Why The Easy Button Isn’t Always Best

By Mike Beevor, Digi.CIty Expert in Residence - IOT

I am not sure there isn’t a city in the world that doesn’t want to be “Smart”.  Given unlimited funds and non-existent legislation (or a totalitarian government at least), the opportunities to become smarter are endless.

Allow me to deliver a hard truth up front.

There is no “easy” button to build a smart city.

Between fluctuating technology and municipal budgets, political gerrymandering, ever-changing regimes and data privacy legislation, the path to smart city enlightenment is a rutted, pot-holed jumble of twists, turns and switchbacks.

Take heart however, there is still a path, although it is different for every city.

Photo by Hannah Joshua on Unsplash

First, a word of caution to all you weary Smart City Adventurers – don’t believe the vendors that try and sell you the magic elixir of rebirth, enchanted sword of righteousness and super-awesome backpack containing everything that you could possibly need, EVER, to make your city instantly smart. It doesn’t exist.  Your city will be an amalgam of many different technologies, vendors, projects and people performing a variety of different functions. ( And note –a backpack does not include protection against Godzilla, Mothra, or Dragons of any sort.)

In this article, I will outline some of the things that I believe  are most important when forming a core strategy for your Smart City journey.  It is not a tome that contains the ultimate answer to life, the universe and everything, but more a notepad with a bunch of spare pages left at the back and ultra-wide margins that you can make your own notes in as you go along.

Single Vendor Solutions Are Rubbish.  Avoid Them.

Innovation doesn’t come from large vendors; it comes from small vendors who see a specific problem in the market and create a solution to fix it.  They use the latest technology, free of technical debt, to do so.

If your Smart City is going to be built on a single vendor solution, then you are going to miss out on all the innovation that will truly enhance your city and probably fail.

Large vendors are necessary for your Smart City – but make sure that you spend a weighty amount of time investigating how that vendor works with small, innovation-led vendors that offer best of breed technologies and how that large vendor collaborates with the small vendor when integrating that new technology into their core technology.  It will tell you an awful lot about how flexible your Smart City is going to be when adapting to the changing needs of your residents in future.

Become Bi-Lingual in Physical Security (OT) and IT

One of the primary reasons cities become smarter is to improve the safety and wellness of its residents.  When public safety improves, the city thrives – it’s a pretty simple equation. People want to move to the city, businesses want to expand into the city, tourists wish to visit the city and so on.

Physical security cannot exist without the heavy involvement of the IT team.  It has grown too large and too complex for the Physical Safety team to manage on their own.  With the volumes of data, the scale of the network needed to transport that data and hardware horsepower needed to process it, that data and its infrastructure lives in the datacenter.

Don’t be fooled however, Datacenter Warriors., Physical Security infrastructure is unlike anything you’ve ever encountered with an entirely new set of rules around compliance and regulation. There are volumes of data that you are unlikely to have encountered before and scale requirements that boggle the mind.

You are going to need to work together and become bi-lingual in each other’s domains.

Have A Plan And Work Together.

Don’t be Leeroy Jenkins.

It is tempting to try and do as much as you possibly can to make your city smart in the shortest time possible.  It won’t work. The results will be varied, and it will be difficult to untangle which projects were and weren’t successful.

Solve individual problems with specific solutions.  It is also a good idea to have poll data available here as to what the residents think the biggest problems are.  The results may surprise you! If your project demonstrably solves a problem, then it becomes easier to get the next one passed and implemented.

Remember Who You Work For

One of the biggest failures I see in Smart City projects comes from a change of regime halfway through the project delivery, and all of the hard work, planning and effort that’s gone into solving that problem, not to mention the money invested, is wasted.  More often however, I see project concepts arrive, go through a full exploration phase, often a small pilot and then they die on the vine because the party at the top changed.

Please stop.  Remember that as city leaders you are working for the greater good of your city, and while some of the specific policies may differ, the common concept of improving the quality of life for residents should NEVER change.

Rather than a conclusion here, I would make one simple request to all of the city leaders reading this - reach out to the leader of your opposition in the city and have a meeting.  I will gladly moderate it for you.  

In that meeting, agree the core projects that need implementing within the city over the next 10 years and agree that regardless of whomever is in power at the time, those core needs are always protected and are not met with politicking .

Your city and its residents will thank you for it.