Open Cities – Government as a Platform

Earlier this week we participated in the latest ‘Gigabit Cities‘ session.

This is the name given to the broadband investment Google is making in Kansas City, and the program looks at the innovation accelerating effect this has.

One of our best practices is what Cisco calls a ‘Next Generation Cluster‘, which basically means enabling more innovation ‘clusters’ through the use of online collaboration technologies, like social media and video conferencing.

The session was a real-world example of this and a demonstration of just how powerful it is.

Taking part via the Telepresence Centres in Cisco offices in locations all over the world – Barcelona, Singapore, Moscow, Kansas City and us in Toronto, a diverse group of experts came together and explored various aspects of how Municipal Government is becoming a hot bed of government innovation.

Headlined by Jay Nath, Chief Innovation Officer for San Francisco, the panel discussed a number of cutting edge topics like:

• The Innovation Agenda - How cities need to formally recognize their commitment to innovation by creating roles like Jay’s, with executive support from the Mayor and also from the community

• Commercialization - Growing revenues and prosperity by cities becoming more proactively involved in commercialization

• Open Data - The city as a platform: Viewing data as an asset to be exploited

The session was also broadcast via webinar, and you can watch the replay here: WEBINAR REPLAY.

Coming next

Developing Open Cities can be achieved through an overall holistic program of Transformational Government. In a follow up series we’ll be exploring this further, and how key concepts like ‘Social Crowdfunding’ can be implemented in Canada.