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our guest today is Sita Hari heron she is the general manager and group head at the digital software and solutions group
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at Tata Consultancy Services and we are speaking with her today about smart cities a toolkit for leaders a special
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report that we produced collaboratively recently Siva thank you so much for joining us today acknowledged at Wharton
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Mikael it's so great to be here particularly talking about smart cities a topic that you and I are quite
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passionate about exactly right so again thanks so much for being here I know we can start with a very basic question
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what is a smart city what was what are the concept meat mean originally and how has it evolved over time and thank you
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for having me Moo Cole I mean it's such a pleasure to be here with you and let's
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look at some data if you look at smart cities and the number of smart cities between 2002 and 2015 it had quadrupled
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across the globe from approximately 21 to 88 at the end of 2017 about hundred and seventy eight cities embarked on 250
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smart city projects from Melbourne to Copenhagen to San Francisco this data suggests that there is this rapid
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urbanization across the globe and there are leaders in the municipalities and cities that are trying to figure out how
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to cope with this rapid urbanization and as you rightly said the definition of smart cities has evolved over the last
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couple of decades in the first phase when smart cities started to be discussed in the public forum technology
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players looked at some of the challenges that were created by the urbanization so
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they said let me create point product solutions addressing the various challenges which is what technology
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players do related to parking mobility water management lighting and so on so that was the phase one how
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as many city leaders lamented technology players didn't quite understand how the
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city would consume those solutions so came the second phase when the city leader said let me take control of the
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technology agenda for my city and however there were two things that were lacking number one collaboration across
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the various departments of the city and number two keeping citizens at the center of
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everything that they do so collaboration with the citizens so now we are in the third phase of smart city definition I'm
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quite excited about that Mukul because city's leaders are saying that I want to
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create cities that are livable that focus on the well-being and happiness of my citizens so it is a citizen centric
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agenda and that is evolving and one of the examples that come to mind is a place that you visited last year for
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your vacation Iceland and the capital city of Iceland Reykjavik developed a program right after the 2008 financial
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crisis called the better Reykjavik program that is a platform by the way which gives voice to the citizens in
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policymaking and there are other examples in san san antonio as an example with your highway sign boards
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and beijing with a I love Beijing app that can be used by the citizens to report either power outages broken
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street lamps or potholes to the government I'm really glad you mentioned the idea of a platform because I was
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very curious to see how you think of smart cities functioning as platforms that enable collaboration between
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different groups groups of stakeholders I was wondering if you could speak about
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that a little bit more yeah so if you start with being citizen-centric that provides the right motivation to drive
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the right behaviors take the right action and collaboration yes is absolutely needed across the various departments of
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the city but it is also needed with the citizens and private enterprises as well
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so if you look at the linkage as an example between water management and traffic management or between event
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management in a city and city commerce it becomes quite apparent as to why such a collaboration is really essential as
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an example if there is water pipe breakage in one part of the city you really want to divert traffic in that
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part so as to avoid traffic jams or congestion in that part and similarly when the city is hosting let's say a
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football match or a popular music concert one thing that isn't obvious is while the city will improve its enhance
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its safety and security measures what is not clear is how does it relate to city
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commerce as an example the retailers will do well if they can increase the foot traffic in the areas where such
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special events happen what that does for the retailers is it increases the revenues for the retailers not just that
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it increases the revenue for the city because of the taxes so the collaboration across the various
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departments of the city is absolutely essential and having a unified platform as you said will drive that
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collaboration but as you and I know we also have to collaborate the city has to collaborate with the citizens as well as
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with private enterprises and academic institutions and one example that comes to mind is how arizona's Institute for
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digital Progress has set up the structure they have a unified leadership structure that drives collaboration
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across the various municipalities authorities Academy institutions like the Arizona State University as well as
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private sectors like Google uber Cisco Intel in order to tackle some of their traffic congestion problems I'm really
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glad you brought up leadership because it seems to me that the role of the leadership is very crucial in making a
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city smart or at least smarter how do mayors and other civic leaders go about setting priorities that define how
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a city becomes smarter across different dimensions of its operations you're right mogul mayor's play such a critical
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role I was watching a documentary several years ago from HP bow which is called the weight of the nation this
