Kickstarting the ecosystem for smart cities in Slovakia this week. How can Slovakia accelerate and become a smart city nation. Have their enterprises, startups, cities and most of all their citizens take part in shaping the Slovak smart cities.
The event was hosted by Business Environment and Innovation Section of the Ministry of Economy of the Slovak Republic and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
PhDr. Mgr. František Kašický, MBA, Ambassador at large for grants from the European Economic Area Financial Mechanism, the Norwegian Financial Mechanism and the Swiss Financial Mechanism, Terje Christensen founder of Smart Cities Norway, Miriam Letašiová, Director General of the Business Environment and Innovation Section of the Ministry of Economy, Aziza Akhmouch, head of the Urban, Urban Policy and Sustainable Development OECD, Terje Th. Nervik, Norwegian Ambassador to Slovakia
Allan Mayo, Doron Barankin and I was invited by Miriam Letašiová, Director General of the Business Environment and Innovation Section of the Ministry of Economy of the Slovak Republic and her team to share experiences and give a workshop on the topic of smart cities.
These are my notes from the workshop and my tips on how to create a smart city ecosystem. Thanks a lot for inviting me. Forgive me for being direct and informal, its my culture.
— Terje Christensen, founder of Smart Cities Norway
Greenwich, the center of the world
Allan Mayo from Digital Greenwich/DG Cities shared some important lessons learned from Greenwich, in particular, about the importance of using smart city processes to build cities that are resilient to significant economic, technological and environmental change.
“For 400 years, from when the Arsenal moved from the Tower of London to Greenwich and the Royal Observatory was established, Greenwich was a key centre of innovation at the heart of the Industrial Revolution.
But, 50 years ago, this innovative ecosystem was blown away, first by the closure of the Royal Arsenal and then by the closure of the Siemens factory. Greenwich effectively de-industrialised in 12 months. Furthermore, when London began to transform itself into a global hub of knowledge intensive services, Greenwich failed to capitalise on this shift, by continuing to offer warehouse and factory space, when innovative service firms were looking for office accommodation.
So, our smart city strategy is focused on making Greenwich resilient to the new wave of digital disruption – to make the Borough attractive to digital SMEs – as well transforming public services.
At the heart of this strategy is a holistic, integrated approach, with inclusivity as one of its core principles. A number of major projects are underway, including becoming one of only two urban test beds for Connected and Autonomous Vehicles, and an EU funded demonstrator project to help cities understand how to use data to optimise energy production and its use at the community level. But, underpinning future smart developments will be an innovative approach to providing full fibre to all premises in the Borough (FttP), to be piloted in Woolwich shortly, which will transform connectivity for business and residents alike.”
In concluding, Allan emphasised:
- the importance of political leadership, vision and governance in local authorities;
- the need to establish a small team to develop a holistic strategic approach; and
- to have access to an innovation budget to pilot innovative projects in key areas of priority for the Council, with a view to developing the business case to roll out successful innovation across the Borough.
But, most of all, he urged Slovak cities to have the courage to take this agenda forward for the benefit of their residents and local business.
Telaviv, the center of innovation
Doron Barankin, who heads the yair IT dept. at Tel Aviv Municipality, makes it sound so easy when he presents all the smart city activities and programs going on in the city.
“Israel sent 400 people to the Smart City Expo World Congress in Barcelona last week (2019). 40 of them were mayors. If a country with a population of Germany did the same it would be 4000 people and 400 mayors.”
--Ohad Yemini
Innovation just works in Israel.
I was talking to Doron and Ohad Yemini, who leads the Smart Cities Consortium in Israel, asking them why Tel Aviv is so good at innovation.
“We just do things, then we figure out how to do the rules afterwards” They told me, as if it was a joke. But I believe that it's the truth.
There cannot be innovation without risk. This is a known fact for people in the startup culture. But how the risk taking is adapted to municipalities is impressive. It seems to me that Israel has a culture that accepts failure as learning.
Norway, on the edge of the world
What we are good at is bringing people together, getting people to talk and cooperate. Did my best at trying to explain the word “dugnad” and how its is co-creation, citizen engagement at the same time.
Far up north we just want everyone to have their say when discussing and planning the future of our cities. So our smart city ecosystem includes academia, startups, municipalities, government, research and civil society.
Invitation to Day0, Oslo 30th march 2020
We want to include everyone in creating future cities and we are inviting municipalities, startups, research, academia, government to http://day0.no in Oslo 30th march 2020.
It will be the largest co-creation and matchmaking event.
Slovakia, the start of an ecosystem
The SMEs are eager to participate, create, to take part in transforming their cities.
“It’s easier to work with foreign cities than local cities”
-- NN from the workshop
“A really stimulating day hearing of developments in Slovakia and the challenges for SMEs to engage with local authorities - if it's any consolation, it all sounded familiar!”
-- Allan Mayo
I must say that the situation in Norway was the same when we started our network in 2016. The municipalities had not noticed that there was something called “smart city”. Not even the entrepreneur community knew what it was. So when we tried to to the first StartupWeekend & Hackathon in 2016 on the smart city topic it failed. We tried again in 2017 and now we had 70+ entrepreneurs keen to hack and make stuff.
Engaging municipalities and getting data from municipalities was no success. Some people had heard about “smart city”, but it was not something they had knowledge about and therefore could not attend.
I would say that spring 2018 was the awakening for the first Norwegian cities.
Smart Cities Klub
There are good initiatives. One of them is the Smart Cities Klub Slovakia (SCK). A network of 13 cities and a region in Slovakia headed by Miloslav Jurik.
