The Digital City Agenda was founded in 2011. The idea for a Digital City Agenda arose from a need for a different approach to the economic and social challenges society faces. It started with the common conclusion of several governors from large ci@es that the innova@on speed is much to low in respect to the need of society and the possibili@es of entrepreneurs. Our goal as smart ci@es is to find innova@ve solu@ons for the complex problems that our society deals with at this present @me, by working from a different, new perspec@ve and with different, new resources: especially the use of IT and broadband. The stakeholders involved know that implemen@ng such solu@ons boHom up bares the risk that none of these solu@ons can get a large enough and sustainable posi@on on the market. So we made the agreement that we would “scale up” and implement the solu@ons of best prac@ces of each other.
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With the “Stedenlink” founda@on we set up the Digital City Agenda. A network of professional en poli@cal people, commiHed to the societal challenges we saw. This agenda is illustrated by ques@ons as: How do we take care of the growing group of elderly people? How do we change to using and crea@ng sustainable energy? How do we keep our children educated and safe? All these ques@ons exist in our ci@es and villages. The commitment grew from 8 to more than 30 ac@ve ci@es within 2 years. A lot of businesses and knowledge partners work together on this implementa@on agenda. The na@onal government supports the agenda by means of an agreement with by the Ministry of Economic Affairs; worth 1 million Euro. Today’s challenges need a different approach than our tradi@onal way of working. Entrepreneurs, Governments, Educa@on, Science, Innovators, and Ci@zens: we all need to join forces to return to a healthy, strong and compe@@ve Europe. The DSA works to find new ways of working by approaching issues boHom up: what does society want? What do we need? As these things change, we work with a rolling agenda that is adjusted to the needs of that specific @me. DSA is a networking organiza@on: we bring all stakeholders throughout the chain of change together, and facilitate collabora@on. We work in co-‐crea@on, which means all par@cipa@ng par@es feel ownership of the problem and will be part owner of the solu@on.
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DSA intents to break through old paradigms. We focus on ini@a@ve and ac@on, in order to come to concrete and working solu@ons. To do this, people, ideas, solu@ons, knowledge and resources need to be brought together and made available in a transparent manner. This way we can learn from each other. Through co-‐crea@on, experiments and collec@ve investments we can make op@mal use of scarce resources. DSA wants to find innova@ve solu@ons for the large social issues of this @me. IT naturally plays a large role in these solu@ons, but IT by itself is not the answer. To come to solu@ons for the complex issues that our country (and all of Europe) is dealing with, we need a different approach to local issues. In spite of this new approach, we do have to focus on standardiza@on and interoperability of the solu@ons that we find. Open networks and open data are the slogans of this way of working. Sharing and giving are the values in this community.
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To be able to facilitate local change, local municipali@es need to break through tradi@on and paradigms. We cannot seHle for the ‘basics’ anymore. We have to start interac@ng more with our surroundings. We recognize that changes in our way of governing need to be made: our Dutch social care system resists innova@on. Because of the budget cuts of the na@onal government, ci@es try to cut down the costs of their services to the public. To work more efficiently they have to scale up the size of their organiza@on by serving a larger number of people. There is a heavy debate going on about the usefulness of this scale-‐enlargement. But, ladies and gentleman, to meet the needs of the local community, our municipali@es also know that they need to work more socially. Listening to society and being involved with the needs of society will lead to a more effec@ve way of managing the urban challenges. Smart ci@es strive to combine these two aspects in an innova@ve program approach. They need to re-‐invent their role and themselves. By arranging and facilita@ng the community problem solving capacity, municipali@es can steer to a vision based deployment of community service with al lot of stakeholders involved. IT will help us in this respect to do more with less and reach common goals. This orienta@on of the administra@on and bureaucracy in innova@ve smart ci@es is the context of the Digital Ci@es Agenda. The issue of the use of IT in community service is also embedded in this context. Because of this complex context, it is not easy to bring innova@ve IT solu@ons into prac@se. Ci@es based their involvements as smart ci@es on their strong points in society and in the business
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The European Commission formulated seven Flagship programs to reinforce the European economy in a sustainable manner. All DSA programs are somehow connected to these flagships, but four of the flagships are largely aHended to within the DSA programs. The topics of the European digital agenda are strongly connected to the Dutch Digital City Agenda. The ‘innova@on union’ reflects the DSA goals; find innova@ve solu@ons by bringing all involved par@es together, and work in co-‐crea@on. For example on the introduc@on of e-‐health, recently promoted by the European Commission. The flagship ‘new skills and jobs’ are to be found in the Learning city, where we work on human capital through digital skills and the digital transi@on in our educa@onal system. But also the programs City of Entrepreneurs and Deregulated City work alongside this flagship, as they facilitate and s@mulate entrepreneurship. Resource efficiency is an important theme all through the world. All of us realize we should have started yesterday: the sense of urgency is high. The DSA aHributes to this issue within the program Green City.
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DSA works in eight different programs each based on a central issue. Each program is directed by one coordina@ng city and supported by other ci@es, businesses and knowledge ins@tutes across the country. DSA works locally: the place where change begins. We recognize that we cannot enforce change top down anymore, we need to facilitate change boHom up. Ci@zens, ci@es and businesses come up with small, some@mes brilliant ini@a@ves. DSA offers a chance for pilots and try outs on small scale and, if successful, upscale aeerwards. In this respect we speed up implementa@on by suppor@ng the markets to deploy solu@ons. This way, a small but brilliant idea can change into a worldwide innova@on!
