People are variously excited, daunted and perturbed by the concept of Smart Society and Smart City. They see it as a huge change, and it is, but there is no reason to do it all at once – there are practical steps.
Ultimately, it is about integrating services around the citizen to deliver better outcomes for citizens for lower cost.
Even better, built into Smart Society initiatives is a real potential to generate new revenues and promote economic growth, improve social outcomes and tackle environmental challenges.
There is enough experience of real initiatives out there that you do not need to start from scratch. That would be expensive and risky. And whilst there is innovation as a core part of any initiative – it’s not about short term demonstrators and experiments any more, it’s about real operational implementation and delivering improved services for citizens. Of course, there will continue to be a Smart Society evolution, and new products, services and opportunities will become available; but waiting for them will be at the expense of benefits now, and done right, they can be adopted later.
Perform Green have designed, led and contributed to a number of Smart Society initiatives over the years – some very well known and celebrated such as in Bristol, UK. From this experience we can identify a few things that contribute to ensuring successful delivery:
- Don’t reinvent the wheel – there are a lot of lessons learnt by us and others, and solutions ready made for deployment.
- Don’t eat the elephant in one go – by all means have an overarching vision (and it’s important to do so), but pick off those items that will make a real difference in the short term and start there.
- Don’t let the tail wag the dog – this is not about the technology, it is about outcomes. So, don’t let the vendors control the agenda and do ensure that whatever you do follows open standards, so that you do not suffer vendor lock in.
- Ultimately, and the hardest things, that in our experience are done least well:
- Do have strong citizen centric focus
- Do have excellent project / programme governance
- make sure that you invest in change management and learning and organisational development.
We have been brought into failing initiatives and turned them around – and the problem has been a lack of suitable experience in project / programme management and a lack of people change management hampering delivery and limiting benefits.
This is why we built Perform Green – bringing together senior technology leaders, service specialists, highly experienced project and programme managers and strong people change management capabilities.
If you’d like someone to talk to us about your initiative, we are happy to spend time and talk you through these points and our lessons learnt from elsewhere.
In the first instance, please contact Barney Smith or Richard Barrington for a conversation.