The WEF publishes a white paper about smart cities governance

The World Economic Forum in collaboration with Deloitte, issued a white paper about smart cities governance. The report aims to benchmark cities that wish to establish policies for ethical and responsible governance of their smart city programs. The guide analyses practices in five policies: ICT accessibility, privacy impact assessment, cyber accountability, digital infrastructure, and open data. The findings are based on surveys and interviews with policy experts and city government officials from the Alliance’s 36 “Pioneer Cities.”  The analysis reveals the following conclusions: (1) Less than half of the cities have policies to embed basic accessibility requirements into their ICT procurement. Less than half of cities provided evidence that they implement these requirements in practice. (2) Most cities (80%) acknowledge legal obligations for privacy and data protection, but less than 25% conduct privacy impact assessments when they deploy new technology. (3) Most cities do not have anyone designated as accountable for cybersecurity, nor a cybersecurity plan that senior executives regularly review. (4) Many cities lack the digital infrastructure needed to support or sustain home working and remote education. (5) Most sampled cities have achieved a basic implementation of an open data policy. Still, only 15% of the Pioneer Cities have integrated their open data portals with their broader city data infrastructure. The report concludes with a call to action for stakeholders.