Role of Data in Smart Cities

How can we harness the potential of data while safeguarding privacy and ensuring ethical use? Technology is rapidly transforming cities, data has emerged as a crucial component. From traffic patterns to energy consumption, cities are generating vast amounts of data that can be harnessed to improve urban living. What role can citizens play in shaping the future of data-driven cities? How can emerging technologies like blockchain and AI be used to enhance data privacy and security in smart cities?

Punit 00:00 
Have you ever wondered about the role of data in Smart Cities? Well, yes, when we talk about smart cities or cities of future, it's all over data, because a lot of data already is being collected, more will be collected. It, of course, creates or generates concerns around privacy, and there's also an opportunity to leverage data based on emerging technologies like AI. So how about understanding what role data is going to play in cities of future? What are the privacy concerns, what kind of skill set the governments or civil servants have, and also the fact is, are they going to use AI emerging technologies? So, for this, we go and talk to none other than someone who is a specialist in this field. That means the field of smart cities, and a consultant in that area. I'm talking about none other than Matteo Satta who is a consultant, specialized consultant, and going to share his views on all these topics. So, let's have this fascinating conversation.   

FIT4Privacy 01:18 
Hello and welcome to the Fit4Privacy Podcast with Punit Bhatia. This is the podcast for those who care about their privacy. Here your host, Punit Bhatia, has conversations with industry leaders about their perspectives, ideas and opinions relating to privacy, data protection and related matters. Be aware that the views and opinions expressed in this podcast are not legal advice. Let us get started.

Punit 01:46 
So here we are with Matteo Satta. Matteo, welcome to Fit4Privacy Podcast.    

Matteo 01:51 
Yeah. Thank you to you for the invitation. I'm very happy to be here with you.   

Punit 01:53 
Thank you so much, and you're working with European governments or European Institutes on building smart cities. Can you describe what do you exactly do? Broadly speaking.   

Matteo 02:10 
Yes. Now I like better talking about cities than smart cities. For me, the idea is that we have a lot of cities that are really complex ecosystems that are today facing a number of challenges. Mostly, the two biggest ones of the last around 20 years are the digital transition first and now the climate transition. And my role mostly is to support innovation, often starting from the digital world, let's say, to support cities to improve what they do to try to align to a word that is moving fast, and my major role is often to build innovation projects that fit to cities and supporting them to work together, also not just city by city, but supporting the Different cities working together around this to help them exchanging knowledge between themselves and moving forward, or at least faster than how it will be without this kind of tools and actions.

Punit 03:14 
Okay, that's interesting, and in a city of future, as we talk about future cities, whether smart cities or normal cities, I think one of the important things would be data would play a key role. Any city that we talk about in future would have a lot of data collection, data usage. So, what is the role of data in cities of future? According to you?   

Matteo 03:41 
That's a very good question, a very complicated one to answer, but I'll try. I mean, in cities today, let's we can have various labs, but let's try to cut it into one, is to say administration, which is the one works, and try to bring everything together to support the citizens that part of the stakeholders, starting from citizen, but then going to companies and so on. Collected a lot in this field, with or without administration, which, on the other side, has its own data today, then we are front of for a city. The biggest issue is to collect and have all the database, making sure also to respect this. Is this something that is today becoming a big challenge for cities because they're trying basis build private, public groups. I mean, I mean the partnerships with all the local stakeholders, making sure that they can collect the data, anonymizing it normally, to make and provide the right services to citizens and the stakeholders themselves. Now, what is. Biggest problem today is the trust of people in cities. People often don't trust the city administration. They like better. As example, if I'm a private operator, and they go like a mobile operator, a social media, the ones that collect a lot of data, actually, now we all know that people are much more ready to do so with them, then when the city administration, then cities often have a lot of data that is not always that use useful, because it's maybe, I mean, a lot of data, but administrative or administrations, and they struggle having of data. Can have data in the future is making sure that the data that is collected anyway can support cities. We have in cities, a lot of projects that happen. I mean, we have today a lot of projects innovation projects, like about censoring and so on. We have an example in Toronto few years ago with Google, in which they tried, in a district to create some sensor district in which old data, new data was collected, and so on. And it was a miserable failure. It didn't work like that. The only role that data can have for city administrations in to try to support the citizens with the data that they create themselves anyway, in the most cases. And in case, maybe putting something on top of that. I mean, I can have, obviously, another project that maybe covers a hole that is today there. But mostly, most of the data, like the traffic data, is there. And then the role of data is creating partnerships. I mean making sure that the city starts cooperating around data, making sure the data becomes, on one side, useful for working and on the other side for respecting also to support, let's say, the privacy. I mean, making sure that people are protecting from uses that maybe are not exactly the best ones possible. These we're still far away from that, to be really honest, because we're missing a business model between companies and cities. There is no business model today, and often cities don't have the budgets on one side and on the other side that is too expensive, then we're still working on that.   