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documentary takes you through the neighborhoods of Columbus Ohio particularly Lyndhurst and huff they're
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about eight and a half miles apart and as you drive through these neighborhoods the life expectancy drops by
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approximately twenty four years and it's not so unique to Ohio you see when you
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take a tube ride in London from Oxford Circus to silver Lane which is about 15 minutes train ride the life expectancy
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drops by approximately 15 to 20 years to neighborhoods that are so close to each
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other but so far apart the question is why an obvious answer is yes that is a healthcare disparity between these two
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communities but as you and I know the healthcare disparity doesn't come by itself it's also because of the
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disparities in education housing food access and possibly workforce development so mayor's as you rightly
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asked they have a crucial role role to play in terms of addressing some of these real-life challenges and balancing
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that with driving economic growth for the cities so they need to do that in my view in three steps
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number one they need to first define a clear vision for their city in a very simple manner I'll use an overused
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example here but a powerful one one of the former mayors of Barcelona mr. arrow said that his vision was to
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create a dancing Barcelona a city where the visitors felt welcome the streets were well lit the city smelled fresh and
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the citizens and the visitors were safe and happy you know this powerful simple vision
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drove the choice of choice of technologies for Barcelona whether it be in mobility parking lighting energy
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management or security and even mace waste management for the city right so to start with the mayors need to define
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in simpler terms what their vision is for the city the second of course as we discussed earlier is collaboration with
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the citizens and driving initiatives that are citizen-centric that becomes very important as a second next step and
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the third is and the mayor's need to understand the local and political context which I think they are quite
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adapted so if if let's take an example in San Francisco a few years ago they
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implemented a dynamic pricing for their parking system la is implementing a similar system called la Park but this
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expansive and expensive in Street sensors Garage sensors smart meters and all of the technologies that are
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required to dynamically calculate the pricing for the parking isn't suitable
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for smaller cities smaller cities can do by using data transaction data that they
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collect as well as some manual surveys that they could do quite occasionally and so it is really important for mayors
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to understand the local and political context instead of getting excited and trying to figure out these solutions
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work somewhere else can i replicate it in my city so those are the three steps I would say that the mayor's need to
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consider but also balance the resources that are available to them between serving the citizens and
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addressing some critical challenges and driving economic growth I'm glad you
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brought up the challenges that mayor's face because one of the biggest challenges that many of them seem to be
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facing these days is how to handle the influx of new people that could either be immigrants coming from other
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countries or it could be just an influx of people from the hinterlands the rural
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areas into the cities do you have any thoughts on how mayors and other civic leaders can deal with these challenges
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in a smart and also an inclusive and compassionate manner absolutely let's look at some data if we look at places
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like Asia Africa and Latin America every hour of every single day nearly 1,000 people are moving from the rural areas
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to urban areas if this were to continue we would have to build a city as large as London one every month for the next
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33 years so this is what is causing the rapid urbanization phenomena that many of them are talking about and it puts a
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lot of pressure as you and I know on the city's limited and scarce resources but
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there is one other critical issue at play that many of us are overlooking which is the growing disparity gap
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across the various regions of a nation so if you look at the u.s. here the bigger communities today are growing at
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a much faster pace and they're also contributing overall to the nation's
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growth more than ever before and these bigger communities are being powered by well-educated Millennials and the
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agglomeration of trends caused by digital technologies right and these are happening as some of the smaller metros
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wayne and the rural areas are sliding into deep decline and if you just look at the
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u.s. in the last couple of years more than half of the jobs that have been created because of the digital
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technologies have gone to the bigger metros the top 20 metros here in u.s. which is only home to one-third of the
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American population with the usual suspects of New York Boston the bay area Seattle Washington DC followed by the
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Sun Belt hubs of Atlanta Dallas Miami and Orlando so in this context the mayors have two key imperatives number
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one make regionally balanced growth a priority it's not a very difficult task
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to do it is just that the leaders have to consciously say that I'm going to drive economic cohesion and it's not a
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novel idea either because if you look across the pond the european union said that i'm going to allocate one-third of
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my budget between 2014 and 2020 to the cohesion policy a program that will allow some of the lagging regions to
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catch up so that should be a key imperative for the mayors the second is make rescaling a priority there has been
