1. IBM Software Government
Planning and design for
smarter cities
2. 2 Planning and design for smarter cities
Infusing intelligence into the way cities
work
Telecommunications City strategy
The interconnected nature of people, resources and environ-
City governance
ments is driving a revolution in how and where people live. By
2050, city dwellers are expected to make up 70 percent of the
Earth’s total population1—or 6.4 billion people—equal to Public safety Transportation
adding seven New Yorks to the planet annually.
To attract the best and brightest citizens and businesses,
which bring the flow of economic capital, cities must compete Education Energy and utilities
against each other in traditional areas such as education
facilities, services and transportation systems—as well as less
conventional areas, such as exuding a vibe of success and
Services Healthcare
sophistication. The convergence of culture and commerce
around cities brings great promise for creating a smarter
city—maximizing economic, cultural, engineering and scien-
tific impacts on the world while minimizing ecological Figure 1: Rational solutions help leaders plan and deliver smarter cities by
impacts. Yet on the road to smarter cities, leaders must make aligning city, business and citizen interests and by prioritizing investments
many choices and decisions, sometimes without fully under- with the ability to govern execution.
standing the effects on the environment, citizens and culture.
local best practices to create economies of scale that connect
Achieving a balanced and sustainable regionally and nationally. Attaining these goals involves ana-
outcome lyzing economic, organizational and ecological challenges and
This high rate of urbanization is both an emblem of our eco- recognizing trade-offs required to successfully achieve a bal-
nomic and societal progress and a huge strain on the planet’s anced and sustainable outcome.
infrastructure. Mayors, heads of economic development,
school administrators, police chiefs and other civic leaders face Specifically, city leaders are dealing with a number of
challenges in educating the young; keeping citizens safe and challenges:
healthy; attracting and facilitating commerce; and enabling the
smooth flow of planes, trains, cars and pedestrians—all while ● Aging infrastructure and assets—As the average age of a
dealing with a global economic downturn. city’s systems and infrastructure rises, the inability to iden-
tify total cost of ownership (TCO) drives overinvestment
To successfully execute the concept of smarter cities as the and risk (sometimes physical). Investing in newer technolo-
new hub of commerce and culture, business and government gies is often more expensive than updating existing systems.
leaders must develop ground-up opportunities and revitalize
existing cities with new ideas and innovations while leveraging
3. IBM Software 3
● Limited budget growth—As costs increase, local receipts ● Pressure to innovatively use technology to solve issues
and aid packages stay stagnant. The expanding role and and drive alignment—Smarter city constituents expect
voice of constituents with divergent needs create even more city leaders to use IT to achieve cost-efficient and effective
requests for limited funds. While opportunities exist to project outcomes that deliver key online services, streamline
streamline and downsize assets and asset management, part- collaboration across project partners and reduce risks associ-
nerships may be more realistic than privatization. ated with solving complex systems problems.
● Agency independency and misalignment—Collaboration ● Mandates to manage security and compliance—To better
is key, but many cities have duplicate processes that drive deliver city services and work with external partners, cities
costly, suboptimal outcomes and make investment decisions must approach and design solutions that create security-rich
that ignore synergies and differences. Failure to pool environments and facilitate compliance. Regulatory and risk
resources and collaborate for new funds affects top and bot- issues, including data security and privacy, are critical, and
tom lines. missteps are costly.
● Demand for greater transparency and accountability—
Public officials and their partners need to reduce risks Intelligent solutions for smarter cities
associated with larger projects, especially to satisfy multiple Innovation starts with the ability to understand current
stakeholders. Complexity inherent in gaining a competitive challenges, opportunities and inhibitors to transformation and
advantage drives project risk, and the sheer volume of infor- creating a road map to achieve the ultimate vision. Many cities
mation and decision impacts are becoming unmanageable.
Governance Outcomes and impacts
Provider organizations Programs Client organizations
Roles Individual clients
Accomplish
Accountability Outputs
Services
Deliver
Responsibility
Processes
Used in
Authority
Resources
Figure 2: Leveraging best practices and business-process-driven reference models, successful cities have designed services delivery around citizen value
and reduced execution risk.
4. 4 Planning and design for smarter cities
struggle with the massive complexity of the issues they face businesses to spark growth, innovation and progress. After city
and cannot effectively break down problems to see the real leaders make decisions, they must manage, monitor and ana-
roadblocks. As a result, city leaders make decisions to satisfy lyze investments to ensure that key initiatives drive measurable
short-term requirements, spending scarce capital that is criti- outcomes.
cal to solving larger, more significant problems. To build a
smarter city and advance the city agenda, leaders need a cohe- IBM Rational software solutions can help cities evolve from
sive set of capabilities that helps bring business and technology their current states to an improved future state by prioritizing
leaders together, clarify stakeholders’ priorities and investment initiatives into a pragmatic plan and by using technology to
potential, and create collaborative partnerships. help manage complexity and identify impacts, costs and risks.
