Notes and sources:a All 2010 except Abu Dhabi and Dubai 2007; EIU estimates UAE population as 5.3m at end 2007, 33.4% Abu Dhabi and 33.7% Dubai;

estimates of population vary due to large number of migrant workers. All others: UN World Urbanization Prospects, 2009 revision. b All 2009 UN forecast for 2025 population except Abu Dhabi. Assumes Abu Dhabi increase equal to Dubai’s forecast increase over the

same period. c Area given excludes sea area administered by city government. New York area includes Newark as UN population estimate for New

York-Newark. d City GDP from 2008 PwC estimates in purchasing power parity (PPP) terms, except Abu Dhabi and Dubai (both 2006). Proportional

figure calculated from World Bank PPP estimate of national GDP in 2008.

Transitional cities: Transitional cities have often developed mechanisms to manage more effectively dynamic growth, and may be seeing a slowing of annual growth rates. Continued population growth stems largely from migration, with lower natural population increases. Growth rates are typically of the order of 2%-3% per annum and transitional cities are often in countries that are more than 50% urbanized. Transitional cities have similar infrastructure challenges to those in emerging cities but are better able to respond financially and organizationally. Increasing affluence in these cities places additional pressure on infrastructure as growing demand for transportation, water, energy, and services greatly outpaces population growth.

Mature cit ies: Mature cit ies typically have much slower growth rates than both emerging and transitional cities, at around 1% on average. Mature cities also have older population profiles. They exist in countries that are typically around 75% urban. Mature cities built out their basic infrastructure one or two generations ago. With high-quality infrastructure in place the challenge has shifted to coping with the need for renewal of aging systems or to dealing with obsolescence where the installed infrastructure no longer meets regulatory requirements or changing service expectations.

50 ICT for City Management

Case Studies

Abu Dhabi’s Masdar City: A Sustainable Metropolis

Berlin: Controlling Green Buildings

Buenos Aires: Capacity Building

The Copenhagen Wheel

Delhi’s Mission Convergence: Welfare to the People

Dubai: Saving Time, Saving Money

Istanbul: Safer Streets Through Technology

London: Adaptive Signalling

Madrid’s Modern Metro

Mumbai’s Citizen Services Portal: Power to the People

Munich: Efficiency Through E-Government

New York: Dial 311 in a Non-Emergency

Shanghai: Smart City, Smarter Transport

Singapore: Smarter Grids, Cleaner City?

Vienna: Public Transport Information on the Move

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51ICT for City Management

Case Studies

52 ICT for City Management

Abu Dhabi’s Masdar City: A Sustainable Metropolis

Case Studies

Masdar’s energy needs are planned to be 70% lower than a typical city of its size. Energy demand will be met by a solar power plant, wind farms and geothermal energy sources. Water will be provided by a solar-powered desalination plant, with around 80% of the water recycled. What’s more, the volume of water used by the city will be 60% lower than a similarly sized set-tlement. The city also aims to reduce waste to zero, through recycling and incineration, a waste-management method that has the potential to provide the city with additional sources of energy.

How does ICT contribute to managing a sustainable city, spanning environmental, economic, and social aims? Masdar City has set some goals for its ICT policies. These include maximizing the efficiency and ef-fectiveness of city management services, enriching the daily experience of residents, businesses and visitors through provision of technology services, and enabling residents and businesses to interact with Masdar City effectively. Against the backdrop of these goals, Masdar City has identified a number of areas it plans to focus on. They include:

Smart home/office and facility man-agement solutions: Building management solutions, including smart metering, are set to cover networking between domestic appliances, minimizing the emissions of IT equipment, ensuring sustainable practice in areas such as lighting and cleaning, and making best use of energy and water re-sources.

Utility computing equipment and ser-vices: Masdar City is set to minimize the environmental impact of IT infrastructure used by private citizens, businesses, and city management by making use of cloud computing architecture to consolidate computing needs.

Electronic wallets: The need for cash will be gradually eliminated by encouraging the use of cards or mobile devices for e-pay-ments that allow citizens and businesses to make electronic commerce transactions quickly and securely in the public and retail sectors across the city.

City management applications: ICT will be deployed to improve the quality and ef-ficiency of services for both citizens and business. On a basic level the goal will be to automate workflows and standardize processes. But ICT applications will also be deployed to manage services such as light-ing, walkways, recycling, and so on.

Sustainability management: Masdar City is set to install monitoring and response systems to track progress in implementing sustainable policies, such as those on CO2 emissions, and to enhance monitoring of facilities to minimize consumption of ener-gy and water. These systems are likely to in-clude real-time sustainability dashboards.

In addition to these initiatives, which will provide the foundation for an efficient, livable urban environment, Masdar City will also be free of motor vehicles that rely on conventional fuels. By creating a car-free zone at the outset, Masdar City will avoid the congestion problems plaguing other cities in the Emirates and the politically dif-ficult debates on solutions like congestion charging that have delayed much-needed progress on traffic-management in a num-ber of global cities.

With the widespread use of energy-saving technology and a car-free urban en-vironment, Masdar City’s ICT plans promise not only an advanced city, but also a green one where citizens will have the informa-tion to let them make ecological choices every day.

Energy will continue to drive oil-rich Abu Dhabi’s economy, but for its own pow-

er needs, the emirate’s plan is to diversify away from oil and towards more sustain-able energy sources. A cornerstone of this plan is Masdar City, which sits on six square kilometers about 17km from Abu Dhabi City.

The development, still under construc-tion, is expected to become an internation-al “clean tech” cluster focused on renewable energy and clean technologies. The Abu Dhabi Future Energy Company, a subsidiary of state-owned investment firm Mubadala Development Company, is the force behind Masdar City. It expects the new city to be completed by 2018, at a cost of US$22bn. It will house some 50,000 citizens.

City profile (Abu Dhabi)

Population 2007 (million) a 1.8

Forecast population 2025 (million) b 2.1

Increase in population 2007-25 (%) 17

Area (km2) c 67,340

Proportion of national GDP 2008 (%) d 51.8%

ICT profile 2010 (United Arab Emirates) e

Telephone main lines (per 100 people) 27.7

Mobile subscriptions (per 100 people) 191.9

Internet penetration (per 100 people) 78

Broadband subscriptions (per 100 people) 14.1

No. of PCs (per 100 people) 40.9

IT services spend (US$ m) 1,041

Total IT spend (US$ m) 4,271

Notes and sources:a EIU estimate; estimates of population vary due to large number

of migrant workers.b Derived from UN World Urbanization Prospects, 2009; assumes

Abu Dhabi increase equal to Dubai’s forecast increase over the same period.

c Excludes sea area administered by city government.d Estimates in purchasing power parity (PPP) terms. Proportional

figure calculated from World Bank PPP estimate of national GDP in 2008.

e EIU estimates, “UAE Technology Report”, December 2009

53ICT for City Management

Berlin: Controlling Green Buildings

In the 1990s, the City of Berlin set up a partnership with the Berlin Energy Agen-

cy, a consultancy partly owned by the gov-ernment, to develop a model for improving the energy efficiency of city buildings. The targets that followed were ambitious—any energy systems companies tendering for future contracts would need to show they could lower carbon dioxide emissions by 26%. The project resulted in thousands of large government buildings being retrofit-ted, cutting carbon emissions by more than 60,400 tonnes a year.

