The rapid pace of technological and societal change has given government CIOs a new sense of urgency and a willingness to experiment with smart city and open data initiatives, according to Gartner. If managed effectively, this shift will position governments at the core of technological innovation in society.
“As citizens increasingly use personal technology and social networks to organize their lives, governments and businesses are growing their investments in technology infrastructure and governance. This creates open platforms that enable citizens, communities and businesses to innovate and collaborate, and ultimately provide useful solutions that address civic needs,” said Anthony Mullen, Research Director, Gartner.
Gartner predicts that by 2019, 50 percent of citizens in million-people cities will benefit from smart city programs by voluntarily sharing their personal data. The volume and diversity of the data generated by citizens will continue to grow in line with the proliferation of consumer devices and the IoT. Citizens will experience some of the benefits of sharing data passively, through government and commercial collaboration. As this hyperconnectivity picks up pace, however, citizens will become more aware of the value of their “life data” and will be willing to proactively exchange it for “in the moment” value.
This process of data sharing is being accelerated by the demand for efficiency and convenience. For example, one of the major barriers for citizens interacting with government is the complexity of engaging via a variety of touch points. A simple question such as “Am I eligible to vote?” can lead citizens through complex processes and rules and onto a variety of websites.
“Open data portals in cities are not a new thing, but many portals today have limited machine readability and therefore limited business value. The city becomes ‘smart’ when the data is collected and governed in a way that can produce valuable real-time streams, rather than just backward-looking statistics or reports,” said Bettina Tratz-Ryan, Research Vice President, Gartner.
The report further states that some cities are already building data marketplaces, especially in light of the increasing streams of data from the IoT. The next step in building a true marketplace is to present and orchestrate this data for more business-oriented benefits. Gartner predicts that 20 percent of all local government organizations will generate revenue from value-added open data through data marketplaces by 2020.
“Users will have a number of options to ‘pay’ for data access depending on the use case. A normal citizen may simply participate via data democracy and have free access in return for providing their own data, whereas commercial use may require sharing revenue with the data owner, or buying a license to access an enriched data source,” added Ms Tratz-Ryan.