George Niland gave a presentation on cities, ICT, innovation and participation at the 2014 European Commission Innovation Convention. He discussed EUROCITIES, a network of over 130 European cities that focuses on cooperation in areas like culture, economic development, environment, knowledge society and mobility. The Knowledge Society Forum's priorities include smart citizens, co-creation for innovation, and IT development for smart governance. Niland outlined challenges facing cities and how ICT can help address issues like population growth, budgets and sustainability while improving services for "internet citizens." He proposed tools like digital strategies, e-government, open data, co-creation and smart city projects to foster innovation, inclusion, mobility and participation. Funding, clear strategies and

1. 2014 European Commission Innovation Convention
EUROCITIES
Cities & ICT – innovation and participation
Presentation by George Niland
Brussels – 11 March 2014

2. Networking
EUROCITIES Forums
COOPERATION
Chaired by the city of Nantes
Culture
Forum
Chaired by
the city of
Bologna
Economic
Development
Forum
Chaired by
the city of
Liverpool
Environment
Forum
Chaired by
the city of
Birmingham
Knowledge
Society
Forum
- Chaired by
the city of
Ghent
- Vice-chair is
city of
Manchester
Mobility
Forum
Chaired by
the city of
Mannheim
Social
Affairs
Forum
Chaired by
the city of
The Hague
EUROCITIES
Over 130 full members in 34 countries, representing 120m citizens
 43 associate members and partners
 Most European capital cities are members

3. EUROCITIES Knowledge Society Forum
 Priorities
o Smart Citizens
o Co-creation for innovation, transparency and business
o IT development for smart governance
 4 Working groups
o Smart Cities
o Open Data
o E-Inclusion
o Cybersecurity
o WG on innovation

4. Some of the Challenges facing our cities
 Considerable population growth, social issues
 Environmental & transport pressures
 Constrained budgets
 Have to stay competitive and achieve sustainable growth while
ensuring good quality of life for all citizens.
 Citizens are increasingly ‘internet citizens’, who expect city
services to be available online.

5.  We need to bridge the gap between the expectation of our
constantly connected citizens and the services offered by
cities
 There is a need to develop improved, more efficient online
public services, keep up with tech innovation and increase
transparency by developing more open forms of government.
Great Expectations

6.  Foster innovation, new businesses and economic growth
 Foster social and digital inclusion
 Improve sustainable mobility (e.g. real time public transport
information, traffic flows)
 Develop new services to measure and cut GHG emissions and
change energy behaviour
 Increase government transparency and citizen participation
 Activate and strengthen quadruple helix co-creation (research,
government, industry, civil society)
Cities enabling new services & citizen participation

7. The enabling tools
 Digital strategy incorporated across the whole city
administration
 New E-government services
 Open data
 Co-creation and User driven open innovation
 Smart Cities strategies and projects and Future Internet
enabled services -the city as a testbed
 Procurement of new technologies, e.g. cloud services

8. From This

9. To This
Heritage Eye

10. Creating an open innovation ecosystem
Living Labs
Crowdsourcing
ideas,
Participatory
platforms
Open data,
Open data
portal
face2face
engagement
App
developers
City
administration industry
Civil society
and Citizens
University,
researchers,
innovation
agencies
Hackathons,
data days
Business
incubators

11. City level - Need for clear policy and strategic aims
 Developing clear open data and open innovation strategies
 Need business cases and proof of value
 Champions and supporters at city strategy level
 Resources and Funding

12. EU level – replication and scale-up

13. EUROCITIES Open Data Working Group
EUROCITIES Open Data Guidebook – overview
 Challenges and solutions, Organizational and technical process of
opening data
 Builds on and utilises the knowledge and experiences of our
member cities
 The value of open data and relevance to issues such as smart
cities, innovation, citizen involvement.
 Best practice examples
 Link: http://bit.ly/Mr19xw

14. Thank you!
george.niland@eurocities.eu