Governing Smart Cities: A Policy Benchmark Report on Smart City Development

This report, Governing Smart Cities, provides a benchmark for developing ethical and responsible governance policies for smart city projects. It explores current practices related to five essential policies: ICT (information and communication technology) accessibility, privacy impact assessments, network accountability, digital infrastructure and open data. The findings are based on surveys and interviews with policy experts and city government officials in the Alliance's 36 "pioneer cities." The data and insights presented in the report come from an assessment of detailed policy elements rather than high-level indicators often used in maturity frameworks.

Using a model policy framework developed by global experts, the report’s analysis reveals serious disparities between cities of all sizes, geographies, and levels of economic development. Among the 36 pioneering cities:

– The pandemic has rapidly accelerated digital transformation and the adoption of urban services, making accessibility to digital city services an essential component of inclusive cities. However, less than half of cities have policies in place to embed basic accessibility requirements into their procurement of information and communications technology, and only a quarter provide evidence that they have implemented these requirements in practice.

– More than 80% of cities acknowledge legal obligations on privacy and data protection, but less than 25% conduct privacy impact assessments when deploying new technologies.

– Cyberattacks on local authorities and services appear to have increased during the pandemic. However, most cities do not have a designated person responsible for cybersecurity, nor do they have a cybersecurity plan that is regularly reviewed by senior management.

– The pandemic has been defined by home working and remote learning. But many cities lack the digital infrastructure needed to support or sustain this shift. Less than half of the pioneer cities have a “dig once” policy in place to ensure digital infrastructure is installed during street digging and construction works, which would accelerate the rollout of connectivity infrastructure and reduce disruptions caused by the pandemic. Furthermore, less than a third of cities have the governance processes needed to drive connectivity through “dig once” policies.

– Open data policy is perhaps the only area where most cities in our sample have reached a basic level of implementation. Even so, only 15% of Pioneer cities have integrated their open data portal with the wider city data infrastructure – a necessary step to make a city ‘open by default’.

These results suggest that cities today lack the fundamental building blocks to protect their rights and ensure the long-term development of smart cities.

The report concludes with a call to action for stakeholders, including city leaders, policymakers, civil society, and smart city technology vendors. City leaders need to take a longer-term view and identify governance gaps before they become material risks. Government officials and policymakers can use benchmarks such as the model policies provided by the G20 Global Smart Cities Alliance to identify and address these gaps. Civil society organizations can provide multifaceted assistance to these policymakers, including technical advice. In addition, smart city technology vendors should use this opportunity to demonstrate their long-term commitment to cities by helping cities implement the policies they need.

All of these stakeholders have a role to play in accelerating the adoption of better policies in cities to ensure that cities are fit for purpose for the challenges they face today. The G20 Global Smart Cities Alliance provides a platform for stakeholders to work together to develop, pilot and scale better smart city policies.

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