Emissions reduction wasn’t the project’s only consideration. “We had so much to do in Berlin, but no money,” says Cornelia Poc-zka, Berlin city government’s head of fed-eral, European and cabinet affairs. “At the time, our biggest concern wasn’t climate protection, it was energy costs.”

The savings in carbon emissions deliv-ered by the Berlin retrofit projects did more than address the city’s carbon emissions. They also saved building owners money in heating and air-conditioning bills—annual savings that, over a period of eight to 12 years, paid for the building retrofit work. Ms Poczka cites the example of the criminal court building at the city centre, which was built in 1906. When the energy saving part-nership contract concluded in 2006, the energy consumption of the building had been reduced by 32%.

While engineering, construction, light-ing systems and insulation made significant

City profile (Berlin)

Population 2010 (million) a 3.5

Forecast population 2025 (million) a 3.5

Increase in population 2010-25 (%) 0

Area (km2) 892

Proportion of national GDP 2008 (%) b 3.3%

ICT profile 2010 (Germany) c

Telephone main lines (per 100 people) 41.3

Mobile subscriptions (per 100 people) 135

Internet penetration (per 100 people) 78.2

Broadband subscriptions (per 100 people) 31.4

No. of PCs (per 100 people) 74.6

IT services spend (US$ m) 38,904

Total IT spend (US$ m) 84,244

Notes and sources:a UN World Urbanization Prospects, 2009 revision. b Estimates in purchasing power parity (PPP) terms. Proportional

figure calculated from World Bank PPP estimate of national GDP in 2008.

c EIU estimates, “Germany Technology Report”, March 2010

contributions to the energy efficiency ret-rofits of the buildings in the programme, information technology also played a cru-cial role. ICT installed in the Berlin buildings included, for example, heating control sys-tems and energy consumption regulators. For while it is one thing to install more ef-ficient heating and air-conditioning equip-ment, those systems will not deliver the necessary energy savings if they are not monitored and adjusted by appropriate technology tools.

As projects such as the Berlin retrofit-ting programme seek to make bigger con-tributions to the energy efficiency of cities, ICT will play an increasingly important role in the built environment. Technology allows engineers, architects and building owners to do everything from computer modeling and analysis to monitoring and control of building infrastructure—from lighting to air-conditioning systems. Software also fa-cilitates the architecture and design aspects of construction or retrofitting projects.

Meanwhile, technology also facilitates the use of greater proportions of renewable energy in powering buildings. And in Berlin, one prominent building is now relying en-tirely on renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power—the German Reich-stag. Here, too, technology played a role, with a software tool used to calculate the building’s energy demand, from heating and hot water to lighting, ventilation and cooling.

54 ICT for City Management

Buenos Aires: Capacity Building

Encouraging the effective use of ICT in public administration is more than a

matter of deploying technology. It requires changing the attitudes of users—citizens, businesses and public administrators. Rec-ognizing this, the provincial government of Buenos Aires worked with Microsoft, Intel, a provincial bank and an NGO to launch a capacity-building project whose aim was to equip 450,000 civil servants with the digital skills and tools needed to promote e-government.

La PC Para Conectarnos (or PC to Get Connected) project helps public employees to buy computers through an affordable plan and to get access to training in com-puter skills. The idea behind the project was that, by giving civil servants IT skills, they could broaden access to public information, engage in more e-procurement and service citizens more efficiently.

It was a project that was badly need-ed—less than 25% of the civil servants had computers in their homes. For those who City profile (Buenos Aires)

Population 2010 (million) a 13.1

Forecast population 2025 (million) a 13.7

Increase in population 2010-25 (%) 5

Area (km2) b 4,758

Proportion of national GDP 2008 (%) c 63.4%

ICT profile 2010 (Argentina) d

Telephone main lines (per 100 people) 23.7

Mobile subscriptions (per 100 people) 127.7

Internet penetration (per 100 people) 32.8

Broadband subscriptions (per 100 people) 10.3

No. of PCs (per 100 people) 32.8

IT services spend (US$ m) 690

Total IT spend (US$ m) 4,430

Notes and sources:a UN World Urbanization Prospects, 2009 revision. b Excludes sea area administered by city government.c Estimates in purchasing power parity (PPP) terms. Proportional

figure calculated from World Bank PPP estimate of national GDP in 2008.

d EIU estimates, “Argentina Technology Report”, May 2010

Case Studies

did not want to buy their own computers, access to training and other resources were provided though Digital Inclusion Centers. These centers were built with some of the proceeds from the computer and Internet connection sales and are also open to the public, offering citizens low-cost IT training and access to online government services.

Matt Miszewski, worldwide public sec-tor general manager at Microsoft, notes the impact among those that did purchase their own computers. “As they become more comfortable with using IT at home, when they bring that back to the workplace, its feeds into greater efficiency,” he says.

Mr Miszewski also stresses the impor-tance of linking these kinds of initiatives with broader e-government goals. “We’ve seen a lot of efforts where politicians like to hand out computers and there’s nothing wrong with that,” he says. “But when they connect it back to other policy outcomes it has the most impact.”

55ICT for City Management

The Copenhagen Wheel

When Carlo Ratti, director of the SENSE-able City Lab at the Massachusetts In-

stitute of Technology, did a tour of Copen-hagen the first thing he noticed was the large number of cyclists. Professor Ratti im-mediately started asking questions about what could be done if electronics were ap-plied to a bicycle wheel, such as the same technology used in Formula One racing cars that give back energy to drivers when-ever they brake.

The result was the Copenhagen Wheel. Conceived and developed by the SENSEable City Lab, the wheel turns an ordinary bike into a smart electric hybrid that allows rid-ers to harvest the energy dissipated while cycling and braking and save it for later use, for example when going up hills. The bicy-cle retrofit is easily done, since no external wiring or battery packs are needed.

The project also has unique ICT applica-tions. Controlled through a smart phone, the wheel acts as a mobile sensing unit that informs users of real-time conditions in the city, such as emissions levels, traffic congestion and road conditions, allowing cyclists to plan healthier and quicker bike routes.

“Because you can attach a sensor to anything, our cities are becoming like com-puters,” explains Professor Ratti. “And the

City profile (Copenhagen)

Population 2010 (million) a 1.1

Forecast population 2025 (million) a 1.2

Increase in population 2010-25 (%) 9

Area (km2) b 456

Proportion of national GDP 2008 (%) c 24.2%

ICT profile 2010 (Denmark) d

Telephone main lines (per 100 people) 45.6

Mobile subscriptions (per 100 people) 137.4

Internet penetration (per 100 people) 89

Broadband subscriptions (per 100 people) 39.8

No. of PCs (per 100 people) 81.4

IT services spend (US$ m) 6,199

Total IT spend (US$ m) 11,235

Notes and sources:a UN World Urbanization Prospects, 2009 revision. b Excludes sea area administered by city government.c Estimates in purchasing power parity (PPP) terms. Proportional

figure calculated from World Bank PPP estimate of national GDP in 2008.

d EIU estimates, “Denmark Technology Report”, December 2009

Copenhagen Wheel could potentially moni-tor other things, too. With the sensing com-ponent, you can explore cities across many dimensions.”