SCK organises training and workshops for municipalities. Raising awareness and knowhow about smart cities in the municipalities. They have also organised a summer school program for several years now. Enabling majors from Slovak cities to visit swedish and danish municipalities, to learn and bring ideas and inspiration back to Slovakia.
The Smart Cities Norway (SCN) network and SCK are cooperating on projects and not long ago 16 cities visited Oslo for a matchmaking session with Norwegian cities.
The two networks have formed an alliance for sharing knowledge about how we run a smart city community. We are inviting networks from other countries to join us in the Nordic Smart Network.
Smart Cities Klub is fueled by passion - one can just guess what will happen is you add funding to the work.
IoT Bratislava
Another initiative is the IoT Bratislava group headed by Jan Masaryk, which has approx 600 members today. IoT Bratislava is an informal community of professionals discovering and promoting solutions and technologies from the world of Internet of Things in the CEE region.
They organize regular meetings of IoT community and share information and knowledge (meetups), cooperate with other communities in the region (like Austria or Hungary), work on prototypes to validate technologies and concepts (like first LoRaWAN network in Slovakia), promote and support IoT events, projects and activities to show benefits of IoT solutions and they participate in the development of strategies, concepts and standards in the field of IoT.
Municipalities - where are they
If I compare the time it took in Norway to raise awareness to the status in Slovakia I would guess that you are at our autumn 2017. You have SME and startups keen to engage. But most municipalities are not aware of “smart city” yet.
“My challenge to the Ministry and local authorities is don't just benchmark outcomes but also what progress is being made to develop a public private ecosystem to develop pilots that, in turn, develop the business case for roll out in the towns and cities......and report on progress after 6 and 12 months!!”
-- Allan Mayo
OECD, EEA and Norway Grants
Slovakia has the spark that can ignite the ecosystem. OECD and EEA and Norway Grants can provide the fuel to get it started.
EEA and Norway Grants has allocated close to 120 million Euro
At the top of their Areas of support you find:
1) Increasing the competitiveness of Slovak enterprises.
If you need a Norwegian partner to apply for the grants you can contact Smart Cities Norway. We have 230+ members that might want to cooperate. We have a catalog, Smartbykatalogen (smart city catalog) here you can find our members and information about what they do.
Tips on building a smart city community in Slovakia
A community is created by passion.
Not by political decisions.
Work with the communities you have, not against them
Don’t do what the Norwegian government, Innovation Norway, did when asked for help. Taking our name and creating a competing network. Their money and resources almost killed the smart city community we had built.
Open doors
As the government you bring trust and authority. Use it to build trust between municipalities and enterprises, startups, research, academia.
Be visible
Participate and co-host events with the community. Stand behind the community, show support.
Help with paperwork.
Entrepreneurs are good at creating things and services. Not filling out forms and applications.
Passion is something people have.
Not something people get when you give them money.
Keep the community hungry
Don’t give them a lot of money. Set goals and pay when they are meet.
If you run a community public-sector-style you will get people queuing for handouts.
Dare to fail
Failing is learning
Links
Day0 -the largest matchmaking http://day0.no
The event website http://smartcities.fsvucm.sk/
The press release https://www.mhsr.sk/press/koncepcia-smart-cities-ma-pred-sebou-dve-hlavne-vyzvy
Smart Cities Norway http://www.smartcitiesnorway.com
Smart Cities Klub Slovakia https://smartcitiesklub.sk/
Nordic Smart Network http://www.nordicsmartnetwork.com
IoT Bratislava: http://iot-ba.github.io/index-en.html and their meetups: https://www.meetup.com/IoT-Bratislava/
EEA and Norway Grants https://eeagrants.org/countries/slovakia
Smartbykatalogen (Norway smart city catalog) http://smartbykatalogen.no
This is a google translate of the press release from SITA, TASR, Communication Department of the Ministry of Economy of the Slovak Republic
The Smart Cities concept has two major challenges ahead
Development of smart places Smart Cities, in Slovakia, face two major challenges - to ensure that Slovak cities have sufficiently elaborated Smart Cities concepts and have a single coordinator on the subject. During the Smart Cities Workshop in Bratislava, this was stated by Miriam Letašiová, Director General of the Business Environment and Innovation Section of the Ministry of Economy of the Slovak Republic.
The Smart Cities Workshop, organized by the Ministry of Economy of the Slovak Republic and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development OECD). The event was attended by representatives of towns and municipalities, the business sphere, but also the state administration. Approximately 70 companies were represented.
According to M. Letašiová, the request of one coordinator for the Smart Cities theme is essential and is based on practice. “It is extremely important that we speak a single language. This body would not only cover the whole agenda, but would subsequently assume competence and responsibility. It should be remembered that the end user should be the citizen himself, his satisfaction and the improvement of the quality of life, "Letaši said. In Slovakia, however, there is a lack of standardization in this area and it is necessary to add it also in education. On the other hand, according to Letaši, we have a number of places that can be defined as smart or those that aim to be intelligent, each from a different perspective. For example, Bratislava was the first to open data on its website. It is important, according to the competence, that each city should first of all develop a strategy and set its priorities.
As stated by the head of the Urban, Urban Policy and Sustainable Development OECD OECD, Aziza Akhmouch, the organization has three fundamental messages in this area. "Above all, we want people to be at the center of interest and people living in smart cities well, then measuring the impact of these changes and then the overall impact on governance," said Akhmouch, who appreciated Slovakia's smart cities activities . The Ministry of Economic Affairs clearly wants to support the market for innovative solutions. That is also why it announced a second call to support SMEs in implementing innovative solutions in cities. It allocated an amount of EUR 1 million. Applications could be submitted by 4 October this year. The call involved 29 projects that are currently being evaluated.
TV news report from the event
https://www.rtvs.sk/televizia/archiv/13982/204612#