Smart City Leadership Programme

Sup­port­ing Smart Cit­ies
SMART CITIES & LEADERSHIP

Cit­ies play a vital role in address­ing the increas­ingly com­plex array of chal­lenges that soci­ety now faces, from eco­nom­ic prosper­ity, com­munity engage­ment and resource stew­ard­ship. The need to change society’s habits and beha­viours, the need to design and man­age ser­vices in new and dif­fer­ent ways and the need to respond to and exploit the poten­tial that mod­ern tech­no­lo­gies offer, are all char­ac­ter­ist­ics of future, suc­cess­ful cit­ies.  The task of city lead­ers to steer and shape their city’s des­tiny has nev­er been more cru­cial.

Oppor­tun­ity Peter­bor­ough, in part­ner­ship with the Brit­ish Stand­ards Insti­tute (BSI) and Urb­anD­NA, has developed the Smart City Lead­er­ship Pro­gram­me (SCLP) as part of the UK’s Future City Demon­strat­or Pro­gram­me. The pro­gram­me has been thor­oughly tested in Peter­bor­ough, UK, which was awar­ded World Smart City in 2015.  It is also being delivered in a num­ber of cit­ies In India, fun­ded by the UK For­eign and Com­mon­wealth Office, as part of the Indi­an Smart Cit­ies Ini­ti­at­ive. The SCLP has been designed to ensure that the essen­tial lead­er­ship com­pon­ent of Smart City devel­op­ment is under­stood and recog­nised as a neces­sary part of a city’s com­mit­ment to real­ise its smart ambi­tions.

PETERBOROUGH’S IMPACT

  • Played a lead role in the devel­op­ment of Brit­ish Stand­ards Institute’s (BSI) suite of Smart City Stand­ards
  • Chair of the BSI’s Smart and Sus­tain­able Cit­ies Com­mit­tee (SDS/2)
  • A founder mem­ber of the Cit­ies Stand­ards Insti­tute
  • Attends the All Party Par­lia­ment­ary Group on Smart Cit­ies
  • A mem­ber of the Ellen MacAr­thur Foundation’s Cir­cu­lar Cit­ies Net­work 
    Deliv­ers a DFID-fun­ded Smart City Lead­er­ship Pro­gram­me for the Indi­an city of Amara­vati and for the state of Mad­hya Pra­desh
  • The team has presen­ted at over 50 inter­na­tion­al con­fer­ences and con­tin­ues to acquire loc­al, nation­al and inter­na­tion­al media cov­er­age peak­ing with the ‘World Smart City Award’ in 2015

“We are begin­ning to think about smart out­comes for our people rather than smart, hi-tech stuff as inputs”

THE APPROACH
  • The pro­gram­me is delivered over two and a half con­sec­ut­ive days involving a wide range of city lead­ers, using the innov­at­ive “Blu­e­Room” meth­od of work­ing
  • To set the scene and enable the con­tent to be fine-tuned, all par­ti­cipants are asked to com­plete an online sur­vey pri­or to attend­ing the pro­gram­me
  • A “know­ledge wall” of focused research mater­i­als is pre­pared to help stim­u­late cre­at­ive and innov­at­ive think­ing and to inform dis­cus­sion and debate
  • Break­out ses­sions drive deep­er insights before test­ing in plen­ary ses­sions
  • As a pre­curs­or to devel­op­ing an agreed way for­ward, par­ti­cipants assess the cur­rent smart status of the host city using the Smart City Matur­ity Mat­rix set out in BSI PD8100
  • The final ses­sions begin the cre­ation of an out­line Smart City Roadmap which includes inter­con­nec­tions and inter­de­pend­en­cies between iden­ti­fied ini­ti­at­ives.
PROGRAMME OBJECTIVES

The Smart City Lead­er­ship Pro­gram­me is aimed at pan-city lead­er­ship, with attend­ance being rep­res­ent­at­ive of the team neces­sary to drive for­ward the Smart City agenda with­in the host city. This will include pub­lic, private and third sec­tor seni­or exec­ut­ives. The pro­gram­me is neces­sar­ily intens­ive and requires high-level com­mit­ment over two and a half days. Over­all it aims to:

  • Increase the per­son­al and col­lect­ive know­ledge among­st city lead­ers about the need for, and pos­sib­il­it­ies arising from, a smart city approach
  • Estab­lish the found­a­tions needed to increase the pace at which the city is able to respond to and build upon to the ‘smart city’ oppor­tun­it­ies
  • Improve align­ment of the human and sys­tems fab­ric for col­lab­or­a­tion with­in the city lead­er­ship com­munity
  • Explore new ideas and start to shape tan­gible oppor­tun­it­ies to engage with a range of spe­cific ini­ti­at­ives
  • Con­struct an out­line roadmap for the host city based on an hon­est lead­er­ship assess­ment of its cur­rent level of devel­op­ment
  • ‘Share the burden’ of devel­op­ing com­mon solu­tions to iden­ti­fied city chal­lenges and needs and,
  • Cre­ate the found­a­tions for trans­form­a­tion­al leaps in think­ing in the city to ensure that it can address and sus­tain improve­ment on the ‘big chal­lenges’ it faces more effect­ively.
PROGRAMME OUTPUTS
  • The Pro­gram­me will help to develop a cohes­ive, pan-city lead­er­ship team with a shared under­stand­ing of what “smart lead­er­ship” means for par­ti­cip­at­ing cit­ies
  • An open assess­ment of the city’s pro­gress towards a smarter future using BSI PAS 181 Smart City Frame­work and the PD8100 Smart City Over­view matur­ity frame­work
  • A bespoke, co-cre­ated roadmap will help to main­tain focus and momentum towards the agreed goals and is now form­ing the basis of cur­rent dis­cus­sions regard­ing Peter­bor­ough;’ “Smart” vis­ion, ambi­tions and goals.