Most importantly, the bike can help us-ers make contributions to environmental data. Information collected can be shared, allowing authorities to gain a new, detailed picture of their city’s urban environmental conditions, helping inform investment de-cisions and shaping transport and environ-mental policy.

“An unintended consequence of the IT revolution is that you have these pervasive fingerprints everywhere and we are cover-ing cities with layers of captured data,” says Professor Ratti. “And the beautiful thing is that this allows people to visualize them-selves and to make better, more informed decisions.”

With the Copenhagen Wheel, the city’s bike riders—already an environmentally conscious lot—will do even more to pro-mote the greening of their city. By choos-ing to cycle, rather than drive, they not only enhance Conpenhagen’s quality of life, they will also generate data to further reduce the city’s environmental footprint, a welcome collateral benefit of an already sustainable choice.

56 ICT for City Management

Delhi’s Mission Convergence: Welfare to the People

Launched in 2008, “Mission Conver-gence” is an ICT-driven, high-priority

and award-winning initiative of the govern-ment of Delhi to bring welfare benefits to the city’s poorest residents. It “converges” Delhi’s nine social welfare departments1 and 46 welfare schemes into a single, e-enabled delivery channel.

Rashmi Singh, director of the mission, explains, “We are taking welfare entitle-ments to the poorest’s doorstep, not as a favor but as a duty.” With an estimated 4m of Delhi’s 17m residents now classified as economically vulnerable, this is a much-needed effort.

City profile (Delhi)

Population 2010 (million) a 22.2

Forecast population 2025 (million) a 25.6

Increase in population 2010-25 (%) 15

Area (km2) 1,484

Proportion of national GDP 2008 (%) b 5.0%

ICT profile 2010 (India) c

Telephone main lines (per 100 people) 7.4

Mobile subscriptions (per 100 people) 53.5

Internet penetration (per 100 people) 12.9

Broadband subscriptions (per 100 people) 1

No. of PCs (per 100 people) 5.9

IT services spend (US$ m) 6,788

Total IT spend (US$ m) 23,367

Notes and sources:a UN World Urbanization Prospects, 2009 revision. b Estimates in purchasing power parity (PPP) terms. Proportional

figure calculated from World Bank PPP estimate of national GDP in 2008.

c EIU estimates, “India Technology Report”, November 2009 1) Participating departments are i) Health and family welfare; ii) Education; iii) Women and child development; iv) Social welfare; v) Food and supplies; vi) Welfare department; vii) Urban development; viii) Revenue; and ix) Scheduled/backward classes and minority welfare. The IT department, overseeing the establishment of the IT back-end and database, is a key stakeholder.

2) Earlier poverty estimation methodologies have relied merely on income as the key parameter. Mission Convergence includes other parameters, including where an individual lives, what public services he/she has access to, how steadily he/ she is employed, whether he is from a caste that is subject to discrimination, and so on.

Mission Convergence takes head on the challenges that have dogged Delhi’s social welfare schemes for years. One is migra-tion: every year Delhi’s population swells by half a million (mostly poor immigrants), which makes welfare planning an arduous task. Second is that Delhi’s most needy are often the least able to access the sup-port due to them, thanks to unfamiliarity, illiteracy, distance and lack of appropriate identification.

Mission Convergence is thus relying on two strategies. The first is to go out and build a dynamic database of Delhi’s poor-est. Over the past year, the government has conducted a door-to-door survey of Delhi’s poorest areas, in close partnership with community-based organizations. It has now collected detailed social and economic information on 900,000 poorest house-holds (about 4.2m individuals). It has also developed a new, more comprehensive method to categorize the poor and needy households.2

Second is to service the poorest at their doorstep, also in partnership with commu-nity-based organizations. Some 93 field of-fices (known as Samajik Suvidha Kendra, or “Public Convenience Centers”) have been set up across Delhi to familiarize and assist target beneficiaries with relevant schemes. These centers also provide a variety of free skills training, legal awareness, health and education services to bring tangible value to the local community, especially its wom-en.

How does ICT fit into this picture? The mission will soon issue biometric smart cards to target beneficiaries to enable them to access entitlements, open bank accounts, and maybe even serve as public

Case Studies

transport passes. All Mission Convergence offices are also being networked for real-time monitoring and information sharing across departments, geographies, and ad-ministrative tiers.

According to Ms Singh, Mission Conver-gence is already triggering some noticeable shifts in the way welfare programmes have been run. First, it has shifted responsibility from the beneficiary to the departmental employee. Now that employees have a de-tailed list of who they should serve, they are under constant departmental pressure to show results, in contrast to the previous practice of waiting for beneficiaries to walk in and apply. This is also breaking the tra-ditional hold of municipal councilors and elected representatives in pressuring wel-fare departments to authorize entitlements to vote banks, even if not deserving.

Mission Convergence devotes consider-able energy to advocacy, communications and training, since resistant attitudes and lack of capacity have been major challeng-es in its effective implementation. Most important, though, is to build “buy in” from beneficiaries themselves, by offering them concrete services and continually incorpo-rating feedback, Ms Singh says.

Incorporating ICT into Delhi’s social wel-fare planning significantly raises the prob-ability that “taking benefits to the doorstep” of the city’s many needy residents will be a success. Smart cards, database tracking, and real-time monitoring and information sharing across welfare departments will all help ensure that the needs of the poorest can be addressed proactively and effective-ly, a meaningful improvement to poverty reduction in a city that badly needs it.

57ICT for City Management

Dubai: Saving Time, Saving Money

Dubai’s efforts to enhance its econom-ic competitiveness include a sharp focus on ICT. In the INSEAD/World Economic Forum Global Information Technology Report 2009–2010, the United Arab Emir-ates, which includes Dubai, ranked highest among all countries of the Middle East, in terms of network readiness. Here, the re-port praised the UAE’s strong and consis-tent government focus on ICT. Today, Dubai can be considered the most wired state in the Gulf.

Both the public and the private sector in Dubai have demonstrated early adoption of ICT. Consider Dubai’s e-government pro-gramme, started in 2001. Today, all munici-pal services are accessible via the Internet; indeed, many routine procedures, such as requests for planning permission, are only available online. Against a backdrop of strong growth in demand for ICT products and services, private sector firms operating in the sector have flourished, too. At the same time, pools of talent around Dubai’s ICT clusters—particularly the Dubai Inter-net City—have attracted further operators from the sector, such as British Telecom and Google.

The concerted effort to put government services online has paid dividends, accord-ing to Yaacoub Daniel, principal e-transfor-mation specialist in the IT department at Dubai Municipality (DM). “Introducing this online technology to customers is adding value to Dubai,” Mr Daniel says. “More than 60% of DM’s e-services are free for custom-ers. The cost that customers used to pay in transport, coming to Dubai Municipality and applying and wasting time... You can transfer those savings [to] the company.”

