The management of city data

Abstract

Cities find it tremendously difficult to specialize in all the competencies involved in designing, building and maintaining data infrastructures. However, cities have neither the incentive nor the means of bringing external partners round to the necessary supply chain networks. The consequence of not doing so is that complexity has often overtaken data infrastructures development. Often, it has become longer than a simple ICT project, and as a consequence, more expensive and difficult to design and maintain. A platform-centric approach for the provision of city data in smart cities enables pooling of multiple organizations' knowledge bases - especially cross-sectorial domains - that are more valuable in combination than in isolation. Building an ecosystem of stakeholders who complements the capabilities of a data infrastructure can potentially bring insights about specialized domains, different application markets, lower costs and shorten the time to market for the development of new services. We give an overview of the theory of platforms and their main characteristics. In an effort to move beyond this confusion, a growing literature on open data and data platforms has emerged, though what practical guidance it offers to governments is often unclear. Examining the prevailing strategy of data catalogues or platforms design is an essential starting point in understanding why a new approach is needed to integrating both technology and non-technology components more effectively into data management and business models.