Punit 07:28 
Okay. And when you say that data is being collected and there are some privacy concerns, so what kind of concerns, privacy concerns are there around data, because some of the data is for legitimate purpose, as it's for the administration of the city, and it's for the government to take it. But what kind of concerns do citizens have around privacy?   

Matteo 07:51 
It's I mean, I'm not even sure that there is a real concern. I mean, obviously the concerns about data are always the same ones, right? I mean, in the sense that there is someone collecting it, storing some this data somewhere, and the data needs to be, let's say, safe, right? And this happens a lot. I mean, today I live in France, and I know that France right now, there are a lot of big companies or even public administration that are hacked, and the data of the people can be taken and used, maybe in wrong way. When I talk about having a good use, it is just that. The difference between the private and the public sector is that the public sector doesn't have a real interest in making money out of data, right? I mean, that's because the public sector doesn't do profit. The role of public the public sector is to support the use of data, just to provide to provide a service, a solution or something, and often the data anonymized is much better to be managed by them that not while companies may have another interest in using data, obviously, to for marketing purposes, for any reasons, it's not really harming the security of people, but it's anyway, using it for some reasons, and some people often don't even know that they are providing data. No, they just had, there is a service, and then actually, it's not for free. I think that cities like go and because cities are local governments at the end, like governments, like any other public entity, I think have the role to try get out of this data that has already been paid by the citizens, by the way, because, I mean, the that's provided by the city, by the citizens, should be used because the cities are paid by the citizens. Okay, I don't know if I'm explaining, all right, it's a circle. I mean, then the best thing there is no real problem of privacy, in the sense of. A incredible thing happening next to hacking or this kind of thing that not going to talk about this, because I'm not an expert or I mean secure, I mean cyber security or so on. But at the same time, we have a circle. It's a bit vicious, because we have citizens making pay the data. I mean letting the data for free, okay, in exchange of some service at this point, then normally, the city has to pay this data again, and creating a circle that is not completely fair, and that's what I think cities and governments should try to tackle somehow, finding a business model, suite with the with the private operators, and giving a having a role in this today, they don't have it today. They just buy some data. Sometimes I don't know if I answer to your question like this.   

Punit 10:55 
No, no, you did openly state the reality. And I think government does have a legitimate reason to process data, but the fact is, it must be protected, and when it's shared or exchanged with another city or may be a third party or a private entity, then there are some rules that need to be respected, but when we talk about data, there's also the leveraging or utilization of data, and there we have new emerging technologies like machine learning robotics or artificial intelligence coming up. And are these at the moment, being utilized to leverage data, or will there be a utilization of these in future?   

Matteo 11:40 
Okay now to talk about today, cities today, the cases of cities, really using, okay, really using, not just pretending to use for what we call territorial marketing technologies, using data and going beyond having a simple data portal or something like that, are a few. There are really few, not many. Honestly, almost no one has chat, chat bots or chatGPT solutions that are trying to be pushed some digital twins, then creating visualizations of data for public will. This is something that is happening, but if we want to go further, we're still not there for a number of reasons that are very complicated to explain. But on one side, the technology maybe is not yet enough to support the cities; on the other side, cities don't have the skilling this technology. Are still quite expensive, and cities may not be able to pay for them, and so on. For the future, this is more interesting because we are moving forward. Cities understood the challenge. They want to go there. They're trying to go there. They're still learning how to do it but the European Commission, in this case and so on, is helping them a lot also. Now, I don't know if you know, but there is a dedicated mission for a city that is called 100 climate neutral and smart cities in which the commission wants to support climate neutrality, let's say path, but using digital technologies. This is, this is very interesting, and this is coming, and we start going towards, mostly, there is an important, let's say, concept that is coming out, that is a technology, by the way, that is the city verse, which is the metaverse, but for the city trying to digitalize and visualize with, I mean, kind of digital twin technologies and so on, on the full on, the full structure of The city, making sure that an administrator, I mean a decision maker, policy maker, or whoever is able to use such technologies to visualize, visualize what's happening, but better to visualize what may happen if I do something of some kind, what be the consequences then such technologies are moving on. But they said the first barrier to this is not having a city versus in itself, in the sense that technology is there you can but data maturity of cities is not good enough yet. And there is this I was, as I was explaining earlier, there is this problem of business model, with the companies that often hold the data that should be useful for that. And we have these two and the third one is the skilling. Often civil servants are not yet skilled enough to be able to fully exploit such technologies. And. And I would add the fourth point, which is the cost. These technologies are very costly, and normally the budgets of cities are still a bit archaic, in the sense that you still have all the expenses that used to happen, but now you you have this extra cost, and there are no funds. Then obviously they can get something at European level and so on. But it's not enough at all, because these are millions of euros that need to be put on the table to guarantee such technologies, at least for now.   

