Harnessing the Power of Video to Become France’s Most Innovative Community

Today, a visit to Drancy, located in the northeastern suburbs of Paris, France, reveals a vibrant community of 66,000 people. The streets are safe thanks to CCTV video shared between local and national police, the library offers computer education to elderly citizens, parents can access user-friendly, web-based applications to monitor their children’s progress in school, and new businesses are coming to town.

In the near future, a top engineering school will bring 1700 students and 200 professors to the area. Drancy is a city on the move, and it is all thanks to the vision of the city’s forward-looking leadership team and a comprehensive business transformation initiative based on Cisco® video solutions and networking technology.

It was not always such a pretty picture. Drancy entered the new millennium as one of the poorest cities in France. The population was declining due to crime-ridden streets, lack of jobs, and low income levels, which caused residents to seek opportunities in Paris and beyond. Businesses had no incentive to move to Drancy. Citizens, schools, hospitals and non-profit organizations had limited access to the Internet and other modern technologies.

Region: France Industry: Public sector Employees: 1500 Business Issue: Transformation of city and citizen service

BACKGROUND

• Drancy was one of the poorest cities in France in 2000.

• City was losing population and experiencing high crime rates.

• Lack of business infrastructure discouraged new employers.

GOAL

• Reverse the net outflow of citizens from the city, decrease crime, and attract more businesses by transforming Drancy into a leading technology and commerce center through invest-ments in new networking and collaborative video tools.

SOLUTION

• Cisco TelePresence implemented for global communication.

• Cisco WebEx adopted for critical supplier communication.

• Cisco Flip Video camcorders and software engaged to speed time to communicate and improve clarity of messaging.

• Cisco Video Surveillance Manager, in combinations with Cisco Physical Access Control, for local and national police safety and security activities.

• Fiber network managed by Cisco Nexus 7000 series switch to enable virtualization, data center growth, and high performance.

RESULTS

• Attracted new site for Eurocopter, resulting in 750 new jobs

• Attracted top engineering school, which will bring 1700 students and 200 professors to area

• Reduced crime by 30 percent to become the second-safest suburb of Paris

• Initiated program to provide computer education to 7000 schoolchildren

• Saved thousands of Euros in travel time and related expenses. Increased productivity, bridging government and suppliers

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CUSTOMER PROFILE

Remarkably, over the past 10 years, Drancy transformed itself into one of the most innovative cities in France. The result of this transformation has resulted in a reversal in the net outflow of citizens, increasing the city’s population by 6000, while simultaneously reducing crime by an estimated 30 percent (Figure 1). Drancy is also successfully attracting new businesses to create jobs for local residents. Through the use of new video solutions and applications, on top of the development of a modern data center and deployment of a citywide fiber network for use by citizens, businesses, and government, Drancy’s use of new video technologies and tools have demonstrated the city’s commitment to becoming a technology-savvy community. This is further evidenced by a top engineering school’s recent decision to open operations in Drancy and to offer classes in the area. In short, Drancy has become a very nice place to live and work.

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Says Mayor Jean Christophe Lagarde: “Drancy was a communist city for 66 years, with no businesses. Now, our city has become a hub for high-tech industries and higher education through the advent of new networking technologies. We owe a debt of gratitude to Cisco for its support of our city’s transformation, in terms of both superior technology and the creation of real business value.”

Exciting Innovations

Cisco partnered with Drancy to help formulate the vision for the city’s transformation to a modern, connected community by identifying the right solutions to turn that vision into reality. As a first step in its journey, Cisco set up a series of proof-of-concept demonstrations to show how the solutions and products would work. Drancy’s team then worked with Cisco to customize the solutions, as required, to fit the city’s needs.

Drancy began its modernization and video adoption by laying a fiber network in 2005. The network is currently available in all municipal buildings and schools, as well as in one-quarter of all residencies. However, the aggressive move to video is not unusual for Drancy. It has many technology “firsts” to its credit. In 2002, it was the first city in France to deploy voice over IP (VoIP) technology;

five years later, it became the first city in France to use the cloud. In 2008-9, it led the way in consolidating its data center network and deployed desktop and switch virtualization.

