A unique approach: bringing academics, mainstreamers and customers together

The way the Smart Cities project works is unique. The project brings together three important methodological approaches: an academic network, mainstreaming, and co-design.

The Smart Cities regional academic network consists of university and university colleges representing six countries from the North Sea region. The academic network gives government partners access to a wide range of expertise and competencies that they can use as they rethink and improve electronic service delivery. The academic partners help the government partners by helping to identify and define the key questions and business challenges. The academic network evaluates the impact of local and transnational work in the project and disseminates its findings and lessons learned to both the North Sea region and to academic and practitioner communities. White papers, tested methodologies, and transferred knowledge will be the key outputs from this people-based innovation network.

National governments are a key factor for transferring technology and solutions to other regions and municipalities. A number of National and Central governments have already become partners of the Smart Cities project, and we are approaching more. The knowledge and commitment from these partners will lead to a sustainable transfer of the services developed in the project to other areas in the North Sea Region. Smart Cities also works closely with the European ePractice.eu community.

What’s the sense of developing services if people don’t use them? The most under-used road to innovation is through asking your customers, not only in assessing how services are delivered, but also in helping to design them. Smart Cities pilots are by definition user-centric. Government partners will actively listen to the needs of their citizens, and these users will be deeply involved in the e-service development process. Co-designing services with citizens will lead to more sustainable services that are more effective and which provide greater levels of customer satisfaction.