Information Sharing & Smart Places: What kinds of information sharing for what kinds of places?

James Cornford

j.cornford@uea.ac.ukNorwich Business School

University of East Anglia

02 July

Places, especially Cities, are, and have always been, about information sharing

Visions of smart places depend on information sharing

• “Smart” is a brain metaphor for places

• Q: What makes brains “smart”?• A: They are massively interconnected

• Q: What makes place smart (by analogy)• A: They are massively interconnected (i.e., they are good at

information sharing)

See e.g., Morgan, 2006

Our vision of smart places is changing

• “Technocratic” visionsMobility and security focus

Efficiency & security (for corporate capital)

Focus on “calculation”

Invisible processes that act behind the backs of the actors

• “Democratic” critiqueWhat about people?

How robust?

Efficiency for whom?

What substantive goals?

• New HybridsFocus on lateral citizen-citizen interactions

Health and happiness as well as growth

The “hackable” city

“Brittle, buggy and bugged” (Townsend, 2013)

See also Kitchin, 2015

Information Sharing is Key to Smart Places

• “The sharing of data for the benefit of all stakeholders is at the heart of smart city aspirations.” (BSI, 2014b: 4)

• But do we also need to share information To make shared data interpretable across professional, sectoral and technical divides?

To provide for resilience, effective governance, recourse in relation to data?

To support dialogical debate as well as calculative processes?

To maintain political support for data sharing?

• More than just “Open Data”… • …more than just “Big Data” (analytics)

• It is likely that over the next few years, Cities will have to install communications infrastructure (owned and managed by multiple vendors) that will allow information to be gathered in real time and in intervals. There will need to be strategies for optimised data collection and assimilation and documented good practice in this area would help in the creation of these strategies. In many cases the format of the information - and often the media and protocols on which it is carried - will be different and the communications environment will be highly heterogeneous. As Smart solutions are developed in different sectors, there will be a need for information captured in various infrastructure elements to be shared between service delivery channels. The information will need to be normalised (and perhaps translated), classified and stored. (BSI, 2014a: 14 emphasis added)

• The findings of the gap analysis in the standards strategy are that there are plenty of standards covering interoperability within the context of particular service delivery systems, but there is a lack of overall interoperability framework standards that work across systems (BSI, 2014a: 14).

Pre-requisites of Information sharing

• … or what do we need to share if we are to share information

• An institutional context

• A physical and technical context

• A set of individual and collective skills and competences

• The necessary time to engage in information sharing

• A cultural context that allows, encourages and promotes information sharing

The kinds of information that we share must change too?

• Not just ‘factual’ information but opinion, feelings and interpretation too

• Not just monological, one way information flow but dialogue and conversation too

• Not just data ‘exhaust’ from existing systems but deliberately captured and solicited information

Three key questions for today

• What kinds of information do we need to share for what kinds of smart places?

• What organisational and institutional innovations are required to support the sharing of information at this scale?

• How will the kinds of information that we are able to share shape the kinds of places that we will inhabit?

References

• Morgan, G. (2006), Images of Organisation. London Sage.• Christopherson, S. and Glasmier, A. (2015) Thinking about Smart cities, Cambridge Journal of

Regions, Economy and Society, 8: 3-12.• Townsend, A. M. (2013) Smart Cities: Big Data, Civic Hackers and the Quest for the New

Utopia. New York: Norton (Kindle edition).• Hollands, R.G., (2008) Will the real smart city please stand up? City, 12(3): 303-320.• Dutton, W. H., J. G. Blumler. Kraemer, K. (eds.) (1987), Wired Cities: Shaping the future of

Communications. Eastbourne: Cassell.• Graham, S. and Marvin, S. (1996) Telecommunications and the City: Electronic Spaces and

Urban Places. London: Routledge.• Kitchin, R. (2015) Making sense of Smart Cities: addressing some present shortcomings,

Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society, 8: 131-136.

More references

• BSI (2014a) The Role of Standards in Smart Cities Issue 2 (August 2014) [http://www.bsigroup.com/LocalFiles/en-GB/smart-cities/resources/The-Role-of-Standards-in-Smart-Cities-Issue-2-August-2014.pdf]

• BSI (2014b) Smart city concept model – Guide to establishing a model for data interoperability. London: BSI.