In 2009, Drancy discovered the power of video for collaboration and communications. First the city installed Cisco TelePresence™ as a service for attracting businesses that need to collaborate across France and the globe. Drancy also boasts the largest closed-circuit TV (CCTV) installation in the country for crime prevention and community building. Drancy also recognized the value of live video collaboration, embracing Cisco WebEx™ for communications between and among key partners and city government to speed decision making and curtail expenses. Cisco Flip Video™ camcorders have been selected as a key method of sharing video content and information between departments and suppliers as well as first-hand from citizens.

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Figure 1

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A Safer City

Among other things, the multifaceted transformation of Drancy significantly reduced crime and helped build community trust in the police force. Drancy installed CCTVs in 2005, and in 2009, implemented Cisco Physical Access Manager and Cisco Video Surveillance Manager. Now, more than 300 cameras across the city provide coverage for approximately 60 percent of the city and feed real-time data to both national and municipal police. Further enhancing the effectiveness of the system, officers on both forces can simultaneously access the video feed on the road, using connected notebook computers. “CCTVs are as important to the cops as their cars,” notes Mayor Lagarde. “The crime rate has dropped significantly, and now Drancy is one of the safest cities in the area.” In fact, crime rates have gone down by about 30 percent, with a corresponding 30 percent increase in the number of solved crimes. Providing the video feed to both municipal and national police resulted in less duplication of effort, better use of time, and improved coordination. And there’s an important side benefit: As the police force became more effective at fighting crime, citizens became more trusting

of the police and are reporting 20 percent more incidents. In the past, Drancy had one of the highest crime rates among the 40 suburbs of Paris; now it ranks as the second-safest, a stunning improvement from being number 30 on the list.

Building New Jobs and Enriching Skills through Video

The improved network infrastructure and related services are also turning Drancy and the surrounding area into a magnet for science and technology. Eurocopter, the largest turbine helicopter company in Europe, needed to accommodate their growth. It will soon open a new site near Drancy, in the city of Le Bourget. Le Bourget, along with Dugny, is one of two neighboring cities that utilize Drancy’s new data center. Because of this, La Bourget is able to offer Eurocopter a modern network infrastructure and access to tools, such as Cisco TelePresence, that are already in place.

Having access to new and innovative technologies is a plus for an aerospace leader like Eurocopter. The ability to connect engineering teams no matter where they are via the immersive, face-to-face Cisco TelePresence

experience is invaluable, creating more efficient and connected teams while saving organizations travel time and expenses. As a result, Eurocopter will add 750 jobs and provide business for 275 contractors in the area, while Eurocopter’s presence will help local retailers and business owners (Figure 2).

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Figure 2

Complementing the influx of new business investment, one of France’s top engineering schools will also take advantage of the new infrastructure by establishing a campus in Drancy (Figure 3). The new data center,

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network infrastructure, and Cisco TelePresence were significant factors in the school’s decision to open new classes in Drancy. The school plans to provide a globally collaborative experience, through those technologies, to its students and faculty by allowing them to connect with other universities around the world. In fact, younger students in Drancy are already using Cisco TelePresence to help them “go global” without actually leaving the city. Today, secondary school and lycée students practice their language skills via Cisco TelePresence with students in other countries. They are conversing with peers in the United States and Australia in English and practicing German with counterparts in Germany. In essence, through Cisco TelePresence, they are experiencing foreign exchange locally. Flip cameras have transformed building and city works. Previously, the mayor or head of public works received written progress reports on city maintenance activities, often days after work was completed. Today, city workers use Flip Video cameras to record projects as they are in progress, for example, how a water main is leaking. This provides