AbdulMajeed Malik, head of the e-trans-formation section at Dubai Municipality IT department, cites numerous examples of e-government transforming routine—and

As oil reserves dwindle for some coun-tries in the Gulf region, their govern-

ments have been pushing through efforts to diversify away from dependence on hydrocarbon revenues. These efforts have been marked by bold reforms aimed at lib-eralizing the economy, encouraging invest-ment, and fostering growth in the private sector.

Highest profile among these, perhaps, is Dubai, whose ambitions to create a ser-vice based economy—including position-ing itself as the regional trade hub of the Middle East region—have led to a boom over the past decade in financial services, construction, real estate, tourism and other sectors.

City profile (Abu Dhabi)

Population 2007 (million) a 1.8

Forecast population 2025 (million) b 2.1

Increase in population 2007-25 (%) 17

Area (km2) c 4,114

Proportion of national GDP 2008 (%) d 24.3%

ICT profile 2010 (United Arab Emirates) e

Telephone main lines (per 100 people) 27.7

Mobile subscriptions (per 100 people) 191.9

Internet penetration (per 100 people) 78

Broadband subscriptions (per 100 people) 14.1

No. of PCs (per 100 people) 40.9

IT services spend (US$ m) 1,041

Total IT spend (US$ m) 4,271

Notes and sources:a EIU estimate; estimates of population vary due to large number

of migrant workers.b Derived from UN World Urbanization Prospects, 2009; assumes

Abu Dhabi increase equal to Dubai’s forecast increase over the same period.

c Excludes sea area administered by city government.d Estimates in purchasing power parity (PPP) terms. Proportional

figure calculated from World Bank PPP estimate of national GDP in 2008.

e EIU estimates, “UAE Technology Report”, December 2009

formerly tedious—procedures, for citizens as well as businesses. Planning applications is one such task that has been streamlined. “When [consultants and contractors] come to apply to build a new building or a house, they used to bring the drawings with them. Now selected consultants can upload these documents, which are hundreds of megs, and get the approval online.”

When the system was launched ear-lier in the decade there was some trepida-tion, Mr Malik says, “maybe because of the literacy level for some of the users who were mainly contractors, and people who had never used the Internet before. But once they noticed the benefits—that their people did not need to come to Dubai Mu-nicipality and drive through the traffic, and that they could get their reply within two or three days and save money—that helped in speeding up the usage of the e-services.”

Dubai’s progress has been far from smooth, however. Businesses in the city still identify a lack of efficiency and ac-countability in government, and complex and overlapping regulations, as the biggest constraints on competitiveness—just the sort of issues that ICT solutions might be expected to solve. Mr Daniel admits that there have been challenges in co-ordinat-ing government agencies, citing as an ex-ample the problems with getting approv-als for food imports. “We had to link three government departments...and it was very hard because of different technologies.”

Recognizing this sort of challenge, the government is determined to unify its dis-parate entities into a “one-stop shop” for users of all e-government services. But the timing of this is uncertain. “We slowed down a little bit because of the (economic) situation now,” Mr Daniel concedes. “But [ICT] is part of our strategy, it’s part of our livelihood.”

58 ICT for City Management

Istanbul: Safer Streets Through Technology

3) 2005 data from the European Crime and Safety Survey, International Crime Survey in the EU Consortium (http://www.europeansafetyobservatory.eu/)

Case Studies

Istanbul is among Europe’s safest cities—indeed, it is safer than much smaller cities

such as Copenhagen, Brussels, Stockholm and Zurich, according to the latest available comparative data.3 Given its 12m inhab-itants, huge population of migrants and large gap between rich and poor, this is no small accomplishment.

In recent years the city’s police depart-ment has begun employing technology to help keep crime at low levels. Its Mobile Electronic Systems Integration (MOBESE) project, which is intended to help the police monitor the city and respond faster to inci-dents, was launched in 2005 and involves the following elements:

Command and control centre. As part of the MOBESE program a new command and control centre was installed at Istanbul police headquarters. The hi-tech centre in-cludes 2m-wide screens which display sat-ellite maps of Istanbul, track the location of police vehicles, and beam images from cameras located around the city.

CCTV cameras. There are 700 surveil-lance cameras, at 300 points across Istan-bul. Using an intelligent networking sys-tem, images from these high-resolution cameras are automatically categorized and routed to the command and control centre. The cameras allow identification and de-tection of illegal demonstrations, motoring offences, and petty crimes. Police officials at the command and control centre can manually operate the cameras.

License-plate recognition system. Ve-hicle theft is one of the major crimes con-

City profile (Istanbul)

Population 2010 (million) a 10.5

Forecast population 2025 (million) a 12.1

Increase in population 2010-25 (%) 15

Area (km2) b 1,831

Proportion of national GDP 2008 (%) c 18.4%

ICT profile 2010 (Turkey) d

Telephone main lines (per 100 people) 22.5

Mobile subscriptions (per 100 people) 94.8

Internet penetration (per 100 people) 48.8

Broadband subscriptions (per 100 people) 10.6

No. of PCs (per 100 people) 27.8

IT services spend (US$ m) 805

Total IT spend (US$ m) 7,218

Notes and sources:a UN World Urbanization Prospects, 2009 revision. b Excludes sea area administered by city government.c Estimates in purchasing power parity (PPP) terms. Proportional

figure calculated from World Bank PPP estimate of national GDP in 2008.

d EIU estimates, “Turkey Technology Report”, March 2010

fronting relatively safe Istanbul, and the city is also an important transit route for stolen vehicles. The MOBESE project in-cludes around 200 automatic vehicle num-ber plate recognition cameras, positioned on all major bridges and highways in and out of Istanbul. The system transmits cap-tured images to the command and control centre, and searches for matches against a database of suspicious license plates. The system alerts police to stolen vehicles two seconds after the camera has captured the number plate.

Vehicle tracking system. Using geo-graphical information systems, including digital maps, 3,500 police department ve-hicles can be tracked and directed by col-leagues back at police headquarters. Hard-ware is mounted in each car, based on GPRS technology. The vehicle tracking system enables improvements in the time needed for police to respond to incidents and to in-tervene.

The MOBESE project appears to be de-livering results. According to the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality, general crime rates in the city have fallen 21% since 2007; murders have dropped 38%; and pick-pock-eting has declined 59%. Buoyed by this success, Istanbul’s municipality now plans to roll out the MOBESE system to include other municipal institutions, such as the fire service. With the greater deployment of ICT services through the city, citizens of Istanbul can look forward to greater levels of public service, delivered faster, which ev-eryone can welcome, even in a safe city.

59ICT for City Management

London: Adaptive Signaling

Given the volume of cars passing through its often-narrow streets, the challenge

in London is to keep the traffic moving. Part of this has been achieved through the introduction of congestion charging. How-ever, in addition, deployment of informa-tion technology around the city is helping monitor and improve the flow of motorised vehicles.

In this endeavour, a critical strategy for Transport for London (TFL), the local gov-ernment body responsible for most of the transport system in the Greater London area, has been the use of adaptive signal control schemes, which allow TFL to mod-ify traffic control tools such as traffic lights to rapidly changing conditions.

