Where are we Now?
The technology is here for smart cities, but should we be implementing this technology at scale yet? At the 2019 Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Smart City Conference in Kansas City, technical panels detailed new methods for scaling smart city applications and integrating various data sets, improving technical smart city capabilities at a rapid pace. Yet, one of the themes that emerged in the plenary sessions in Kansas City was that answering the the call for technical improvements would not be sufficient to increase the deployment, utilization, and optimization of smart city applications. The reason? These are not merely technical problems, but socio-technical ones, and the rapid pace of technological improvement has in many ways outpaced our ability to manage that technology. While cities may have large networks of infrastructure and computers, they are not merely machines. The policy and governance questions around smart cities, which are still largely unanswered, may be as likely as technical ones to delay, or even derail, the benefits of smart cities.
Even in some large cities, IT governance may still be maturing. City Chief Information Security Officers are a relatively new invention, if they can be afforded at all. Many cities still employ IT professionals in civil service job titles that date back to the earliest introduction of computers into city government. Even the managerial capability to contract for modern IT systems, let alone the ability to evaluate their construction or assess their safety, is sometimes poorly developed. The fact that some cities lack the organizational or institutional capability to effectively implement, manage, contract for, or evaluate smart city goods and services offered by vendors may not prevent them from pursuing such projects.
Even in some large cities, IT governance may still be maturing.
Smart city deployments are almost always done in deep cooperation with the private sector. Do we trust these companies to have the greater good of citizens first in their mind? How they calculate risk and return on investment are naturally different. Indeed, companies have not just the right, but the fiduciary responsibility, to walk away from sectors, markets, or products that don’t offer strong outlooks for profits; however, cities do not have that luxury. There may be profitable smart city implementations that are technically feasible, but that violate some other concern that cities take seriously, like privacy, equity, accountability, or transparency.
Do our city leaders have the education or staff expertise to stand up to the technology firms? Do they have the financial backing or market position to do so? Do our city leaders have the technical support from state, federal, or non-profit partners to ask technology firms the hard questions about the economics and safety concerns of smart implementations? In many cities, unfortunately, the answer is no.
Much of the existing literature around smart cities has a utopian feel. It is certainly true that smart city applications can reduce costs in some cases, improve efficiency in some cases, and collectively improve urban service delivery and quality of life. However, like all technologies, smart city technologies are largely agnostic to whether they are implemented well, ethically, economically, safely, or with accountability.