Toolkit aims to help civic leaders make an impact

A new report has been released which aims to helps leaders to strategically pick projects that will bring the most impact to a city.

Smart Cities: A Toolkit for Leaders, published by Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and Knowledge@Wharton, is designed to help today’s urban leaders understand how their municipalities can harness technology to improve the citizen experience.

Smart city case studies

Featuring case studies of successful smart cities in the US and Europe and insights from industry experts, the report sets out to explain how making citizen wellbeing the primary smart city goal can result in happier, healthier and more productive urban spaces.

The report focuses on the key stages of developing a smart city, which go beyond the procurement, adoption and integration of technology within a community. It also provides ideas and insights on sustainability, compassion and equity for all stakeholders.

The cities and topics examined in the report include:

• Atlanta: from fiscal crisis to smart city savvy. Atlanta suffered fiscal woes for years, but these problems are now behind it. The city is looking to secure its future with smart-city initiatives
• Washington DC: a smart city can be equitable. The city demonsrates that smart city initiatives can encompass equitability, resilience, sustainability and transparency-collaboration
• San Jose: the Silicon Valley city gets even smarter. The city is drawing from the talent in Silicon Valley for its smart city projects. One private sector tactic it is using is creating innovation roadmaps
• Kansas City: making a city data-smart. Kansas is leveraging public-private partnerships to provide free services to residents but it is vigilant about protecting the privacy of user data.

“If you start by being citizen-centric, that provides the right motivation to drive the right behaviours and take the right actions,” said Seeta Hariharan, group head, Digital Software & Solutions Group, TCS.

“Collaboration is absolutely needed across the various departments of the city, but also needed with citizens and private enterprises.”

Tata Consultancy Services is a global IT services, consulting, and business solutions organisation. Knowledge@Wharton is the online business analysis journal of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

Smart Cities: A Toolkit for Leaders is available as a free download at: dss.tcs.com/knowledge-at-wharton-special-report-for-mayors-smart-cities/

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