“It’s about having the technology in the road to gather that information,” says Alan Bristow, director of traffic operations at Transport for London. Throughout the city, he says, about 1,400 cameras on the street help build up a picture of what is happening on the road network. This infor-mation is posted on the TFL website, given out through third parties such as the BBC’s local radio stations, and broadcast by the Highways Agency via a digital radio sta-tion, while 150 of these “JamCams” can be viewed by the public.

City profile (London)

Population 2010 (million) a 8.6

Forecast population 2025 (million) a 8.8

Increase in population 2010-25 (%) 2

Area (km2) 659

Proportion of national GDP 2008 (%) b 25.9%

ICT profile 2010 (UK) c

Telephone main lines (per 100 people) 34.7

Mobile subscriptions (per 100 people) 130.4

Internet penetration (per 100 people) 74.4

Broadband subscriptions (per 100 people) 34.3

No. of PCs (per 100 people) 82.2

IT services spend (US$ bn) 47

Total IT spend (US$ bn) 85.9

Notes and sources:a UN World Urbanization Prospects, 2009 revision. b Estimates in purchasing power parity (PPP) terms. Proportional

figure calculated from World Bank PPP estimate of national GDP in 2008.

c EIU estimates, “UK Technology Report”, November 2009

One of the most important of London’s adaptive control tools is SCOOT (Split Cycle Offset Optimisation Technique). The system uses road sensors, which are positioned at all angles on the approach to a junction, to monitor the traffic and set an appropri-ate length of the green light depending on the traffic volume. “This feeds in data on an hour-by-hour, second-by-second basis,” says Mr Bristow. “And from that we build up a picture of what is happening on the road network.”

And knowledge is power—Mr Bristow says that being able to monitor junctions and set the green time on the traffic light accordingly can result in a 12% delay reduc-tion. “The value of a system like SCOOT, where we have the ability to react to inci-dences as they occur, is that we can enable the traffic to run more smoothly,” he says.

Since it is hard for staff in the traffic control centre to monitor all cameras all the time, 20 cameras are equipped with a video analytics system known as IRID (im-age recognition and instant detection) that automatically spots congestion. “We can catch problems earlier and deal with them much more quickly,” Mr Bristow explains. “As opposed to waiting for someone to ring in when it’s a huge problem.”

60 ICT for City Management

Madrid’s Modern Metro

4) “Madrid’s Model of Infrastructure Project Creation”, Madrid Network, December 20095) Metro Madrid press release, July 20086) Metro Madrid press release, January 2010

With the world’s fourth-largest pub-lic transport system—and one that

is used by almost 50% of its citizens4—it’s hardly surprising that Madrid Metro is known for its innovative use of technology. And with other systems looking to expand or upgrade, Madrid is even exporting its knowledge and experience elsewhere.

Metro Madrid is also one of the world’s fastest expanding commuter rail networks. When it embarked on its expansion plan in 1995, the system was 120km in length. By 2007, some 128 new stations and another 164km had been added to the network. At the same time, Metro Madrid has been con-stantly looking around for new ways to use technology to enhance the efficiency and usability of the system.

City profile (Madrid)

Population 2010 (million) a 5.8

Forecast population 2025 (million) a 6.4

Increase in population 2010-25 (%) 10

Area (km2) 607

Proportion of national GDP 2008 (%) b 15.9%

ICT profile 2010 (Spain) c

Telephone main lines (per 100 people) 36.7

Mobile subscriptions (per 100 people) 123.2

Internet penetration (per 100 people) 70.8

Broadband subscriptions (per 100 people) 24.9

No. of PCs (per 100 people) 41.6

IT services spend (US$ m) 14,513

Total IT spend (US$ m) 28,820

Notes and sources:a UN World Urbanization Prospects, 2009 revision. b Estimates in purchasing power parity (PPP) terms. Proportional

figure calculated from World Bank PPP estimate of national GDP in 2008.

c EIU estimates, “Spain Technology Report”, January 2010

A variety of cutting-edge technologi-cal innovations have been implemented. These include contact ticketing systems, advanced signalling and radio-frequency identification (RFID), which generates ac-curate location and positioning, something that is needed to ensure trains stop at pre-cise points along the platforms.

Many of the IT systems are used to achieve safety and operational efficiency. In 2008, for example, Metro Madrid imple-mented a state-of-the-art signalling system on lines 1 and 6, allowing it safely to in-crease capacity. The Communication-Based Train Control (CBTC) allows operators to safely reduce the distance between trains and to increase the number of trains that can run on each line at the same time. This

has raised the number of passengers that can be carried by more than 50% and im-proved train frequency at peak times.5

A Centre of Operations for Maintenance and Monitoring of Installations and Tele-communications (COMMIT) has also been able to manage and co-ordinate mainte-nance across the system, aided by systems such as automatic procurement and real-time monitoring of field data. The centre can remotely manage and resolve incidents in the network.

“Technology is a clear ally in this respect, making it possible to improve reliability, re-duce response times in case of failures and, at the same time, to cut operating costs,” says Juan Pablo Alonso, technical director of Metro Madrid. Given its size and staffing levels, management of the network would be impossible without these kinds of tech-nologies, Mr Alonso says.

Other technological innovations are more visible to passengers. Also in 2008, Metro Madrid introduced contact-free cards for passengers to smooth the process of buying and using tickets. New software systems allow the cards, which can be used on all modes of transport, to be recharged easily.

The investments have paid off. The sys-tem has increased its capacity, decreased costs and can operate more safely. How-ever, the other return on the investment in technology has been citizen approval. In a 2009 survey, the 7.5 out of 10 approval score was the highest since the study was first conducted in 2003.6 Other cities have taken note of the improvements Madrid has made through ICT. Looking with envy at Madrid’s system and its awards for tech-nological innovation, cities such as Quito and Santo Domingo have sought Metro Madrid’s advice as they plan to expand and modernise their networks.

Case Studies

61ICT for City Management

Mumbai’s Citizen Services Portal: Power to the People

7) These include finance and accounts, material management, human resources, fleet and workshop management, citizens’ portal and ward management, project systems and real estate.

City profile (Mumbai)

Population 2010 (million) a 20

Forecast population 2025 (million) a 25.8

Increase in population 2010-25 (%) 29

Area (km2) b 603

Proportion of national GDP 2008 (%) c 6.2%

ICT profile 2010 (India) d

Telephone main lines (per 100 people) 7.4

Mobile subscriptions (per 100 people) 53.5

Internet penetration (per 100 people) 12.9

Broadband subscriptions (per 100 people) 1

No. of PCs (per 100 people) 5.9

IT services spend (US$ m) 6,788

Total IT spend (US$ m) 23,367

Notes and sources:a UN World Urbanization Prospects, 2009 revision. b Excludes sea area administered by city government.c Estimates in purchasing power parity (PPP) terms. Proportional

figure calculated from World Bank PPP estimate of national GDP in 2008.

d EIU estimates, “India Technology Report”, November 2009

Municipal Corporation of Greater Mum-bai (MCGM) is the largest municipal

corporation in the country, catering to over 12.5m citizens with the help of a complex, multi-departmental set-up and a network of 24 ward offices. To streamline its vast op-erations, improve efficiencies and enhance customer service, MCGM launched Citizen Services Portal (CSP) in April 2007.