Punit 15:31 
Okay, that makes sense. In fact, I wanted to understand if the governments or the civil servants have enough knowledge about data and data leverage technologies, but you answered that it is not the case. And there I like to follow up. Is there something being done to bridge the knowledge gap?   

Matteo 15:51 
Now let's say that 10 years ago, we were in a completely different situation. 10 years ago, giving Excel files to some departments was kind of a shock for them. We see an improvement, and hopefully, moving on with time, improves this more and more for two reasons. One, obviously the civil servants get younger, in the sense that you have some that retire and some other that come in, and the ones coming in are native digitals that this helps a lot first, and on the other side, people start getting used to see more and more data. We start injecting a platform that maybe uses data, and then they get used more and more. I would say that policy makers and decision makers become tougher and tougher verb training courses that happen and so on. The biggest issue is, as an example, having data analysts or data scientists and so on for two reasons. Again, one is economical. I mean, a data scientist and a data analyst is very requesting on the market today, not just for cities, for everyone, and they are much more attracted by companies that can pay, I don't know, two, three times, four times the wage first and second, because can be also the projects that you go, driving it city, sometimes, maybe more interesting or so On, because you have working for a public body has not limitations, but it's public. Public money has to be used in a particular way and so on. There is a number of things that can happen. Then we are going towards a more digital civil servant, for sure. At the same time, the process will be quite long, also because of the labor rules of the of the public sector that are completely driven by private I cannot say now I'm hiring 30 data scientists because I decided to do so. I need to tender that and so on, and have limitations and so on that come from the government that cities this is happening on the other side the project. Cities are taking on digital technologies and so on. The ones that I was describing earlier obviously help a lot to existing ones to improve what they are doing. I mean, improve that I'm doing. But today, to be very honest, what they can see is that often the data strategies of cities are not done by the cities themselves, or at least they do. They give the input, but you have consultants often jumping in engage when I call it, but concerns, I'm not talking about a single person often, I'm talking about companies that check in and do the job for them, which, on one side is okay, I mean that there is nothing against consultants, but at the same time, we are missing an important point for me, that is the internalization. I mean internalizing such processes and knowledges know hows is much more important than just giving to someone that is not part of the organization in any cases, and then maybe may miss something for a number of reasons.   

Punit 19:07 
That makes sense. It makes up an interesting environment in cities because one, there is a lot of data. Two, there is a need for having a better strategy. Three, there is also a skill set issue. And then the fourth, there is also an intent to do something. It's even though the skill is not there, the strategy is not so strong. There's still an intent to leverage data, and the drive is coming from the European Union. So, it's an interesting or fascinating environment, and also with the digital strategy that the EU has for 2050 and the climate strategy, I think there's a lot of opportunity to leverage and lot of laws to leverage data in an effective manner or govern the data in an effective manner. So, it's going to be interesting and fascinating environment next. 10 to 20 years, it seems?   

Matteo 20:01 
Absolutely, I mean, it's clear that we will. We have a complex ecosystem. We have a number of levels that are very different. Because also the Europe, Europe is trying to drive these countries, because first is, first of getting to cities, they need to go to countries. The only issue, I think that it's the usual European problem. We have different speeds in countries. Then you go in some countries, they have good data strategies, even in cities, that are much better than in other countries, while in other they're still struggling, because there are also national or regional burdens that or bottlenecks that can create, not obstacle, but at the same time, there are, I mean, not allowing to speed up these as much as it should be.  

