Seizing the Initiative

Abstract

The most difficult barrier to creating a Smart City is finding the right way to take the first step. Based on its experience as an award-winning Smart City, with knowledge of developments around the world, the example of Ottawa can be used to help provide a play-book for Smart City movements. The first and critical step is to establish the Governance of the Smart City project, the framework that aligns leaders from many sectors to fulfil the Smart City mission. Once established, a status-check is useful in determining the city’s current position along the Smart City continuum. This involves assessing how each sector of the community views its progress. Each sector is then challenged to provide a vision of where they would like to be in 3–5 years time, assuming that they had adequate broadband infrastructure to support their goals. The visions are linked, a final plan is drawn up, and a network map is created. The network is the final stage, for in the last analysis, the creation of a Smart Community is 90 % social, and only 10 % technological. The job for social leaders is to tame this and create for citizens an “intentional future”—a framework that puts them in control of their lives in a time of unparalleled turbulence.