Category Archives: Smart cities

How local and central governments work with community groups and citizens for better outcomes. An early example of ecosystem engagement.

NEOM’s ambition to be a cognitive city

Joseph Bradley describes himself as an applied futurist, author and cognitive city developer—not necessarily three [...]

How Matterport is digitising the built environment—and why it matters

Over the last year or so, as stay-at-home orders have come and gone around the [...]

How can cities use social media to engage more effectively post-pandemic?

Over the course of the pandemic, the realisation has grown among many people and businesses [...]

Bridging the digital divide: IFIP/IP3 and Rotary 

The ‘digital divide’ between those with access to technology, and those without, is a huge [...]

How a pandemic accelerated the re-invention of a small community

Sant’Agata di Esaro, in Cosenza in Southern Italy, is not a name usually associated with [...]

Business lessons from tree cathedrals

In 1918, a man called Edmund Blyth returned from the battlefields of the First World [...]

How The Good Law Project is igniting participation in the legal landscape

New models of work and funding are changing business all around the world. Crowdsourcing in [...]

The genius of What Three Words

Three words can make a huge difference. Some would say that three-word combinations are amongst [...]

Are digital channels redefining connected societies?

It is sometimes said that everything in life is connected by six or fewer steps. [...]

Re-imagining sustainable urban life

What does urban life mean at the end of the second decade of the 21st [...]

AI in government: how public sector work will change

There has been a lot written about how AI will change the world of work. [...]

E-residency – the way forward for digital nomads?

Large numbers of workers around the world are now self-identified or de facto digital nomads. [...]

Increasing role of artificial intelligence in city administration

Cities can use artificial intelligence and analysis of data in a number of ways to [...]

How AWS picked the 2016 winning cities of ‘City on a Cloud’

Regular readers of this website will know that we are big fans of awards, particularly [...]

Copenhagenize Design Company: designing for cycling

If you lived in London or Paris ten or twenty years ago and you cycled [...]

Smart City Berlin: a hub for innovation

Berlin has embraced ‘smart’ in a big way. Starting from the idea that open data [...]

Digital Dublin: innovation for economic sustainability

Sometimes you could be forgiven for thinking that becoming a Smart City was a goal [...]

Why violence is a symptom, not a cause of failing cities

We are enjoying one of the most peaceful periods in history. Global violence is at [...]

The safest cities in the world

What is the safest city in the world in which to live? According to a [...]

Award Spotlight: Barcelona and the Juniper Smart City Rankings

Which is the Smartest City in the world in 2015? According to Juniper Research, that [...]

Siemens Green City Index: measuring environmental sustainability

More than 80% of the population of the Americas, and 70% of that in Europe, [...]

Do smart cities need smart people?

Cities. Gleaming high rise office blocks, centres of technology and industry, and trade hubs. But [...]

The Global Open Data Initiative (GODI): sharing resources on how to use open data

The Global Open Data Initiative (GODI) is a coalition of civil society organisations sharing principles and resources [...]

Dubai: Smart City of the Future

The city of Dubai has ambitious plans. It plans to transform itself into a truly [...]

Financing smart city solutions

Smart cities hold out the lure of sustainability and innovative technological solutions to large, previously [...]

Measuring smart cities: key performance indicators for new technology

“What counts is what is measured.” We’ve all heard this, and however much you may [...]

UIDAI – the biggest ID project in the world

The UK government has made much of its new ‘verify’ site, part of the government as [...]

Smart city lighting is becoming a reality

Smart Cities are a growing phenomenon, with cities around the world vying for supremacy. But [...]

Next Century Cities

We’ve heard and written a lot about smart cities in recent years. They are cities [...]

The global Smart City market: what’s it worth?

There has been much written about Smart Cities, but the field is quite light on [...]

Cognicity: the city of the future, realised today

Where Barcelona leads, London is keen to follow. It’s not often that you’ll read those [...]

The importance of agility in the public sector

Mario Devargas, former CIO for a police force and a large council, talked at the [...]

Sense of place: shaping the future of the public sector

Data almost always has some geographical element tied to it, whether it’s polling figures, or [...]

Government as a platform

At IP EXPO this week we heard Liam Maxwell, the UK Government’s CTO, discuss the [...]

Will we be seeing more private planned cities?

Palava, near Mumbai in India, is unlike most other cities. For a start, it’s a [...]

How Glasgow’s smart city investments play out in the games

As the Commonwealth Games get under way in Glasgow this week, visitors to the city [...]

The best cities in which to live: Mercer Quality of Living Survey

Which city in the world offers the best quality of living? According to the 2014 [...]

