In its bid to create a smart city, Johannesburg has been hard at work for quite some time already, and its Public Access to Internet in Libraries (Pail) project has been up-and-running for years to empower Joburg’s poorer citizens.
Nobuntu Mpendulo, the director of library and information services, spoke about the initiative on the second day of the smart cities themed week of the GDS2040.
“Pail started because a library’s main function is providing access to information, in all formats,” she said. The policy was first adopted in 2005 and was introduced by the City’s library and information services unit and the Office of the Chief Information Officer in 2006.
“It was introduced to empower the poor politically through meaningful participatory governance and enable them to feel part of the City, to support the egovernment initiative of multipurpose community centres, and to facilitate the operations of the City,” she explained.
Pail has a number of benefits for the City and its residents, according Mpendulo. Residents enjoy free access to the internet in a safe and controlled environment; there are workstations designated for adults and children; there is education and school support; it is a platform to engage with local government; and it is an opportunity to showcase community projects and entrepreneurial initiatives.
For the City, it provides a vehicle to realise the smart city concept and facilitate egovernance, as well as provides a platform to administer service-oriented projects, among others. In this way, it is helping to build the foundation of what is needed to turn Joburg into a smart city.
Economy
“Part of the tenets of an economically viable future city is a smart city,” said the portfolio head for finance, Geoffrey Makhubo. “What the future looks like is not included in any blueprint, so there is a need for conversation between all residents.”
Makhubo considered what the cost would be to the City of not becoming a smart one, and whether we even had a choice in the matter. “We have to be smart to continue to attract investment, and we cannot be smart in isolation.
“We have no choice in 2040 but to be a smart city,” he said.
This would include using technology such as smart metering, utilities and investment. It was therefore necessary to begin preparing today to address the problems we would undoubtedly face in the future.
Joburg would have a projected population of eight million people by 2040, which meant the City would have to respond to its challenges in a particular way; it could not respond in the way it did in the 1960s, added Makhubo.
“Part of the problem is that Joburg attracts the poor who live on the fringes of the city and spend the longest time travelling around the city,” he said. “Technology can help us a lot in solving these problems, through access to libraries and information, for example.”
Social media
The public sector director at Microsoft, Kabelo Makwane, spoke of further ways that local governments could use technology to communicate with residents. “Governments are using social media more and more to reach constituencies efficiently.”
Municipalities such as Johannesburg could also use advanced software and services to work more efficiently, modernise and streamline workflows and services, and bring more voices into public processes, among others.
However, he cautioned residents against assuming that it was only the government’s responsibility to work more efficiently and resolve conflicts. “It is imperative upon us, as residents of the city, to offer up solutions.”
Possible solutions could include residents taking photographs of potholes they saw and sending these directly to the government agency responsible, rather than having to phone the call centre and losing time by logging a query and waiting for a response.
This could be achieved, he believed, by taking a bold approach towards publishing data; streamlining regulations to reduce friction and create incentives for innovation; and developing skills in information and communications technology.
He also spoke about the role that social computing could play. Social computing includes social networking and content, real-time communication, building communities, and the ability to work from anywhere.
Government
“These are small building blocks that government could start to implement,” he said.
Love Clean London and Eye on Earth were just two examples of such initiatives that were put in place elsewhere in the world, and which had made a discernible difference. Love Clean London was a web portal established to combat graffiti. Citizens could take photographs of the graffiti and/or the offender, and post them to the website so that the City and police could take further action.
Eye on Earth was established in the USA and focused on citizen reporting on climate change. This information could then be used to track and map disasters such as tsunamis, and could even be used to predict weather patterns and act as an early warning system.
Finding solutions to challenges was therefore based on three pillars, according to Makwane. These were: education, innovation and skills development.
“What we do today has to assist us in ensuring that our children and grandchildren inherit a world-class African city of opportunity by not plundering our resources and stealing from our future,” said Makhubo.
For more information on the events taking place during the smart cities week, visit the GDS2040 Facebook page, or follow @GDS2040 on Twitter. The GDS also has a website.
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Lynley Main
Quelle/Source: Joburg,
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