Punit 20:53 
I think anyhow, data is a complex or managing or governing data, or leveraging data, or complex matters. It's not that only the public authorities are struggling. Even I've seen large corporates having to struggle in setting up data governance and data management strategy. Because 10 years ago, we were saying, let's have data governance, but now we are also saying data governance, with privacy protection, with cyber security, with the compliance for EU AI act, and that's where the compliance burden, or the compliance needs, also come in. And I don't look at it burden as a burden, but also as a need, because citizens are asking for it. Citizens want to know what data you have, what you do with it, and why do you have it, and what will how will it be protected so it doesn't make an easy case, and it's equally challenging for both private and public sector. The public sector, it becomes a bit more difficult because the volume of data is very high, but I think we have a fascinating future in front of us. Would you like to share one final message in this conversation? Somebody listening to it?   

Matteo 22:02 
But listen, I think, I mean, I think it's very interesting. What you said just now, both private and public sector are struggling because data is released complex. I think that data in cities represent the complexity of cities. I think that cities would be complex anyway, even without data. The data that we are seeing is really representing this and also it's fragmentation. It represents also fragmentation, the social fragmentation that we have in cities that comes from a lot of levels. The message is, I think that in any case, we got the right direction. It's a long way, because it's a revolution. That's a new industrial revolution, I would say, is one of data and digital transition and the climate transition is on top of that. Then I think that the message is that we're doing the right things, right moves. It will take time. We will need, obviously, to speed it up. But I think the direction is correct, and we are trying to understand what the way is. Now we have to take it.   

Punit 23:12 
Okay, that's a very good message. We know what we have to do, and we are doing it. And maybe if we put a bit of speed, we will have more effect. Absolutely, with that, Matthew, I would say, thank you so much for your time and wonderful insight about how cities are being governed and what role data is playing and what kind of privacy concerns citizens have. So, it was wonderful to have you. Thank you so much.   

Matteo 23:39 
Thank you to you. Punit, it was interesting, first to have this because I liked a lot talking about this, and second, it's thank you for the space and for the for the visibility that you gave me in this session. Thank you very much.   

FIT4Privacy 23:53 
Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, feel free to share it with a friend and write a review if you have already done so, thank you so much. And if you did not like the show, don't bother and forget about it. Take care and stay safe. FIT4Privacy helps you to create a culture of privacy and manage risks by creating, defining and implementing a privacy strategy that includes delivering scenario based training for your staff, we also help those who are looking to get certified in CIPPE, CIPM and CIPT through on demand courses that help you prepare and practice for certification exam. Want to know more, visit www.fit4privacy.com. That's www. FIT the number 4 privacy.com if you have questions or suggestions, drop an email at hello(@)fit4privacy.com. 

Data is the cornerstone of building smart cities. While the journey towards data-driven urban environments presents challenges, such as privacy concerns and technological limitations, the potential benefits are immense. By effectively managing and leveraging data, cities can enhance services, improve sustainability, and create a better quality of life for their citizens.

As we move forward, it's essential to strike a balance between innovation and privacy. By developing robust data governance frameworks and fostering public trust, we can harness the power of data to build cities that are not only smart but also equitable and sustainable.

Matteo Satta is a freelance consultant specialized in Smart Cities and EU Affairs (Horizon Europe, Interreg, Urbact, C4C). Since 2005, he has contributed to the management and the development of various ICT International projects and IPR Licensing programs. 

In 2014, he started his adventure in the world of cities, joining the City of Issy-les-Moulineaux, to manage and develop its participation at EU and international level, with a particular interest on Digital Innovation. He is the writer and Scientific Coordinator (for ANCI TOSCANA) of the "100 Climate neutral and smart cities" mission project CLIMABOROUGH.

Overall, he participated in the management/coordination of various European projects (CIP, VI and VII Framework Program, Horizon 2020, Horizon Europe and Interreg) and he collaborated in the drafting of many proposals. He is also a selected expert of the European Commission for Horizon and Digital Europe (Horizon) and was a "Lead expert" for the programme URBACT III.  

Punit Bhatia is one of the leading privacy experts who works independently and has worked with professionals in over 30 countries. Punit works with business and privacy leaders to create an organization culture with high AI & privacy awareness and compliance as a business priority by creating and implementing a AI & privacy strategy and policy.

Punit is the author of books “Be Ready for GDPR” which was rated as the best GDPR Book, “AI & Privacy – How to Find Balance”, “Intro To GDPR”, and “Be an Effective DPO”. Punit is a global speaker who has spoken at over 50 global events. Punit is the creator and host of the FIT4PRIVACY Podcast. This podcast has been featured amongst top GDPR and privacy podcasts.

As a person, Punit is an avid thinker and believes in thinking, believing, and acting in line with one’s value to have joy in life. He has developed the philosophy named ‘ABC for joy of life’ which passionately shares. Punit is based out of Belgium, the heart of Europe.

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