Analysis of the list of open/smart projects: What we know about project needs and challenges

Trends and findings from of an analysis of 40+ open/smart projects throughout City departments

Update 9/8/17: The list of open government and smart cities projects has doubled to more than 80 projects since we first published this analysis in April. We've refreshed this post with new insights on project maturity levels, what barriers they need cleared, and the internal and external partners involved in various efforts.

As we talked about in a previous post, our team working with the City's Open Government Operating Board compiled a list of 80+ open gov and smart cities projects that City departments are involved. We've done this as part of creating Austin's Smart City Strategic Roadmap, which presents tools and frameworks we can use to up our problem solving capabilities across the City. This post uses those tools and frameworks offers some takeaways regarding the projects' needs and how we might organize and make sense of them. For more information on our methodology for collecting this data, read our post on the project inventory. You can also find the Inventory at the following link: Austin Open and Smart Project Inventory

Summary of findings

Overarching finding: Many projects don’t know what they don’t know and need help accessing the expertise they don’t have already. Having the right experts involved early can help a project flag the areas it will need to figure out. This points to the need for a structured intake/assessment process -- to outfit projects with the expertise they need.

How projects align with City outcome areas: City departments are working on open government and "smart cities" projects across the six outcomes areas Council has established for the City. The majority of projects involve cross-cutting support across departments and subject matter areas (the Government that Works outcome).

Project maturity levels: Analyzing project needs against our smart city maturity model, many projects are trying to get off paper (level 1-->level 2) or develop analytics capabilities (level 2-->3). Projects making these transitions particularly need help improving data and technology capabilities.

What expertise and help projects need: Teaming is the most pronounced need -- connecting projects with the expertise they need. Many projects also need help with public-private partnerships, which are frequent approaches to smart cities projects. Specifically, projects seek to navigate information security, privacy, legal, and financing considerations.

City and community partners involved in projects: Departments involved in many “smart” initiatives could be better represented at Open Government Operating Board meetings (Transportation, Library, etc.).

There’s more to learn about these projects and their needs.

The information we captured on these projects gives a sense of the goals projects are working toward and what challenges they are facing. But we weren't able to answer all our questions based on the information collected. Further, this database can't identify the right pathway to help a project move forward. For example, we estimated what maturity level a project is trying to achieve, based on our smart city maturity model. Identifying how projects are upping their game with technology and data is straightforward. However, understanding how project teams are navigating organizational issues, collaboration, and leadership will require a deeper assessment of project needs. We're working with project teams to do this deeper assessment.

How projects align with City outcome areas

Our City Council and city management are working on a list of overarching "outcome areas" that will form a multi-year strategic plan and influence City budget decisions. While they're still in development, these six outcome areas are becoming a go-to framework for organizing City services:

• Government that Works: Believing that city government works and works well for everyone
• Economic Opportunity & Affordability: Having economic opportunities and resources that enable us to lead sustainable lives
• Mobility: Getting us where we want to go, when we want to get there, safely and cost-effectively
• Cultural & Learning Opportunities: Being enriched by Austin’s unique civic, cultural, ethnic, and learning opportunities
• Safety: Being safe in our home, at work, and in our community
• Health: Maintaining a healthy life both physically and mentally

Since this is an important lens through which we're viewing City services, how do the projects line up?

Finding 1. The City is working on open government and "smart cities" projects across the six areas, and many projects seek to further multiple outcomes. The inventory reflects the fact that projects often relate to more than one outcome area (about half of the projects map to more than one). For example, the Permitting Initiative aims to streamline residents' experience with the permitting process, and in so doing will improve performance and responsiveness (Government that Works), and also impact economic affordability. As a result, all six outcome areas are reflected in the list of 43 projects.

Finding 2. The majority of projects involve cross-cutting support across departments and subject matter areas (Government that Works). For example, the Open Data Program opens access to data dealing with mobility, economic development, health, etc., but primarily aims to improve residents' experience with City government as a whole. The Open Data Program is also one of 22 projects that support the Government that Works outcome without any direct connections to other outcome areas (about half of the projects).

See an Airtable where we sorted our projects by City Outcome Areas at the following link: Smart City Projects to City Outcome Areas

Project maturity levels

As part of the smart city strategic roadmap, we adapted a maturity model to help us understand what capabilities projects are trying to achieve. Some projects may run their service on paper with no data, while others may be able to use rich data to analyze patterns and predict what will happen next -- and many projects fall in between. Comparing projects against this maturity model, here's what we found:

Finding 3. Most of the projects are seeking to automate services (level 2 maturity) or develop analytics capabilities (level 3 maturity), while only a few are aiming for predictive, proactive capability (level 4 maturity). Of the first 65 projects we analyzed:

• 10 are at an in-person, ad-hoc capability (level 1)
• 24 aim for automated services and collecting data (level 2)
• 21 are developing analytics capabilities to understand and respond to problems more effectively (level 3)
• 4 aim to create predictive analytics that enable proactive action (level 4)

We did not have enough information to assess 6 projects. Moreover, our assessments were based on the information project leads submitted, which doesn't give a deep assessment of project needs. We're particularly limited in determining maturity levels related to organization, collaboration, and leadership.