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a lot of talk about machine learning artificial intelligence robotics and automation getting to the factory floors
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the jobs of tomorrow will not be the same as jobs of today or yesterday even the white-collar jobs will get disrupted
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if you go and look at the historical data one thing is certain whenever the public sector investment is
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directed towards the human capital that has always led to prosperity right in three decades following 1910 you has
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spent a lot of its funds public sector funds in educating the citizens so the high school graduation rate in that
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period went from 17% or 18% to 73% and the graduation rate went from 9% to 51% it's an amazing growth in just a
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very short period of time so what does what did that mean it meant that for us the citizens were
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highly educated and their income was substantially higher in comparison to the counterparts some of the other
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industrialized countries at that period of time in my view if we can do it then we should be able to do it now
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particularly given access to many of the digital tools that we have at our disposal
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you mentioned digital tools and one of the of course digital technologies spreading everywhere
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and one of the effects of digitalization is that it throws up vast amounts of data and I was wondering if you could
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speak a little bit about how data analytics and collaborative data sharing can enables smarter decision-making
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about you know cities so data is by far the most valuable asset nowadays that private enterprises have as well as
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public sector has so whether you are driving through a traffic light or paying a utility bill or browsing a
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city's website or calling a city department or even dumping garbage into your neighborhood dumpster the city
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collects so much of data about you if the data is mined properly then the city can use that of course to serve the
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needs of the citizens better at they can even anticipate the needs of the citizen
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so if the city were to mined this data and develop a platform there or face sees that the report talks about let me
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see if I can outline those five for our listeners number one the first see is all about collaboration that we talked
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about across the various departments of a city I think we spoke about an example
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of water management and traffic management and how they are interrelated so that is the first C collaboration
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across the department's of city the second is how do you use the platform to effectively serve the needs
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of the citizens so the second C stands for the citizens so using that unified platform
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how can a citizen such as you and me either pay a bill or get a license for starting a business and this would
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require collaboration as we can imagine across several departments of the city itself the third C is about the colleges
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and the university systems so how do you collaborate with them effectively in order for you to tap into the local
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talent and the fourth C is communities a neighborhood how do I use the platform to effectively serve the needs of a
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community neighborhood provide them information related to their neighborhood maybe it is related to
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safety it is related to health about that particular community and the fifth season' tech space how do you open up
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your platform publish api's that the companies can use the private sector can
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use in order to develop new applications tools in support of your smart city agenda so those are the five C's but
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when it comes to data Michael I'm certain you and I will say that before city starts to collect your data and use
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it they have to get explicit permission from the citizens write an explicit opt-in is absolutely needed not just
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that the city needs to explain to the citizens how they plan to use that data in simple terms instead of throwing a 25
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page document at us and in the end cities need to be responsible guardians of citizens data I I agree we couldn't
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agree with you more about the need for privacy and actually I wanted the next question I have I use about a sixth C
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and that is cost obviously you have a lot of expenses involved with cities trying to become smarter which brings up
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the need for how do these initiatives get funded and how do you get the costs covered and I was wondering if you could
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talk a little bit about the different financing models that cities have used to to fund some of these smart city
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initiatives and what are some of the pros and cons you're absolutely right moving the cost and funding is by far
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the biggest challenge when it comes to funding any smart city initiatives so of course you know federal grant is an
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option philanthropic grant which is the knight foundation as an example funded some of the smart city roadmap study
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that the city of Philadelphia didn't publish last month as we all know but these grants are not sufficient if you
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are looking at a citywide smart city program there are other couple of other options that have been toyed around one
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is possibility for possibly increase taxes and thereby increase the revenues of the city to fund some of these
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programs but most of us may not be in favor of getting our taxes increased the second option is how do you as we just
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discuss the city has accessed so much of our data can they sell it can they monetize the data I'm not actually in
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favor of that option until we understand that there are adequate privacy and security measures that are in place by
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the city so that gets us back to an option that is an age old technique but it has been improvised recently it is
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public-private partnerships the way it has evolved lately is there is also the repayment model that has been built into
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this partnership now let's look at a couple of examples one that comes to mind is Kansas City with its citywide
