World Economic Forum
Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution Japan
Smart Cities Project
Challenge
Over the last ten years smart city technology vendors and developers have frequently struggled to meet expectations and many pilot projects have stayed as pilots. The reason for this failure is the misalignment between the pace of technology change and the pace of governance change. Good governance of technology is needed so that buyers can deploy it at scale, but cities face a variety of significant governance gaps in areas like security, privacy, and interoperability.
Opportunity
This project aims to scale the adoption of tech governance by governments and institutions. That will then facilitate more innovation and investment in urban technologies.
Impact
In the first year since its establishment, we have formulated model policies in five fields and have begun working with 36 pioneer cities globally. In Japan, we have formed a community with 12 local governments, and this initiative will spread to India and Latin America. Our engagements aim to:
- Address fragmentation in smart city ecosystemsand enable development of global norms for technology governance
- Mitigate common challenges related to privacy,security, sustainability, resiliency, equity, and Interoperability
- In so doing, accelerate deployment and adoption of smart city technologies
This project is part of platform "Shaping the Future of Internet of Things and Urban Transformation".