What expertise and help projects need

We asked project leads to discuss any unmet needs or barriers to success. Looking across the projects, here's what we learned.

Finding 4. Many projects need expertise related to public-private partnerships--particularly smart cities and emerging technology projects. Advice regarding partnerships, law, intellectual property, and information security and privacy ranked among the highest-demand expertise areas. This is not surprising when dealing with emerging technology, given that these projects often involve assets or products developed by private sector partners. These projects need to tackle key challenges such as:

• Ethical and privacy issues regarding data collection, management, and sharing
• Records management implications
• Ownership of the data and intellectual property
• Project financing and risk sharing
• Appropriate partnership arrangements and business models to address all of the above

However, it's not only technology projects that need help with partnerships. For example, the Homeless Outreach Street Team initiative requires collaboration across public, private, and service sectors to tackle the complex challenges of homelessness.

This aligns with what we learned in talking with project leads--that project teams need to find out what they need to know early. Connecting with experts in the above issues is critical to project success.

Finding 5. Many projects could benefit from qualitative research, design, and iterative development, though there may be some awareness gaps of what these domains offer. Our analysis tagged fourteen projects that could benefit from these design and technology methods, based on the information project leads submitted. For example, performance dashboards for City executives should be informed by research into what information executives need in order to make decisions and how they digest that information. Some of the projects identified with these needs did not explicitly list needs for design and technology expertise. For example, adoption of agenda management software could be more sustainable if we understand how people use the software and can improve the technology over time through iterative development.

Finding 6. Projects need more cross-departmental coordination and busting organizational barriers. Some examples:

• The Open Data Initiative identified a need for help leading cultural change across the organization around being "open by default."
• Smart Kiosks expressed “There is always room for more inter-departmental collaboration. CTM, APL, PARD, APH, Economic Development, and others might have an interest in smart kiosks.”
• Austin Data Exchange and Rodeo mentions needing help "Convening our community around how we add value to our data exchange and use if for economic and other benefits for our community."
   

These needs line up with desires we heard in interviews with City staff earlier in this effort.

Finding 7. Projects voice a need for clearer definition of project roles among departments. Because many projects span multiple departments, a number of projects are challenged with identifying a participant to facilitate, organize, or move the project forward--even if they do not own the project entirely. For example, Tech Hire mentions the need to “Identify a COA organization that is more appropriate to sustaining the organizing of TechHire without diluting the leadership and pushing the spear forward.”

Though the questionnaire did not ask for additional detail on where projects are experiencing role confusion, there could be many reasons:

• One department may not be in a position to take ownership for a project in which they do not control all aspects (ex: Transportation Department's role with regard to Smart Kiosks, which involves multiple departments' areas of responsibility).
• Departments lack an overarching shared strategy to evaluate and prioritize an emerging technology project. (The City's forthcoming smart cities strategic roadmap aims to solve this at least partly.)
• Limited resources, funding, or staff time can inhibit a department from committing to a new project.
• There is a need to add additional skillsets or capabilities to effectively execute an emerging technology project, and/or limited awareness of how they might connect to the right skillsets or capabilities we already have.
   

Finding 8. Many projects report needing resources, funding, and staff capabilities to achieve goals--particularly technology projects. Though these needs exist across different types of projects, several technology initiatives expressed the need for expertise to help the City to make thoughtful decisions about technology investments, approaches, and even advise on P3’s. Two examples:

• Open Data Initiative - identified three specific roles they need in order to take their initiative to the program/office level
• Smart Mobility - stated their unmet needs include the dedicated resources needed to develop and execute pilot projects, especially staff time to collaborate, integrate, acquire equipment and knowledge, communicate, test, report and iterate pilots.
   

Moreover, working in the open takes effort -- in the form of dedicated staff time for communications and community engagement, training and hiring the right skillsets in open source web development, and resourcing for closing feedback loops.

City and community partners involved in projects

Finding 9. The list of departments and partners working on open/smart projects could serve as an invite or awareness list for the Open Government Operating Board. Many of the departments involved in many open/smart projects currently participate in the Open Government Operating Board (e.g., CTM, CPIO, Innovation Office). There are also a number of departments working as project owners or advisors that currently do not formally participate in the Board. For example:

• Austin Public Library
• Transportation Department
• Austin Energy
• Clerk's Office
• Law Department
• Telecommunications & Regulatory Affairs
   

External partners frequently involved in open/smart projects might benefit from more coordination and communication. These organizations include CityUP, Open Austin, The University of Texas, Google Fiber.

Want to add a project to this list, or update an existing project?

Click here to submit a new project to the list of open/smart initiatives.