The rise of smart cities enabled by digital technologies holds the potential to help deliver faster and better public services. Digital technologies (e.g. sensor cameras, Internet of Things (IoT) infrastructure, geospatial technologies, digital twins, etc.) are being deployed to collect and analyse data for tackling urban challenges, such as making mobility management more efficient, improving vehicle and pedestrian safety, enhancing public security and emergency services, strengthening urban planning and design, and facilitating research and development. Cities therefore have access to large amounts of real-time data to monitor, manage and improve urban life.
At the same time, the way data are produced, collected, analysed and stored is critical to address public privacy and data use concerns and ultimately maximise the effectiveness of smart city projects. Good data governance can also help strengthen data quality and increase data collection capacity by defining the processes and stakeholders’ responsibilities in managing data.
The OECD has long been assisting countries in harnessing the benefits of data and digital transformation for people’s well-being while addressing related potential challenges. For instance, the adoption of the OECD Recommendation of the Council on Enhancing Access to and Sharing of Data in 2021 was the first international effort to agree on a set of principles and policy guidance on how governments can maximise the cross-sectoral benefits of all types of data while protecting the rights of individuals and organisations. At the local level, the OECD has also actively engaged in smart cities and data governance, notably through the elaboration of Group of 20 (G20) guidelines on leveraging digital technology and data for human-centric smart cities: the case of smart mobility and the G20 roadmap toward a common framework for measuring the digital economy.
In this context, Smart city data governance aims to guide policy makers at all levels on setting up effective data governance for smart cities, building on international experience.
This report is part of the OECD Urban Studies series and supports the implementation of the Programme of Work and Budget of the OECD Regional Development Policy Committee (RDPC). The draft report was discussed at a joint session of the Working Party on Urban Policy (WPURB) and the Working Party on Territorial Indicators (WPTI) on 24 April 2023. The final report was approved by written procedure on 13 June 2023 under cote CFE/RDPC/URB(2023)10/REV1.