What is it?

A guide to designing smart city projects that are outcomes-focused and embed trust, ethics and security as foundational principles. The guide includes:

• How LOTI defines and thinks about smart cities;
• How boroughs can determine whether or not a smart city approach is right for them;
• How smart city projects can be designed to deliver the maximum benefit for Londoners while also being transparent, ethical and secure;
• Case studies from boroughs and other organisations that have applied the principles set out in the guide in practice.

Why did we create it?

LOTI has produced this paper because we know that realising the full potential of smart city tools and approaches in London depends on collaboration. This is true in at least three areas.

Addressing Pan-London Issues: The types of issues that smart city tools and approaches are apt to address, such as pollution, congestion and energy consumption, do not neatly confine themselves to borough boundaries. Without some coordination, there is a risk that each borough implements a completely different approach, creating new data silos and preventing the creation of insights and services that could work across boundaries and benefit all Londoners.

Promoting Innovation: By coordinating and sharing lessons from their various experiments, boroughs can reduce the time, cost and risk of trialing new smart city innovations. This way, all get to learn faster. And by implementing some common standards and principles, they can make London a more attractive place for innovative companies to trial their products, and enable a greater number of innovators to build useful products and services with their data.

Protecting privacy and reputations: All boroughs take data privacy and ethics extremely seriously. Yet the use of the new and innovative tools and approaches in the field of smart cities presents new complexities for managing data well. LOTI can help boroughs by sharing design principles and guidance to implement smart city projects openly, ethically and securely to ensure they are worthy of Londoners’ trust, confidence and support.

Read our accessible version of the Report on Google Docs.