Developing city data governance to boost innovation

Citizens not only expect access to government services online, on the move, and 24/7, but also parity with the numerous commercial apps they use every day. As the recent pandemic and ongoing geopolitical tensions show, city planners and operators have to factor in even more uncertainty, arising from other ‘black swan’ events, climate change, natural disasters, cybersecurity attacks, and the resultant supply chain disruptions.

City systems are, by their nature, interconnected, interwoven and interdependent. Governments cannot do it alone when it comes to running their cities, and need to leverage both internal and external innovation, such as open innovation and open data.

In the past years, more so-called government technology (GovTech) start-ups have emerged and are building solutions for governments around the world. These start-ups have been changing the way
their government customers serve their citizens. Through open data initiatives, public safety modernization, citizen service improvements, and infrastructure programs, city governments
and GovTechs start-ups are turning to the cloud to provide cost- effective, scalable, secure and flexible infrastructure.

For example, in Singapore, SpaceAge Labs leverages Internet of Things (IoT) technologies to help its customers manage remote assets and operations in the urban water and landscape services industries. “Remote monitoring software has helped customers like the Public Utilities Board (PUB), the national water agency, to reduce manual labor, avoid overflow events, and better plan maintenance activities," says Deepak Pita, CEO of SpaceAge Labs. "Similarly, it has also helped the National Parks Board (NParks) to optimize its grass maintenance services,” he added. SpaceAge Labs is now expanding into Australia, the U.K., the Middle East and the U.S.

Also in Singapore, Virspatial Technologies has used its Twinverse digital twin solution to help a prominent local university to model and then optimize its campus operations for energy efficiency, thereby reducing operational costs by 30 percent and greenhouse gas emissions by 35 percent. The university even managed to lower its real estate costs by 25 percent through space optimization via Twinverse, which runs on cloud technology and incorporates artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, 5G, IoT, and video game technologies.

Many government agencies around the world are using cloud technology to run city systems. Through our ongoing discussions with these organizations, Amazon Web Services (AWS) has identified eight trends impacting GovTechs today:

1. Infrastructure upgrades: Governments are hitting the accelerator on their efforts to move legacy infrastructure systems to cloud-based services.

2. AI and machine learning (ML): Integrating AI (including generative AI) and ML can help reduce costs, provide accessible options to customers, and help governments as they serve their constituents.

3. Citizen service improvements: Improving the delivery of constituent services leads to better social outcomes and increased opportunities for GovTechs.

4. Cybersecurity considerations: As governments seek to protect the flow of information into and out of the cloud, they are increasingly looking for flexible, affordable partnerships with the private sector.

5. Big data solutions: Volume, variety and velocity are the name of the game as governments look to manage massive amounts of data and uncover real-time insights using analytics.

6. Open data initiatives: Governments are seeking to democratize data by making it more accessible to their constituents — a process that involves new cloud-native formats and tools.

7. Public safety modernization: New technologies equip governments with new tools to protect citizens, but these high-tech resources also require upgrades to infrastructure, security and data storage.

8. Sandbox environments: By mirroring actual, real-world environments, but with appropriate guardrails, sandboxes facilitate experimentation and open innovation by providing a safe space for GovTechs to develop, test and demonstrate their offerings.

One key to successfully riding these trends is data governance. With end- to-end cloud-based data governance, city governments have control over where their data sits, who has access to it, and what can be done with it at every step of the data workflow. They can protect such data with precise permissions, so that data can be shared externally — including with GovTechs — with confidence. Finally, they can reduce risk and improve regulatory compliance by monitoring and auditing data access.

Another success factor is the strategic use of open innovation and co- innovation. For example, in Singapore, the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) and AWS have launched the IMDA-AWS Joint Innovation Center in late 2022, to serve as an innovation hub for corporates, start- ups and governments in Singapore and across Southeast Asia.

AWS also partnered with Synapxe to set up the Synapxe-AWS Co- Innovation Lab in 2023, to enable collaborative health technology innovation between public healthcare institutions and industry partners. Public healthcare institutions can leverage this platform to rethink problems, design, and build prototypes or experiment with innovative solutions by tapping into resources from this co-innovation lab, which is also the first of its kind in ASEAN for public healthcare.

In addition to their age-old roles of protector (i.e. ensuring public safety), provider (e.g. of various municipal services), planner and policymaker, city governments are increasingly called upon to also serve as collaborators to industry and citizenry, and as platform builder, so as to facilitate open and co-innovation with and amongst them.

At AWS, we see cloud technology continuing to be a major catalyst in how city governments operate, innovate and collaborate efficiently and securely, in advancing their respective missions. The start-ups that serve them are using this technology to process, store and transmit government data. In many ways, moving to the cloud is the ultimate government infrastructure upgrade.