Cities: the Bloomberg Mayors’ Challenge

Cities are a vital part of the world’s infrastructure. Generating growth and prosperity, but also [...]

How Romania has used the ECDL to accelerate public sector ICT

We’ve discussed some of the challenges of central government in terms of ICT, for example, [...]

Cloud computing takes off in central government

We’ve written before about a number of cities across the globe moving to cloud computing [...]

Joint development of public e-services in Sweden

Are electronic services in public administration a case of putting ‘lipstick on a pig’, or [...]

The quest for resilience in cities

Most of us are familiar with the concept of Smart Cities, and their potential. But [...]

Transforming service delivery with cloud based information hub

One of the biggest challenges for local government administrators is the integration of services provided [...]

City administration technology trends survey

It is an exciting time to be part of a city administration team. The proliferation [...]

How will the collaborative economy will drive public services?

When we started this journey to rank and rate cities on contextual use of technology, [...]

Online Open Government

Does ‘online open government’ sound like a tautology or, worse, a myth? As private citizens, [...]

Event review – TEDCity2.0

TEDCity2.0 was a day-long event which took place on 20th September 2013. It brought together [...]

Smart Cities: a progress report building on Bilbao

In November 2005, a World Summit of Local Authorities on the Information Society was held [...]

Will the Internet of Things(IoT) drive greater sustainability?

We believe that one of the most interesting ideas emerging from discussions about sustainable cities [...]

Seoul leads again

Seoul recently topped our ranking of tech-enabled cities, and we’re not the first to give [...]

How technology is enabling more cost-effective city administration

We hear a lot about how technology can help individuals and businesses to manage better, [...]

Project review: ranking intelligent communities

Intelligent communities? An odd term perhaps, but one which is becoming increasingly relevant, particularly in [...]

The future is cities

The future lies in cities. There are very few people who would argue with that, [...]

20 Of The Best Cities In The World For Telecommuting

Why do telecommuting professionals choose to live in some of the most expensive cities in [...]

Seoul tops our ranking of tech-enabled cities

Over the past six months, we have been gathering data on how cities and towns [...]

Open source software maturity in public services

One of our key research objectives is to open a dialogue with government and business [...]

Open source is ready for prime time. Are government IT policies?

As we discuss open source policy with a number of government officials, a remarkable pattern [...]

European Government is Failing to Effectively Utilise OSS

A report published in October 2011 by the London School of Economics for the UK [...]

The Four Commandments of Cities

Eduardo Paes, the mayor of the city of Rio de Janeiro, believes that mayors really [...]

Law enforcement must keep up with social media tactics

Throughout 2012 police forces around the world have started embracing social media to mostly positive [...]

Connected City Index

Most discussions about IT in government have revolved around the big issues, usually impacting federal [...]

Does WordPress for cities re-align the benchmark?

Last November, WordPress launched WordPress.com/cities as the one-stop solution to start a site for cities [...]

Award spotlight: Excellence in eGovernment

Australia’s Excellence in eGovernment Awards recognise the most outstanding initiatives in eGovernment across five ICT [...]

What’s next for e-government?

We are looking for 100 government practitioners to join our panel to provide feedback on [...]

Why public sector line managers need to understand APIs

Conversations with public sector line managers over the past few weeks have highlighted the huge [...]

Will Salesforce.com’s presence on G-Cloud alter buying dynamics?

Six weeks ago, Salesforce.com joined the UK government’s G-Cloud. This initiative allows government agencies to [...]

What do public agencies expect from cloud computing?

Cloud technology constitutes a change in computing and knowledge management, with hosted IT services delivered [...]

Spotlight on Code for America

We are big fans of TEDTalks. If you have not visited the site, it works [...]

Award spotlight: 2012 City 2.0 from TED

While it is normal for tech awards to focus on the achievements of IT teams, [...]

2012 Global Cities Index and Emerging Cities Outlook

The backbone of our research and analysis is the Digital City Index. As part of [...]

Award spotlight: KLISS

Kansas Legislative Information System and Services was the recipient of the 2012 NASCIO Award for [...]

Case review: Transforming IT at Bundesagentur für Arbeit

Transitioning from legacy systems to an infrastructure that can support the way work needs to [...]

WEF Global Competiveness Report

As we start constructing our ranking of public sector productivity gains, existing analyses of the [...]

“We’re not going to fix government until we fix citizenship”

Watching saved TED talks is now among the most productive things on can do when [...]

Trends driving our research agenda

Faced with budget constraints, governments at all levels are taking a hard look at how [...]