The main objective of CSP was to “pro-vide convenience to citizens and business-es, while improving MCGM’s administrative operations and reducing cost,” according to Shree Kant Singh, deputy chairman of Mumbai Port Trust in the national govern-ment’s Ministry of Shipping, who led the implementation of CSP as the chairman of its project management task force.

A first of its kind initiative by any urban municipal body in the country, CSP has transformed the way MCGM works and de-livers services to its citizens. The portal has three main components:

Citizen portal ward management mod-ule, which enables online delivery of over 100 citizen services, such as registration of births and deaths, issuance of licenses and permits, etc.

Aqua, through which citizens can make online payment of water bills (which was awarded 1st prize in National Urban Water Awards 2009 for “Innovative Use of IT in citizen service delivery”).

P-Tax, which enables citizens to pay prop-erty tax online. The portal also allows citi-zens to register and track their complaints and grievances.

With over three million transactions ev-ery year, the portal is being used by citizens primarily for availing municipal services and for paying water bills.

Behind the scenes, MCGM undertook reengineering and integration of its opera-tions across functions7 and locations with the help of an enterprise resource planning solution. Information from all offices was consolidated, computerized and stored at a single information repository, which can now be easily accessed by all ward and zonal offices and citizen facilitation centers (CFCs) by lease lines.

CSP has made a tangible, positive dif-ference to both citizens and MCGM. For citizens, IT-enabled services—delivered through CSP, CFCs and Internet kiosks—have resulted in speed, flexibility and con-venience. According to Mr Singh, the deliv-ery time of services has fallen dramatically after the introduction of CSP.

For MCGM, the key outcomes have been greater operational efficiency, im-proved effectiveness and better supervi-sory control enabled by fast and real time access to accurate information. The portal has also resulted in greater efficiency in the recovery of water user charges. Further, e-procurement services offered by CSP have helped both buyers and suppliers reduce transaction time and unnecessary paper-work while improving transparency.

The key enabling factors for the suc-cessful implementation of CSP have been MCGM’s autonomy in decision making, support of the elected council and part-nership with experienced private partners (for domain expertise, ICT solutions and products). One of the main challenges faced was the resistance and lack of capac-ity among municipal staff which was over-come through communication and training inputs. Mr Singh says that more than 2,500 employees of MCGM have been trained on different software applications.

Reduction in delivery time of key citizen services

Services Delivery time

Before CSP After CSP

Issuing new license 18 days 7 days

Renewal of licenses 15 days Immediate

Bill payment 1 hour 10 minutes

Source: User feedback survey conducted by MCGM

62 ICT for City Management

Munich: Efficiency Through E-Government

To boost the city’s competitiveness as a business destination, increase its appeal

as a livable urban location, and modern-ize city management, Munich city officials have been building up the administration’s e-government capabilities.

For a start, thousands of municipal employees are now equipped with PCs. In addition, they can access intranets and e-calendars, log working hours electronically and contribute to internal “wikis”, or group knowledge databases. Meanwhile, the city has been building an electronic document management system as well as technology facilitating online payments.

The idea behind the investments made in recent years has been to increase effi-ciency and lower the costs associated with the management of municipal services—partly by reducing the amount of paper-based communications—and to provide the kind of digital tools needed for munici-pal employees to communicate with each other.

In order to co-ordinate activities across a diverse set of departments and indi-viduals, a specific unit was established to develop the system and ensure the right departments were working together as the different stages of the program were implemented.

At the same time, since 2004, the Ba-varian state capital has been migrating all its desktop computers and PCs to the Linux open-source operating system, after hav-

City profile (Munich)

Population 2010 (million) a 1.3

Forecast population 2025 (million) a 1.4

Increase in population 2010-25 (%) 8

Area (km2) 310

Proportion of national GDP 2008 (%) b 2.2%

ICT profile 2010 (Germany) c

Telephone main lines (per 100 people) 41.3

Mobile subscriptions (per 100 people) 135

Internet penetration (per 100 people) 78.2

Broadband subscriptions (per 100 people) 31.4

No. of PCs (per 100 people) 74.6

IT services spend (US$ m) 38,904

Total IT spend (US$ m) 84,244

Notes and sources:a UN World Urbanization Prospects, 2009 revision. b Estimates in purchasing power parity (PPP) terms. Proportional

figure calculated from World Bank PPP estimate of national GDP in 2008.

c EIU estimates, “Germany Technology Report”, March 2010

ing chosen this over proprietary systems such as Microsoft’s. Among other things, the technology allows agencies to change web-based applications and the design of citizen-facing web pages swiftly and with-out having to restart servers.

However, as well as enhancing the ef-ficiency of internal government activities, the investments made in technology in re-cent years have been designed to improve the delivery of services to citizens and the business community via its Internet portal. Among the services offered by the portal are online registrations and payments, e-mail connections to city departments as well as the opportunity to receive automatic updates on things such as public transport schedules and real-time traffic conditions.

Much of the emphasis has been on rolling out information for businesses and individuals—and the city has even included children in these efforts. An interactive por-tal called Pomki allows children to partici-pate online as well as proving information on things such as details of museums of interest.

While choosing the right providers and training municipal staff in how to use tech-nological tools has been important, experts stress that much of the success of Munich’s e-government project has been having sup-port from the top, with the mayor playing a particularly prominent role, and defining the responsibilities of politicians, adminis-trators and technicians.

Case Studies

63ICT for City Management

New York: Dial 311 in a Non-Emergency

Though ICT has the potential to improve the speed and ease with which citizens

can interact with their governments, many consumers still profess a preference for di-rect interaction, if not face-to-face then at least via e-mail. New York City has taken an approach that caters to this preference while harnessing the efficiencies of tech-nology.

City profile (New York)

Population 2010 (million) a 19.4

Forecast population 2025 (million) a 20.6

Increase in population 2010-25 (%) 6

Area (km2) b 319

Proportion of national GDP 2008 (%) c 10.0%

ICT profile 2010 (US) d

Telephone main lines (per 100 people) 33.3

Mobile subscriptions (per 100 people) 94.8

Internet penetration (per 100 people) 83.9

Broadband subscriptions (per 100 people) 27

No. of PCs (per 100 people) 93.1

IT services spend (US$ bn) 218

Total IT spend (US$ bn) 506

Notes and sources:a UN World Urbanization Prospects, 2009 revision. b Excludes sea area administered by city government.c Estimates in purchasing power parity (PPP) terms. Proportional

figure calculated from World Bank PPP estimate of national GDP in 2008.

d EIU estimates, “US Technology Report”, February 2010

What began as an initiative to ease the volume of calls to New York City’s 911 emer-gency service has become a comprehen-sive response service that allows the city not only to interact more efficiently with citizens but also to base policy decisions and infrastructure investment on more ac-curate data.

