October 2022: Digitalisation and smart cities: Identifying and addressing competency needs for the future

Ahead of the Smart City Expo World Congress later this month, the Smart Infrastructure Blog by CSIC Research Associate Dr Kwadwo Oti-Sarpong, and member of the CSIC Digital Cities for Change team, considers the global growth of smart city projects and the need for specific competencies to ensure the delivery of public value.

Smart city projects characterised by digital innovations are growing globally. As of 2020, more than 410 smart city projects – of estimated value US$124 billion – had been reportedly implemented in several cities around the world. The value of the smart cities market is projected to reach nearly US$7trillion by 2030.

The projected growth in value, and increasing funding for urban digitalisation and, broadly, smart city projects, can only lead to the desired positive societal outcomes if the implementers are well trained. This training to develop competencies ought to be multidisciplinary and equip built environment professionals to better understand the interrelatedness between ethics/responsible innovation, technical, and governance and management dimensions of digital innovation initiatives. Dr Kwadwo Oti-Sarpong, CSIC Digital Cities for Change

Across the UK, several city governments, including Glasgow, Manchester, London, Cambridge, Bristol, Milton Keynes, Belfast, Hull and Peterborough, have received national  funding in excess of ~£15bn. This is to enable local authorities to deploy smart city projects with their development partners featuring the use of digital technologies and data to improve places by providing citizens with social, economic, and environmental benefits. An additional £5bn of public funding is expected to become available to support more local authorities to undertake digitalisation projects deploying the use of digital technologies, including sensors, data collection and integration dashboards, internet of things devices, digital twin modelling and edge computing, to tackle the challenges of rapid urbanisation (congestion, waste, poor air quality), transform the public sector and improve their service delivery to citizens. Clearly, there is momentum in funding the deployment of various technologies as part of smart city initiatives.

However, deploying digital technologies to address urban problems presents a number of challenges requiring careful consideration. As well as identifying and deploying the context-appropriate array of sensors, data collection, integration dashboards and digital twin models, the process of creating public value must be addressed. Importantly, the ability to create any form of public value in a place requires city governments and their professional delivery partners to possess the capabilities to effectively integrate the use of such technologies into existing city governance and management structures – and anticipate and address ethical and responsible innovation concerns that would arise, such as the privacy of citizen data and the potential further exclusion of marginalised minorities. This need for capabilities was highlighted in the high-profile Sidewalk Toronto project by a Google subsidiary which failed mainly due to an inability to anticipate and manage data and trust issues related to its data-heavy ideology for the planned neighbourhood. Arguably, the technology to generate data from human and vehicular traffic to enhance city planning and development processes was not going to pose a significant competency challenge given the technological capacity of the tech subsidiary.

There is evidence that digitalisation initiatives comprise a mix of technology, governance and management, and ethical/responsible innovation dimensions combining to shape outcomes. This further highlights the need for the development of competencies that cut across these dimensions to better equip professionals and local governments involved in digitalisation in the urban context to effectively lead their successful implementation and deliver the desired outcomes in communities. The reality of this need is indicated by the presence of international, e.g., UN Habitat, OECD, and national, e.g., UKRI, UK Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, The Royal Town Planning Institute, bodies in various ways. All these organisations emphasise existing and future skills, competencies, and capacity needs on the part of local governments, and more broadly professional knowledge gaps that should be addressed through interdisciplinary training.

Recognising the importance of addressing this need, the Digital Cities for Change (DC²) team at CSIC is developing an interdisciplinary postgraduate educational programme at Postgraduate Certificate, Diploma, and Masters’ levels. This course is designed as a flagship programme bringing focus to urban digital innovations, addressing the competency gaps and preparing the next level and future generation of built environment professionals involved in the delivery of digital innovations in cities. It will provide new thinking on how to develop competencies to effectively plan, design and implement smart city projects aimed at delivering context-specific public value.Additionally, the course will equip city managers and built environment professionals with multidisciplinary knowledge required to deliver digitalisation projects which benefit citizens and communities, and will span engineering, urban planning, leadership, ethics, and responsible innovation. The programme will provide participants with the knowledge and tools required to create public value from a perspective that considers both social and technical dimensions of urban-scale digitalisation initiatives. Furthermore, the course will deliver knowledge and skills on how to better utilise urban data and emerging digital technologies, informing decision-making in urban planning, management, and public service delivery, taking into consideration the nuances each context brings.

The projected growth in value, and increasing funding for urban digitalisation and, broadly, smart city projects, can only lead to the desired positive societal outcomes if the implementers are well trained. This training to develop competencies ought to be multidisciplinary and equip built environment professionals to better understand the interrelatedness between ethics/responsible innovation, technical, and governance and management dimensions of digital innovation initiatives. The provision of such training would ensure that professionals possess competencies to lead the future of urban scale digitalisation initiatives of the future that deliver public value and bring benefits to people.

• The CSIC Digital Cities for Change team will be hosting the workshop ‘Leadership for Responsible Urban Digital Innovation’ at the Smart City Expo World Congress in Barcelona on 17 November from 14:45-16:45 CET. The workshop is designed to show participants the knowledge needed to address competency-related challenges for the successful delivery of public value through urban digitalisation initiatives. It will be led by the Digital Cities for Change (DC²) team, Dr Jennifer Schooling OBE, Director of CSIC, and CSIC Research Associates Dr Kwadwo Oti-Sarpong and Dr Viviana Bastidas. Registration is open through the Eventbrite page which is now live.

• Read more about the Ove Arup funded Digital Cities for Change project here.

• If you would like to receive more information about the interdisciplinary postgraduate course, send an email to ko363@cam.ac.uk with the subject line: “DC² Postgraduate Course”.

• The Digital Cities for Change project features in the CSIC short film ‘Data, performance, decision-making’.