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IOT effort and the municipality in this particular case funded approximately 3.7
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million the private partners they for about twelve point three million so brought the total to about sixteen
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million the city used sixteen million dollars to install twenty five kiosks around the city and the kiosks provided
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free internet access to the citizens as they are getting out and about in the city through which they can also access
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city related information the city also uses these kiosks as emergency alert system now the revenue model for this
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comes through advertising on these kiosks and the initial calculation has shown that both the city as well as the
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private partners that funded this initiative will be able to recoup most of their costs in less than five years
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which is pretty impressive right the second example is Portland Portland Oregon and the initiative
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however is a pilot instead of a full-fledged smart city program like in the case of cancers so the city could
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pretty much live with the federal grant for this pilot where they are using IOT related sensors that go on top of the
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traffic signals as well as many of the light poles in the city the objective of this project is for them to figure out
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how they can improve some of the stalled traffic they can reduce stall traffic in
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these major intersections of the city thereby improving the air quality so that's the pilot scope and if it goes
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well they want to figure out how to get the funding for the entire city itself so the initial funding came from NIS T
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National Institute of Standards and Technology and all of the sensors that are needed for the major intersection
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were provided by the private partners so those are the funding approaches that the cities have looked at but
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predominantly it has been the public-private partnerships with clear repayment models so once the funding has
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been raised what are some of the best practices and the way the funds can be allocated
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across different priorities that the city says McCool you're absolutely right
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funding is by far the most challenging thing for the mayor's to continue it when it comes to smart city programs but
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there are three ways at least that they should consider before they go about spending the money number one which is
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pretty much a no-brainer which is to say pick programs that give the maximum bang
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for the buck or the greatest return on investment let's take a example and if
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you take a city approximately depending on the size of the city you will find nearly ten thousand to three hundred
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thousand lights and this is in my opinion a very valuable part of the infrastructure because it already has
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power supply built into them it said at an elevation of nearly 30 feet so imagine if we put some sensors on top of
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these light poles they can be used to monitor foot traffic based on that determine when to turn on the lights and
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turn off the lights it can also be used to monitor the traffic detect crimes so with just a few sensors on each of the
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light poles the city can achieve at least three things increase the safety and security of the citizens east
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congestion traffic condition and the third thing that they can do is save energy costs for the city so that is a
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project that would provide a maximum bang for the buck a good ROI so choose projects that give a good bang for the
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buck the second one I would say is before spending the money think through any of the regulatory changes that are
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needed as an example Columbus Ohio plans to roll out electric vehicles and autonomous vehicles the question
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that the city has to ask is how do they work in the context of the existing infrastructure what regular regulatory
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changes have to be made so that is the second aspect to consider the third one that the cities should consider in my
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view is the procurement process itself how do I streamline procurement if funding is the most difficult thing to
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do the second most is the procurement processes in the city they are pretty long they're also quite laborious so
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there are a couple of approaches that have been proposed in order to ease the procurement process number one consider
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cooperative procurement as an example if there is another city that is already working with that vendor see if you can
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piggyback on that contract the second is consider driving the initiative at a state level as an
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example in January 2017 the state of Illinois the department of transportation in the state of illinois
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launched an RFP for smart street lighting across the state now once that RFP is awarded the cities can use that
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existing contract instead of having to negotiate the terms and conditions on an individual basis so those are the three
00:28:05
things to consider before the cities start to spend the money no cities at the u.s. do you think have done a good
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job of implementing smart city initiatives I know you referred to a few names early on a conversation but if
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specially if you think like challenge and like climate change which cities do you think are doing a good job and what
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kind of the cities learn from the example yeah so there are quite a few cities in u.s. that have been that have
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driven several initiatives that are smart that are sustainable and there are some that are tackling climate changes
00:28:45
well let's take a few examples in each of these areas two cities that I to talk about one is Atlanta Atlanta and
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another is Orlando in the case of Atlanta the reason I'm biased towards Atlanta is
00:29:00
because I met the chief operating officer of Atlanta the previous one then Gordon a few years ago and he had this
00:29:10
clear vision on what he wanted to do for the city and thanks to him and thanks to
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the former mayor Kasim Reed they put together several smart city initiatives in the areas of transportation safety I
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would say also communication with not just citizens but also the businesses so there were several such initiatives and