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The eight coordina@ng ci@es of the DSA have set themselves the goal to accelerate change within the theme of their choice. For the city of Amersfoort, that theme is sustainability. Our way of genera@ng energy is going through a transi@on to become more sustainable and fit for the future. This transi@on might seem very technical: from central to decentralized genera@on, from fossil fuels to sun-‐, water-‐ or wind energy. Even though these are very technical processes, I am convinced that this technical transi@on goes hand in hand with a social transi@on: at the end of this social transi@on, a consumer can be user and producer at the same @me and be a prosumer. IT gives us the instruments that can make this happen at a large scale. One of the projects within the Green City is “Smart Grid: rendement voor iedereen” (profit for all). In this project many different actors work together to develop new Smart Grid service concepts. The project evolves around 200 households that have been co crea@ng with municipali@es, provinces and businesses from the beginning. They help developing and tes@ng new techniques like installing solar panels and home energy management systems, but most importantly give feedback and communicate openly with all other par@es. This communica@on goes via ‘district TV’ and an open source plaiorm. This way knowledge and experience is retrieved while working on the project. By that the business cases that arise meet the needs of all stakeholders: profit for all!
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Innova@ons and IT usage in (long-‐term) care therefore are essen@al for high quality and accessible care. Caring City, one of the themes within the Dutch Digital City Agenda is working with innova@ve solu@ons that keep our society moving. As a result of the individualiza@on of our socie@es we no longer know exactly who lives in our street or in our neighbourhood. And many volunteer organiza@ons will tell you that it is difficult to find people who are willing to volunteer on a regular basis. Does that mean that people are no longer interested in helping each other? No, not at all. But people seek short term commitments, with clear end dates and the possibility to assist only when it suits them. New ini@a@ves as the Dutch online organiza@ons WeHelpen.nl (WeHelp) and ZorgVoorElkaar.nl (Care For Each Other) provide plaiorms to unleash this enormous poten@al of informal care. Based on postal codes people can ask for assistance and care, or let each other know that they can be asked for help. It could be learning Dutch, picking up medicines, garden work, a walk to the park or a visit to the museum. Simple things. These services help to @e the social networks in our neighbourhoods together and create more vital communi@es. And they help in cumng down the cost for healthcare and welfare. Also, they could be great to support the 3 million caretakers in the Netherlands, who next to their already busy lives take care of an ill child, spouse or elderly parent. Many Dutch ci@es are experimen@ng with these online par@cipatory health services. S@ll, these services are rela@vely unknown and require a much broader audience to
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Making civilians correct their own property value (WOZ-‐waarde)? Would that be possible? End 2011 and end 2012, the municipali@es Tilburg and Borne have been gradually experimen@ng with this in pilots. An assured breakthrough project! The ci@es launched a web-‐service that provides ci@zens transparent informa@on about the value of their property (‘WOZ waarde’) that is linked to their tax-‐ assessment. The ‘WOZ waarde’ is always a topic for much dispute between house owning civilians and the municipality, leading to many complaints and high administra@ve costs. Especially now, because of the decline of the value of property of houses. The goal of the WOZ project is to increase transparency and establish an understanding of the property value for stakeholders. Besides transparent informa@on, people can compare and even correct the informa@on. Missing or incorrect informa@on can be corrected, directly showing the effects of the correc@on on the new “temporary” property value (WOZ waarde). This last aspect; Ci@zens correc@ng the informa@on themselves is unique, this is the breakthrough! This project also provides great poten@al for the city. The web service results in a drop in official complaints and thus a drop in process costs, ci@zens are contribu@ng to the quality of municipal data, and the transparent character of such projects strengthens the bond between the municipality and its ci@zens. The project has proven to be very successful, and has gained much praise by its
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A lot of the issues Europe men@ons in its flagship programs manifest themselves locally, so local solu@ons will contribute largely to the flagship goals. The Europe 2020 strategy contains an urgent request to al governmental ins@tu@ons, but also businesses, knowledge ins@tutes and ci@zens to focus on the European challenges as much as our own capacity allows us to. By adjus@ng our efforts to each other and to our European ambi@ons, we can make a shie to what we all want: a socially and economically strong, self-‐organizing society. And it does not have to take us very long to get there!
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Ladies and gentleman, I have come to the end of my contribu@on to this event. As we all know and have seen, top down changing our systems and society no longer works. I don’t think it ever did! Now, we are seeking new ways to innovate. The technology to support this is already there, but not fully deployed. It is unchartered territory, we are all learning by trial and error. Let’s find out what ci@zens and customers need, let’s try to create value by working together with stakeholders. The Digital City Agenda facilitates this change movement; helps bring par@es together and create new ways to organize the collabora@on. Change will always be scary; it will never be easy. There is no straight line from the beginning to the end. But I hope I have shown you the good things that come from change today, and I hope I have inspired you to hop on our train of social collabora@on and create movement in your own environment. Let’s do it: make our ci@es smart and strenghten the economy and our society!
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