[Spotlight] Exploring the Data Ecosystem and Data Governance in Smart Cities
By Larissa Magalhães, International Working Group Governmental Co-Chair, Open Data Charter
What is the status of open data in these spaces?
Data has become the most significant and decisive element for smart cities to face the urban challenges of sustainable development, making quick or real-time decisions from different frameworks, from the environment to technology and infrastructure construction.
Exploring the data ecosystem and establishing strong data governance in smart cities is essential to harnessing the full potential of data, which is undeniably, open data. By understanding how data flows and ensuring it is managed responsibly, cities can innovate, improve public services, and build a transparent and trusting relationship with their citizens. However, there remain challenges related to data governance and the provision of the data ecosystem in smart cities.
Open Data Charter’s recent Implementation Working Group (IWG) panel gathered to support data governance and the city-level data ecosystem. We believe that addressing these challenges requires a multifaceted approach that includes developing interoperable standards, promoting stakeholder collaboration, investing in advanced data management technologies, and creating clear, transparent, and adaptable data governance frameworks.
Exploring the Data Ecosystem and Data Governance in Smart Cities
The May IWG meeting brought together three distinguished professionals involved in smart cities and data projects to discuss approaches to leading responsible and sustainable data ecosystems and governance at the city level.
Multifaceted approach for leveraging data and technology to make life better in cities and communities
Florencia Serale works as a Digital Rights Consultant at UN-Habitat’s Innovation Unit. She also worked as a Digital Innovation Specialist at FAO in Asia Pacific and as a Consultant at the Open Data Institute and the Inter-American Development Bank.
UN-Habitat’s People-Centered Smart Cities project focuses on the importance of a comprehensive, multi-faceted approach to managing smart cities’ data ecosystem and data governance. Cities face significant relative problems. The global review of smart cities and governance practices indicates regional differences and differences between public organizations regarding data sources, collaboration mechanisms, policies, and infrastructures.
As a priority, leveraging data, innovation, and technology can drive sustainable urban development while addressing these advancements’ significant challenges and risks. This requires adopting a multifaceted approach that includes standardizing data practices, promoting collaboration, investing in advanced technologies, and addressing ethical and regulatory concerns so that smart cities can effectively manage their ecosystems and infrastructures for data governance.
Furthermore, to ensure that government, private sector, and civil society practices are committed to leveraging innovation and technology to make life better in cities and communities, the multifaceted approach must establish guidelines for including people’s values, measures to reduce environmental impact, digital empowerment, skills, and economic opportunities, supporting multi-level digital governance, maximizing digital transparency and community participation, promoting digital privacy and security of communities.
Key Takeaway: The multifaceted approach improves urban life and ensures sustainability, inclusion, and respect for human rights, driving long-term progress and prosperity in the development of smart cities.
Advanced and user-friendly data management technologies
Antonio Filograna, BeOpen project coordinator, Senior researcher, and Project manager at Engineering Ingegneria Informatica S.p.A., Italy
The objective of BeOpen is to assist public administrations at local, regional, and national levels in enhancing the availability and usability of public sector information, specifically High-Value Datasets. This initiative aims to enable organizations and public entities throughout the EU to reuse open public data to develop information products and services.
BeOpen aspires to establish an open framework to enhance the accessibility of High-Value Datasets from the public sector across the EU. The project aims to deliver a cost-effective, user-friendly tool tailored for high-value dataset management in public administration. It seeks to validate and assess improvements in the accessibility and reusability of these datasets through EU-wide pilot services and AI applications. Furthermore, BeOpen aims to provide a technical framework to enhance data interoperability, semantics, and quality of public sector datasets. It also intends to make public open datasets available in machine-readable formats via APIs, discoverable through the European Data Portal and national open data portals, and to offer guidelines and recommendations addressing legal interoperability in public Open Data dissemination and reuse.
BeOpen will facilitate the creation of new digital and AI services by improving access to and the usability of High-Value Datasets from the EU Public Sector. The BeOpen project framework is expected to boost the availability and usability of open data provided by the public sector. Eight pilot projects will tackle issues related to mobility, urban security, the environment, and natural disasters in various EU regions.
Key Takeaway: Build on the blueprint for a common European data space for smart cities and communities.
Clear, transparent, and adaptable data governance structures.
Hector Domingues is the Open Data Coordinator for the City of Portland, Oregon, and part of the Smart City PDX team. In addition to Open Data initiatives, Hector has led privacy and information initiatives in the City, including using ethical tools to assess technology solutions, privacy, and information protection principles.
The City of Portland has an OPEN data policy by default to enable widespread publishing, open access, and data sharing across multiple actors. Municipal Councils are responsible for their data, although there is no central repository with a catalog of Bureau data. There is a team responsible for Open Data that collaborates with other teams to implement a unique Open Data Portal. Additionally, an open data manual guides the standardization of open data and creates a publication pipeline. This flow makes processes and procedures collaborative products.
Open Data is Business Intelligence and Community Engagement related to other sectors in an expanded project, the Smart City PDX program. The program is based on five pillars. All pillars involve multiple actors. The privacy pillar deals with the internal implementation of the policy and the impact assessment associated with the use and collection of data. The surveillance pillar supports a comprehensive approach for the city to create safeguards while protecting civil rights and promoting transparency. The Open data pillar creates public access to data and will be used and reused for collaboration and accountability. The data governance pillar configures practices throughout the city to ensure and maintain data usability, privacy, and integrity. The data services pillar supports the collection, analysis, and sharing of data for the community and according to priority.
Key Takeaway: Smart city and open data programs must incorporate interested and specialized communities in all privacy, surveillance, services, and data governance processes.w
Get involved
The Open Data Charter community is growing globally with over 170 governments and civil society organisations adopting the international Open Data Charter principles to date. However, we are always looking to welcome new open data adopters to promote the transfer of knowledge and capabilities globally.
Our next IWG is on the 30th July and will explore the topic: Open Data Ranking/Measurements. The agenda will be shared on our Twitter and Linkedin account. in the coming weeks. If you would like to attend the session, present at one of our future sessions or find out more please read here or e-mail us at info@opendatacharter.org.