Cities can craft a living map of the city and its partnerships
IBM Rational® solutions for smarter cities combine mission- and automate data collection and analysis of potential funding
critical planning, alignment and execution capabilities with initiatives against critical decision criteria. With Rational soft-
best-practice assets, processes, practices and services to help ware, city leaders can create scenarios and models to visualize
align the varying needs of internal and external players. Cities the effects of investments on requirements, finances, time and
can make faster, better-informed strategic and tactical deci- citizens.
sions that drive realization and help maintain existing service
levels. IBM has identified four core-competency areas that By capturing and organizing priorities and constraints of all
form the foundation of a smarter city. constituents; analyzing current opportunities against future
scenarios; and matching limited funding with high-priority,
Define and prioritize city initiatives high-return and low-risk investments, cities can establish a
Cities must make smarter cost–benefit analyses to prioritize transparent and inclusive decision process that promotes effec-
initiatives that best create citizen value and support the munic- tive analysis and management of limited resources and that
ipal vision. It’s important to capture the current state of city helps ensure fiscal responsibility and auditability.
services and infrastructure—a system of systems—and evaluate
the transformation required. By thinking in terms of a citizen- Design innovative citizen-centered solutions
centered model, city leaders can establish decision processes To evolve into a smarter city, a city needs an optimized blue-
that analyze the value of opportunities and result in a collabo- print and road map that allows municipal leaders to view city
rative process that focuses on maximizing value, minimizing systems that connect all elements, including infrastructure,
trade-offs and capturing the city vision. processes, services and information, and stakeholder needs and
motivations. Armed with this comprehensive view, city leaders
With competing interests for limited funds, it’s critical that can develop and analyze future-state scenarios that uncover
cities evaluate new and existing services, infrastructure and the true consequences of change; better predict the effect on
capabilities against the priorities of citizens, communities and
5. IBM Software 5
Figure 3: Managing execution of smarter city investments requires a single view of current and in-flight investments to help ensure fiscal responsibility and
social impact.
and risk across systems and stakeholders; and identify oppor- state that balances city effectiveness. Deep systems analyses
tunities to streamline, modernize and eliminate redundancy capabilities also help cities identify opportunities to more
while maintaining services quality. Removing the complexity quickly realize value, reduce costs and improve risk manage-
around a city’s system of systems and connecting the compo- ment associated with ongoing transformation.
nents of a smarter city allow leaders to reduce the effects of
change across systems and lay the groundwork for longer-term Rational software solutions help business and technology lead-
economic growth and reduced costs. ers more easily understand and analyze the interdependent
nature of a city’s system of systems so they can make faster,
With a blueprint to envision current and future states— better-informed strategic and tactical decisions; increase effi-
including risks that may not be apparent when looking at ciency; and free up capital through consolidation.
organizational capabilities separately—leaders can model city
processes, services and technologies to define the achievable
6. 6 Planning and design for smarter cities
Deliver citizen-centered solutions faster associated architectural models. Taking advantage of struc-
Accelerating project implementations involves identifying and tures, approaches, requirements and models built on the expe-
leveraging best practices and automation to drive collabora- rience of other cities provides a solid foundation that can be
tion across organizational boundaries. To ensure successful customized to help align IT implementation and accelerate
project execution, cities need to define and manage require- delivery through automation.
ments and connect them through model-driven development
solutions built on best practices and approaches. Rational software solutions can help leaders more productively
deliver city services by connecting the dots between business
With integrated life-cycle delivery solutions, city leaders and technical stakeholders and by automating delivery
can build consensus and speed development using a single, processes through best practices and a collaborative, instru-
integrated environment and common metamodels that help mented software delivery platform.
define program, service and process requirements as well as
Figure 4: In today’s city, optimal investments require prioritization processes that balance the economic, environmental, political and social benefits to the
city and its constituents.
7. IBM Software 7
Protect city applications
A smarter city interacts with citizens and stakeholders through Building smarter cities
multiple channels and must anticipate and prevent—not just
● The City of Copenhagen uses Rational software to
respond to—security breaches to applications and infrastruc-
prioritize projects on a strategic level and evaluate their
ture. It’s challenging to simultaneously deploy security-rich
strategic contribution as well as to quickly access infor-
solutions for citizens and protect critical city data and applica-
mation on the implementation and progress of individual
tions. To effectively manage web application vulnerabilities initiatives.
that threaten citizens and cities and increase the level of per- ● The Municipal Information Systems Association (MISA) of
sonalized services, cities must perform the following tasks: Canada leverages IBM solutions to create and share a
best-practices model of the business of government. By
● Centralize security and compliance requirements collaborating around a common reference model (taxon-
● Automate vulnerability discovery and compliance analysis omy, processes, etc.), municipalities can better align
● Embed security testing across the development life cycle to resources and translate agency objectives into the best
identify and mitigate security risks before they become an plan of action.
issue
● The City of Babcock Ranch in Florida is aligning with
IBM to build the world’s smartest city from the ground
up in its quest to build its city system of systems and
With a comprehensive security and compliance solution, cities
deliver net-positive environmental impact by leveraging
can reduce risk and provide consistent security management Rational software to prioritize partners, projects and sys-
while increasing security professionals’ productivity and effec- tem investments.
tiveness. IBM Rational solutions for web application security ● One of the largest community-owned electric utilities in
can help cities automate web vulnerability and compliance the United States worked with IBM to create one of the
analysis processes and focus on a single source of truth for first intelligent utility networks in that country—enabling
security and compliance requirements. Cities gain the ability the utility to centrally manage, monitor and control its
to protect critical data and infrastructure and enable citizens smart grid for 1 million consumers and 43,000 businesses.
and city stakeholders to transact and interact online with
confidence.