rich, real-time information so city officials can communicate better to the citizenry and collaborate better to respond to changing conditions. “Now we give Flip to the city workers; video is a much more immediate and effective way to capture and describe activities,” says David Larose, CIO of Drancy. “You don’t have to write a report. You take a video and are talking while Flip’ing. Your commentary is captured, and you just have to upload your videos and you can broadcast it to anyone you want.” The use of Flip Video cameras is not limited to government employees. In another valuable applications, tenants moving into apartments can now use Flip cameras to record building inspections, eliminating the burden of cumbersome written reports. In addition to using Flip Video to record project progress, the mayor has requested that City Council meetings be recorded and distributed online to citizens. He has plans to communicate to citizens online with video blogs captured on a Flip Video camera. Both activities will strengthen the bond between the city and its community with immediacy and visual impact.

Drancy, with the benefit of the fiber network and the Cisco Nexus® 7000, has laid the groundwork for the transition to pervasive video, whereby citizens and employees will be able to take advantage of video-enabled services and technologies anywhere. Other leading examples of the use of video in Drancy:

• Drancy plans to offer an online video-sharing community to citizens and employees alike so that they can take a video, for example, with Flip Video, and upload it directly for the mayor or specific city workers to review and act upon.

• Transporting the elderly from nursing homes to hospitals can be incon-venient and expensive. Drancy is investigating how to integrate Cisco HealthPresence between the resi-dences for the elderly and hospitals, so that communication and diagnos-tics between patient and doctor is a push of a button away.

• Drancy is examining how to provide city services via video in citizen’s houses for the elderly who are not physically able to travel to citizen service offices.

In a few years, Drancy will have Cisco TelePresence in every classroom in Drancy. If health reasons prevent children from attending classes either as a group (e.g., the recent issues with the H1N1 virus) or as individuals (e.g., a personal illness), they will be able to attend classes via video.

Improving Productivity

The new video solutions and infrastructure have also resulted in major productivity improvements for city workers, while simultaneously enhancing the quality of their work environment and improving morale. “With collaboration tools like WebEx, Cisco TelePresence, desktop virtualization, and VoIP phones, our employees can work just as effectively from home as from the office,” says David Larose, CIO of Drancy. “What’s more, approximately 20 percent of offsite meetings are now virtual. With Cisco WebEx, we are able to communicate clearly and efficiently with partners. No longer must people from the education and IT departments have to travel hours to meet software developers. With the rich video in Cisco WebEx, we can share exactly what needs to be updated instantly and clearly.”

No Trade-Offs

Moving forward, Drancy will continue to assess the return on investment and effectiveness of its new technologies, factoring in increased tax revenue from Eurocopter and the new engineering school. It will take several years to measure educational improvements such as higher achievement among primary school students; similarly, the possible expansion of CCTV use will depend on crime trends over time. The expanded adoption of Cisco TelePresence will enable business leaders, students, and government to collaborate effortlessly no matter where they are.

Drancy’s leadership team will continue to adapt to the changing landscape and the expectations of next-generation workers. “These young people will expect personalized web content, lightning-fast query response time, sophisticated video capabilities, portals rather than websites, all the innovations that technology has to offer,” says CIO Larose. “Working closely with Cisco, we will satisfy these requirements while continuing to contain operational expenses.” Drancy’s vision for the future includes transforming not just the technologies available to citizens, but the entire communication experience for citizens.

The network will grow to support video mail and video collaboration, social media, and online chats. CIO Larose anticipates the day will soon arrive when citizens will communicate with their government via video, instead of the phone, when the elderly will see their doctors and family from their living rooms, when students will participate from home with their classrooms, when teachers will meet with parents over video for conferences, and when local businesses of all sizes will meet over video with new customers anywhere in the world. “With Cisco, there are no trade-offs. We can capture value from technology transitions, and still operate as a lean and efficient city government to help ensure an excellent quality of life for our citizens. We aim to make Drancy the most innovative city in France, and we are confident that Cisco can help us do this, particularly in the area of video for citizens, business and the city government. Soon everyone will wonder how we ever communicated without the richness and immediacy of video.”

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