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Atlanta plans to use what they call as the short spotter IOT acoustic technology in order to
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reduce the while violence in the cities due to guns and this particular technology will help them to dispatch
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the officers to the crime scene in real-time without anyone having to call 9-1-1 so that's that's a cool example
00:30:07
isn't it atlanta also plans to install solar panels and many of the large buildings in the downtown area and that
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would be towards their sustainability initiative to be used to increase their renewable energy capacity as as well as
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reduce energy waste staged as well as greenhouse greenhouse gas emissions as well
00:30:32
orlando is quite quite an interesting city Mukul as we all know right i mean with the disney world and it has about
00:30:39
75 million visitors every year and the mayor says that it has the highest hotel and car rental rates in the entire world
00:30:52
and the director of the smart city program says that his city gets people with all sorts of driving habits and and
00:31:02
what are the things he says is you know you don't need x-- of Technology even some simple fixes
00:31:07
could go a very long way when it comes to making the city smart and he gives an example of this mobile parking alert
00:31:19
systems that the city has developed and there was a lot of resistance I believe initially because the city officials
00:31:27
would worried that revenue coming out of the fines parking fines would go down it
00:31:32
did however what the city saw was increase in revenues because it allowed people to pay for the parking through
00:31:40
their mobile devices and of course both the citizens and visitors were happy and
00:31:45
because they could avoid fines as an example Orlando is also a city quite unique because it's the only city in
00:31:53
Florida that has passed an ordinance saying that all of its public buildings will publish both their energy and water
00:32:05
consumption and the City of Orlando also has committed to ensuring that all the buildings will use renewable energy 100
00:32:17
percent renewable energy by 2050 and what is even interesting is that the municipal operation will transition to
00:32:25
renewable in another decade which is by before end of 2030 so those are some of the examples of cities that are not just
00:32:33
focused on infrastructure but they are also focused on citizens and sustainability and to your question on
00:32:40
climate change and are there any cities that are tackling climate change I think
00:32:45
Atlanta with the solar panels is of course an example San Francisco recently received an award for its zero waste
00:32:53
program that it launched in 2002 since the program was launched it has an incredibly incredible reduction in the
00:33:06
error in the landfill rates diversion rates of about 80 percent San Francisco also every uses 100 million
00:33:16
fewer plastic bags so with many of these initiatives I think San Fran San Francisco is well on
00:33:23
its way to achieve the zero waste goal by 2012 actually 2019 end of this year I see just a couple of last things to wrap
00:33:34
up you referred earlier to public-private partnerships being so critical I was wondering if you have any examples
00:33:42
of cities that are doing a good job working with the talent in the companies in the in in in in their geographic
00:33:51
boundaries so as to enhance the impact of their smart city initiatives are there any examples of that kind that you
00:33:59
you can think of and what can companies learn truck cities and companies learn from those in
00:34:04
yes absolutely local I think collaboration with the private enterprises and the University's
00:34:12
academic institution is a way by which the cities can tap into local talent one of the new concepts
00:34:22
thanks to Brookings Institution is this concept of innovation districts think of
00:34:29
them as geography clusters that brings together academic and scientific research institutions private sector and
00:34:39
small and big right small entrepreneurial organizations enterprises that are large and then
00:34:48
public incubators that are focused on doing research and all of these Geographic clusters that are placed in
00:34:56
amenity rich urban cores mixed use urban cores and simply put these or geographic
00:35:03
areas that drive the economic development for a particular city there are several example the one that I
00:35:11
will mention is by Mayor Andy Berke and his initiative in Chattanooga he set up the Chattanooga innovation district that
00:35:20
has helped the city drive the growth - absolutely the next level it's one of
00:35:25
the best places to live in the country top hundred places to live nowadays and some of the example
00:35:31
of companies that have been successful that were built in that innovation district that come to mind is access
00:35:39
America transport which was eventually bought over by UPS and the same founders also created another startup called the
00:35:46
lamppost group so these innovation districts are a way for companies to create the clusters to drive economic
00:35:55
growth but also dry partnership across the various entities in the city one last question Sita and that is will
00:36:04
focus quite a lot in this conversation on the American experience of making cities smarter I wonder if we could
00:36:13
compare take a look now cross the pond at Europe and see how does the American approach Rebecca lapping smart cities
00:36:21
differ from the approach you see in Europe and are there lessons that each continent can learn from the other in
00:36:28
terms of how to make the world more sustainable and more inclusive and you and I know Mukul that Europe has been at
00:36:37
this Smart City program and initiatives I would say for some time a little bit longer than us has been in u.s. the
00:36:49
Smart City programs typically have been tied to infrastructure and economic development and Europe being at it for a
00:36:58
little bit longer they are now focused on creating citizen-centric initiatives how do I make my cities more livable how
00:37:06
do I make my cities where the citizens are happy and sustainability is one of the key initiatives that Europe has been
00:37:15
focused on but I think Europe is also unique in the sense that it has smaller countries then you have the European
00:37:22
Union so there is a concerted effort between across communities cities and the European Union itself to drive some
00:37:32
of these smart city programs and and that I think is going to help them achieve their goal of 300 smart cities
00:37:41
by end of 2020 and so which is an ambush just goal and I think they are on the way to do that but you and I know
00:37:49
sometimes it is never late or it is sometimes good to be late to a party because then that allows you to learn
00:37:57
from the lessons that someone else has had so in my opinion I think us can take a lot of lessons from how Europe has
00:38:10
approached some of the smart city programs but with several of the initiatives across us and the investment
00:38:18
that the cities are making I sincerely believe that us is well on its way to drive growth across major metros as well
00:38:29
as the smaller metros as well I want to conclude with this Mukul if I may as we look at some of these programs that are
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happening I believe that it is the responsibility of the leaders in the private and public sector and academic
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institution to collaborate effectively with the city leaders as well as with the communities to figure out how to
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make Digital Inclusion part of the agenda when it comes to smart city programs see that thank you so much for
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speaking with knowledge at word and so here the pleasure speaking with you thank you very much Michael it always is
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a pleasure for more insight from knowledge at Wharton please visit knowledge Wharton
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pen edu [Music]