Launched in 2003, the 311 service has given New Yorkers a single number through which they can do everything from pay city taxes to sign up for job training or find the right agency to handle a problem.

Callers to 311 are connected with a 24-hour call centre where staff conduct online searches to identify the informa-tion requested or to connect callers to the appropriate city office. The service is also available online through 311 Online and the service has its own Facebook page and Twitter account through which it updates customers.

Since the service launched, the volume of calls received has increased rapidly, from 10m in 2004 to 18.7m in 2009. Call num-bers rise sharply during major city incidents or unplanned events. Last year there were some 75,000 calls related to H1N1 or swine flu, with about half of those occurring dur-ing the two weeks after the World Health Organization identified the virus.

The service is also being deployed to ad-dress long-term health issues. For example, the city is using 311 to provide free nicotine patch kits to those trying to quit smoking. “We’ve significantly expanded the depth of human services we provide through 311,”

says Keir Buckhurst, the 311 project lead for Accenture, the consultancy that is helping the city develop the service.

The service is even able to address cor-ruption. In the construction industry, for example, firms request appointments with buildings inspectors to examine and ap-prove work using an automatic scheduling tool run through 311.

An unexpected benefit has been the wealth of data that can be captured by the system. Soon after it went live, for ex-ample, the Department of Transportation was able to prioritize the fixing of potholes based on which were generating the most complaints.

Based on complaints about noise, the city was able to revamp the noise code, setting decibel levels for car alarms and changing permitted working hours for con-struction companies. “And it turned out few people liked the ice-cream truck jingle,” says Mr Buckhurst. “So they changed the regula-tions for how long they could play it for.”

According to a study conducted by an outside firm in 2008, the system appears to have had a positive effect on citizens’ attitudes towards government. “They got satisfaction results higher than federal and state governments but also a number of re-tail organizations as well.”

While the system was originally set up simply to alleviate the number of calls be-ing made to the emergency response num-ber, the city and its residents appear to have gained a whole lot more.

64 ICT for City Management

Shanghai: Smart City, Smarter Transport

Another key focus for the city is to man-age data connected to the city transport network, which will come under severe scrutiny during the Expo. Shanghai’s pro-posed Twelfth Five Year Plan (12FYP, 2011-15) has a whole section dedicated to “Smart Comprehensive Transportation”. Currently this is based around three major projects:

Electronic ID management system. One major headache for public transpor-tation management in Shanghai (as with other major cities in China) has been the rampant spread of unlicensed transport vehicles (most often taxicabs) that often look exactly the same as the licensed va-riety. To combat this, and to keep track of public transport, the city has issued smart ID license tags and cards to most of the city’s 180,000 public transportation ve-hicles, 48,000 taxis and 180,000 transport workers. The license cards contain informa-tion like the model of car, the license plate number and the operating company. With all major transport stations and vehicles also equipped with smart card readers, the idea is to prevent the forgery of transport licenses and the operation of unlicensed vehicles, by verifying the information on the cards with a central database.

Public transport smart cards. Smart in-tegrated circuit cards (IC cards) have long been in use by the public in Shanghai, for use on public transport and also some re-tail stores. Known as gong jiao IC cards, the system is managed by a subsidiary of the Shanghai Urban Construction and Com-munication Commission. The city plans to use the data captured by usage of gong jiao cards more efficiently to improve the col-lection of passenger flow information. This will be achieved by integrating gong jiao IC

Shanghai, host of the 2010 World Expo, is making a concerted effort to harness

ICT in the management of city services, and in particular to co-ordinate information col-lected to improve efficiency. Indeed, it has a bureau dedicated to this purpose, within the Shanghai Municipal Commission of Economy and Informatization.

According to the Commission, one of its near-term priorities is to establish a “grid-style public management information system” that integrates information across various city departments—including land and housing development, environmental protection, and public safety agencies (for example in the reporting and handling of criminal cases and residents’ complaints).

City profile (Shanghai)

Population 2010 (million) a 16.6

Forecast population 2025 (million) a 20.3

Increase in population 2010-25 (%) 22

Area (km2) 6,340

Proportion of national GDP 2008 (%) b 2.9%

ICT profile 2010 (China) c

Telephone main lines (per 100 people) 17.6

Mobile subscriptions (per 100 people) 63.5

Internet penetration (per 100 people) 29.2

Broadband subscriptions (per 100 people) 9.3

No. of PCs (per 100 people) 22.3

IT services spend (US$ bn) 12.4

Total IT spend (US$ bn) 83.6

Notes and sources:a UN World Urbanization Prospects, 2009 revision. b Estimates in purchasing power parity (PPP) terms. Proportional

figure calculated from World Bank PPP estimate of national GDP in 2008.

c EIU estimates, “China Technology Report”, January 2010

card readers with GPS tracking, so that city transportation office can understand the pattern of passenger flow. Still in the test-ing stage, the system is currently in place only in a couple of places in Qingpu district, but the plan is to install it citywide in the 12FYP period.

Bus smart information system. Started in 2005, this RMB300m (US$44m) project is a major initiative of the Shanghai Urban Transportation Management Bureau and another key focus of the 12FYP. Under this system, Shanghai’s city buses have devices on them that allow real-time communica-tion between the vehicles, operators and bus stops. This enables the operator to mon-itor usage and vehicle position as well as passenger flow and other data such as fuel consumption. GPS data for each bus is fed to the operator’s information system and disseminated by an exclusive digital broad-casting signal—until recently operated by Shanghai Media Group (SMG). Information screens on the buses and at bus-stop signs relay scheduling news, predicting how long a wait before the next bus arrives (and serv-ing as a media outlet for broadcasters and advertisers).

The system has not been without prob-lems. Oversaturation with advertisements and poor management of the broadcast system led to the end of SMG’s involvement in the project (a new partner has yet to be selected). One problem was that the data system for monitoring bus usage was not actively updated or managed, according to city officials. The problem of underutiliza-tion of technology is of course not unique to Shanghai. The mere existence of an ICT solution does not guarantee it will be used effectively.

Case Studies

65ICT for City Management

Singapore: Smarter Grids, Cleaner City?

In 2009 Singapore’s Energy Market Au-thority (EMA), initiated a pilot project to test new technologies for an “Intelligent Energy System”, or a smart grid. The EMA is confident of its benefits. “We envisage that smart grid technologies would allow consumers, be it businesses or households, to better manage and optimize their elec-tricity usage, thereby improving energy ef-ficiency for Singapore as a whole,” says an EMA spokesperson.

Indeed, smart grids promise to deliver greater efficiency in power generation, cost-savings to consumers, reductions in carbon emissions8 and the ability to incor-porate diverse sources of energy—such as wind and solar—into the grid. Because they use communications technology to enable a two-way flow of information between en-ergy providers and consumers, smart grids represent a significant upgrade to existing power grids, which only communicate in one direction—outbound.

For consumers—even in Singapore, where limited communications technolo-gies are already in place to detect outages—this has meant forgoing access to detailed information about their day-to-day electric-ity usage and the ability to efficiently regu-late their consumption.

