Cities of Knowledge Conference

Attended the morning session of the one day Digital Cities conference held today at Clontarf Castle.

I got to see Jon Udell and John Ratcliffe speak in the first session. Jon talked about governments (local and national) need to make the raw data available in consumable format (RSS, CSV, XML etc.) so that citizens can do their own analysis. To this end he gave several examples of online data analysis tools that combine rich graphical analysis with social networking features. The three he specifically mentioned were,

Many Eyes from IBM (The usual all singing all dancing stuff)
Swivel (Spreadsheet analysis of CSV data)
Dabble DB a more full featured online database

I pointed out in a question that the Irish government is good at collecting data but not good at sharing it. His response was get the citizens to supplant the government by creating their own data sets in social networks and the tools above.

John Ratcliffe’s talk was more of a traditional lecture, he tried to cram a lot into his 30 minutes, but he had some great slides on structural models for the development of Ireland as an Island.

He is not a fan of decentralisation calling it the ADB policy (Anywhere But Dublin), I kind of agree with that. Dublin is the capital and the largest population centre, you can’t ignore that.

We then had presentations from a collection of city representatives. See if you can guess who is playing catch up in this list.

Tallinn – Toomas Seep – City Office

We need common language
Population – 400,000
Half Estonian GDP comes from Tallinn
1m ID cards issued (including 230,947 foreigners)
Central Registers, X-Road exchange between registers
52% have internet
62% use internet banking
80% send in tax declarations electronically (These numbers don’t add up!)
Want to develop Electronic City Hall, Selected services 24×7, Local government transparency, back office integration
Free wireless access in public spaces (parks, squares, beaches)
M-Parking: pay for parking via mobile network, 60% of revenue comes from M-Parking
ID-Ticket : Virtual transportation ID for all public transport, 120,000 users per day
Digital Document processing via Internet
City council sessions on web via video and audio
All council meetings held in public and publically accessible on the web
All legal acts online on register
E-School: All reports and marks are online
eVoting used universally, no security issues! (Shurely, shome mishtake, ed)

Joan Batelle – Barcelona

1.6m inhabitants
Problems – nCounters problem, duplicated paperwork
Move to multi-channel services with one-stop-shop approach
EU public sector generates 40% of EU GDP
Need more “energetic government”
Put citizen at the centre
Go mobile
Don’t automate: re-engineer and innovate
Execute and deliver and deliver
CRM = Citizen Relationship Management
Minor work permit requests processed in 1 week (as opposed to 1 to 4 months)

Paul Krutko – Chief Development Office, San Jose (US)

Capital of Silicon Valley
10th largest city in US, 3rd largest in CA after San Diego and LA
One third of all the VC in the US lands in Silicon Valley
Development requires a “Vital Community”
Open Government – Streaming of council meetings, all officials calendars online
All documents to be discussed must be posted online two full weeks before the discussion meeting
BusinessOwnerSpace.com
Solar Technology
Creative intersection of Art and Technology : ZeroOne
Make traffic management network available to public as a network backbone
Place ranks higher than job for the first time with US college graduates
The World is spiky, and those spiky places are sticky for people
Creative Artistic endeavour is an indicator of great business endeavour within cities and states

Peter Finnegan – Dublin City Council, Head of International Relations and Research

http://www.dublin.ie : A citizens portal, delivered in 3 months
New telephone focussed customer service centre
Mapping of city facilities
Exploring putting planning applications online
Using mobile phone to gather feedback
http://www.democracy.ie
Vodafone and TomTom collaborating to track traffic congestion
Cities need to attract knowledge workers
A city with conectivity will be at an advantage
Need to create spaces for social knowledge creation (both physical and virtual)
The issue is vision, leadership and courage, not technology (hear, hear!)
Every city needs a Futures IT strategist
When imagination collides with reality then creativity arrives especially if leadership clears the space

Stephen O’Brien – Liverpool, eGovernment Project Manager

Population : 440,000
Historically a seaport, now economy is more diverse
From seaport to ePort
1999 : Highest rates, poor service provision
Worked on joint venture with BT
Golden Numbers – Each service has its own “Golden Number” to measure service delivery
Focus on point of contact resolution of citizen queries
Mobile contiguous WIFI network in city centre (Free?)
Looking at ways to roll WIFI out across the city

Ina Olinki – City of Helsinki (Sorry Ina, could only guess the spelling of your name)

Population 450,000
Biggest employer in Finland
One of the top ten growing metropolises in Europe
Part of a triumvirate of cities with Tallinn and St. Petersburg (Leningrad)
Living Lab: development environment to test services in a live community
Forum Virium: Create internationally competitive digital services
Rabbit infestation is a problem in Helsinki (non indigenous species). Used website to communicate the problem and gather feedback
How can you ensure that peoples opinions count?

Dermot Harrigan, Martin McGinity Derry City Council