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20% of local government organizations to generate revenue from data by 2020

19 Jan 2017
20% of local government organizations to generate revenue from data by 2020

20% of local government organizations to generate revenue from data by 2020

An increasing number of cities around the world are using open data and other data initiatives to generate efficiencies and revenue. This creates huge opportunities for the whole smart city ecosystem, including cities, citizens, communications service providers and technology vendors.
“If managed effectively, this shift will position governments at the core of technological innovation in society,” according to a recent briefing from Gartner.

"As citizens increasingly use personal technology and social networks to organize their lives, governments and businesses are growing their investments in technology infrastructure and governance," adds Anthony Mullen, Research Director at Gartner. "This creates open platforms that enable citizens, communities and businesses to innovate and collaborate, and ultimately provide useful solutions that address civic needs."

As a result, Gartner predicts that by 2019, 50 percent of citizens in large cities (with over a million people) will be voluntarily sharing their personal data. The volume and diversity of the data generated by citizens will continue to grow in line with the proliferation of consumer devices and the IoT.

Rise of the messaging bots and machine-readable data


This process of data sharing is being accelerated by the demand for efficiency and convenience. For example, one of the major barriers for citizens interacting with government is the complexity of engaging via a variety of touch points. A simple question such as "Am I eligible to vote?" can lead citizens through complex processes and rules and onto a variety of websites.

Citizens, therefore, are turning to conversational platforms like virtual personal assistants and messaging bots over traditional apps and websites. Governments are also adapting to this change. [Go here to see an award-winning project around using a cognitive digital agent to " create the next generation of customer care services". The findings are relevant for citizen experience too.]

For example, the Utah Department of Public Safety provides a practice exam for its driver's license via Amazon Echo, and Singapore is collaborating with Microsoft on its "conversation as a platform" initiative to develop chatbots around a number of public services.

One consequence of this, according to Gartner, is that the volume of machine-readable data generated on how citizens interact with government and their city is rapidly growing, creating a huge opportunity to develop open data portals that can increase efficiency, improve citizen experience, drive innovation and generate revenue for government organizations.
"Open data portals in cities are not a new thing, but many portals today have limited machine readability and therefore limited business value," said Bettina Tratz-Ryan, Research Vice President at Gartner. "The city becomes 'smart' when the data is collected and governed in a way that can produce valuable real-time streams, rather than just backward-looking statistics or reports."

Cities leading the way


Some cities are already building data marketplaces, especially in light of the increasing streams of data from the IoT. One early mover is Copenhagen Data Exchange, which connects citizens to data, providing online city records and a mix of lenses through which to view the information.
Gartner says,“The next step in building a true marketplace is to present and orchestrate this data for more business-oriented benefits.”

An early mover here is the City of Milton Keynes. The Data Hub includes lots of different types of data sets as well as simple visualizations and a developer sandbox. The UK city has also been leading the way in this area, tackling issues such as: What are the business models around data and who will pay? How much will they pay and how will they pay? How do you manage SLAs? They have been collaborating on solutions through a TM Forum proof-of-concept Catalyst project.
Gartner predicts that 20 percent of all local government organizations will generate revenue from value-added open data through data marketplaces by 2020.

The key to monetization will be automating and extending the user experience to allow citizens and businesses to discover and prepare data, and to find patterns and share them within their community or organization.

"Users will have a number of options to 'pay' for data access depending on the use case," said Ms. Tratz-Ryan. "A normal citizen may simply participate via data democracy and have free access in return for providing their own data, whereas commercial use may require sharing revenue with the data owner, or buying a license to access an enriched data source."

One city is not a market


TM Forum’s Carl Piva, VP, Strategic Programs and Head of the Smart City Forum, is looking further ahead. He says, “Many cities around the world are already using open data, whether static or real-time, to work more efficiently and spot patterns. A growing number are using platforms or data hubs to integrate that internal open data and augment it with data from paid, third-party sources, such as local businesses. The next stage of this is scaling up to sharing data and services between cities.”

TM Forum is working to progress this work in a number of key ways:

  • Our Open APIs are being used in a smart city context through the work we are doing with FIWARE on a Business Framework for the economy of data and in our Catalyst projects. We are tackling challenges such as creating the technical foundations for the management and monetization of different kinds of digital assets involving multiple partners. We are also working on areas such as managing service-level agreements and ensuring trust. Get involved.

  • As part of the Yinchuan Innovation Center initiative, TM Forum is working in collaboration with ZTEsoft and Smart Yinchuan to build a city platform using these APIs.


TM Forum’s Smart City Forum unites the world’s leading cities, telcos and vendors to help them capitalize on the opportunities of smart city transformation.