“Today’s electricity grid focuses largely on the passive transmission of electricity from the power plant to the consumer,” said Lawrence Wong, CEO of EMA at the Smart Grids Conference in Singapore in November 2009. “Most consumers do not know much electricity they are using or how much they are spending until they receive a bill at the end of the month.”9

Under the Intelligent Energy System (IES) pilot program, 4,000 smart meters—a

Some authorities are embarking on city-wide schemes to deploy ICT in energy

efficiency. Among the most ambitious are initiatives to apply smart grids to the power supply.

Smart grids carrying data and commu-nications use digital technology to man-age energy use and facilitate energy flows both to and from the grid. The idea is that with smart meters installed in their homes, citizens will eventually be able to see how much electricity they are using at any given time and, following price signals from utili-ties, moderate that use and even control individual devices remotely from PCs or mobile devices. Businesses and homes us-ing renewable energy sources will also be able to send surplus energy back into the grid, earning energy credits.

City profile (Singapore)

Population 2010 (million) a 4.8

Forecast population 2025 (million) a 5.4

Increase in population 2010-25 (%) 13

Area (km2) b 710

Proportion of national GDP 2008 (%) c 100.0%

ICT profile 2010 (Singapore) d

Telephone main lines (per 100 people) 36.1

Mobile subscriptions (per 100 people) 138.4

Internet penetration (per 100 people) 79.3

Broadband subscriptions (per 100 people) 29.8

No. of PCs (per 100 people) 62.6

IT services spend (US$ m) 2,488

Total IT spend (US$ m) 6,426

Notes and sources:a UN World Urbanization Prospects, 2009 revision. b Excludes sea area administered by city government.c Estimates in purchasing power parity (PPP) terms. Proportional

figure calculated from World Bank PPP estimate of national GDP in 2008.

d EIU estimates, “Singapore Technology Report”, February 2010

key component of smart grid technology—will provide consumers with real-time infor-mation about variable energy prices, giving them the choice to consume energy at lower-cost times of day. In an earlier trial, installing smart meters in two local hous-ing estates in Singapore and implementing time-differentiated electricity prices re-sulted in these households shifting 10% of their usual electrical load from peak periods to off-peak periods,10 a result that suggests that consumers would change their energy consumption if given better access to infor-mation about their usage levels.

The IES program is also testing demand management systems, which can be con-nected to appliances, homes or office build-ings to manage automatically their energy consumption according to changes in price, both saving consumers money and allow-ing energy providers to better manage grid load planning.

“For example,” an EMA spokesperson says, “building owners can install automa-tion systems that monitor and control the building’s lighting and mechanical systems. These systems would be wired to commu-nicate with the grid, so that the building owners and occupants can participate in demand response and energy efficiency programs offered by the utility companies.” The IES program will also evaluate systems that integrate small and variable sources of power into the grid, including allowing Electric Vehicle owners to sell energy back to the grid. (Singapore is also examining the benefits of adopting EVs.)

According to Mr Wong, “a smarter grid will enable us to make better decisions about energy usage and enhance efficiency in the power system as a whole.”11

8) “Intelligent Energy System Pilot Project”, Singapore Energy Market Authority, http://www.ema.gov.sg/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=135&%20Itemid=165

9) “Opening address by Mr Lawrence Wong” Smart Grids Conference, Singapore, November 2009. Available at http://www.ema.gov.sg/index.php?option=com_news&task=article&cid[]=144

10) Ibid.11) Ibid.

66 ICT for City Management

Vienna: Public Transport Information on the Move

Austrians are the heaviest users of public transport in the European Union, with

average journeys of 3,362km per person annually—versus 2,012km in the EU bloc of 25 countries, and just 1,192km in Germany and 1,706km in the Netherlands. Austria’s capital, Vienna, leads the way. Of all week-day journeys in the city, 35% are by public transport—second only to Zurich in Eu-rope, which racks up 37%. No point in the city is more than 15 minutes’ walk from a bus, tram, or subway stop.

City profile (Vienna)

Population 2010 (million) a 1.7

Forecast population 2025 (million) a 1.8

Increase in population 2010-25 (%) 6

Area (km2) 415

Proportion of national GDP 2008 (%) b 38.6%

ICT profile 2010 (Austria) c

Telephone main lines (per 100 people) 23.4

Mobile subscriptions (per 100 people) 132.8

Internet penetration (per 100 people) 64.3

Broadband subscriptions (per 100 people) 25.6

No. of PCs (per 100 people) 72.2

IT services spend (US$ m) 4,335

Total IT spend (US$ m) 9,063

Notes and sources:a UN World Urbanization Prospects, 2009 revision. b Estimates in purchasing power parity (PPP) terms. Proportional

figure calculated from World Bank PPP estimate of national GDP in 2008.

c EIU estimates, “Austria Technology Report”, December 2009

To ensure it stays that way, Vienna Lines, the city’s leading public transport op-erator, together with the Transport Associa-tion of the Eastern Region of Austria, and Fluidtime Data Services, a Vienna design and software firm, launched Qando, a new mobile telephone application, in May 2009. Its aim: To provide real-time travel informa-tion to travelers’ mobile telephones.

The system includes GPS-based route planning—meaning users can be directed from their current locations to their des-tination. Users can stand at a bus or tram stop, and see clearly when the next bus or tram will come—even at those stops that do not have electronic count-down displays installed. For those with wheelchairs or prams, the next low-loading trams are also marked. Qando also provides real-time in-formation on any disruptions or delays to the transport service. The information is provided in German or in English.

Qando provides users with timetables of all the public transport services in Vienna, Lower Austria, and Burgenland. Using this timetable information, Qando can calculate the route and the traveling time for any trip on public transport in these areas, between two points of interest, or addresses. Users can also buy tickets for their journey by SMS—a few clicks away from their calcu-lated journey. And when users store regular journey legs under “favorites”, Qando sends regular updates of service interruptions to the user. Besides these functions, users can also access location-based services us-ing Qando, including information on events

in the vicinity, such as exhibitions and con-certs, as well as restaurant tips, and out-of-hours chemists in the vicinity of the user.

The Qando application is free, and al-ready, more than 200,000 users of public transport have downloaded it. In January this year, the operators won an award for Qando, granted by the city of Vienna. It was honored with the ebiz egovernment award as Best IT Project 2009 by a special jury of parliamentarians and the Digital Austria platform.

Despite these successes, the operators of Qando are not stopping there. Next, they plan to extend its scope beyond the limits of the city of Vienna itself, to the en-tire Eastern region of Austria. An expansion to include Vienna’s subway may also be on the cards. In time, it is possible that further developments may include route calcula-tions that take into account cost, time, and congestion of various different modes of transport.

Encouraging such third-party innova-tion is a key focus of the public authorities’ ICT strategy. Barbara Novak, member of the Vienna City Council and spokeswoman for information and communication technol-ogy (Austria), describes Vienna’s aspira-tions in ICT as resting on three bases: “A technologically developed infrastructure; equally, the development of new [public]content and in new e-government services; and incentives to develop such ideas and applications in the private sector.” Qando is evidence that at least one aspect of this strategy is paying off.

Case Studies

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