How SAP and cities are boosting innovation through open data

By Adam Aston Published January 03, 2013   Listening to a couple of coders gush over the virtues of gamification, location-based mobile services and open data standards, I might have mistaken the techies for sneaker-wearing pitchmen at a Silicon Valley hackathon.

But this was midtown Manhattan. Instead of B-school dropouts, the geeks in question were actually silver-haired civil servants in charge of the IT operations for Boston and Edmonton. Though centuries old, each of the cities is racing towards decidedly cutting-edge goals of opening up access to municipal data for their residents and businesses to use and commercialize.

“Successful cities of the future aren’t necessarily the most efficient. It’s about engagement and citizen empowerment,” said Bill Oates, chief information officer for the City of Boston. “Our innovation is on people, to help constituents connect with the city.”

The CIOs were brought together by SAP to mark the U.S. launch of the software giant’s Urban Matters program, which aims to help municipal governments “deliver better-run cities” by opening up data streams for citizens and business to tap into.

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