Governing Smart Cities

COVID-19 has revealed the full extent of vulnerabilities of cities and urban areas in the face of large-scale disruptions. Confronted with the biggest public health crisis and economic challenges of the modern times, city leaders globally are working towards improving public health infrastructure and overall responsiveness.

Smart city technologies are key to boosting recovery and building resilience to future shocks, while also driving efficiencies and improving quality of life. As cities invest in and deploy new technologies, it is imperative to implement governance policies to prevent and mitigate risks around privacy, cybersecurity, and sustainability. In an effort to help cities draw on best practices and build resilience, Deloitte has developed technological solutions, frameworks, and strategic approaches in key areas within the urban transformation sphere—including vision, governance, infrastructure, and funding among others—as well as invested in research to help cities better cope with future challenges. Further, our initiative ‘Urban Future with a Purpose’ engages key stakeholders in a discussion of important trends cities need to be aware of.

Deloitte’s current work with the World Economic Forum and the G20 Global Cities Alliance seeks to guide cities in the governance of smart technology. Following the G20 agreement in 2019, the G20 Global Smart Cities Alliance was established to help cities identify and adopt foundational policies for smart city technologies. The Alliance created a policy roadmap around five core principles along with corresponding model policies as guidelines for cities.

36 “pioneer cities” participated in an assessment to evaluate the usefulness of the policy roadmap, and help move towards pilot schemes and policy benchmarks for other cities. This executive summary is based on the World Economic Forum report Governing Smart Cities: Policy Benchmarks for Ethical and Responsible Smart City Development, which captures the findings from this review as well as from five supporting benchmark reports dedicated to each of the model policies.