Big Data | Esteve Almirall

November 28, 2016December 2, 2016 by Esteve Almirall

Data & Cities

Last Friday November 25 Barcelona City Hall & Esade held in Barcelona an event around the use and the governance of Data in Cities. Central to this event was the discussion of what cities have to do with data and how to approach the tsunami around Big Data, Data Analytics and Data Science that is shaking and transforming companies and organizations around the world.

It’s a very new subject and I think it is fair to say that local authorities are mostly unprepared to deal with it. To summarize, not only they lack the internal competencies but best practices and general policy frameworks don’t exist yet. Only a few cities: New York, Seoul, Amsterdam, Helsinki, now Barcelona … are exploring this uncharted territory with a diversity of approaches.

Last Friday we had the opportunity to be exposed to some of them. Among all I would like to highlight three.

The future of eGov .-

Last year I attended a presentation of what it was supposed to be the new eGov strategy of a major Smart City. They presented to us the motivation, how much technology has changed from a web presence to multi-channel, multi-screen. How people now look at more than one screen at the same time – do you have friends working in marketing? Then you know it ! – how cities have to keep up with these developments …

Underlying the presentation was a message expressed in the form of a metaphor: Wouldn’t it be nice if all city services were available in your mobile? The whole city services in your smartphone! The city-hall in your pocket !

Metaphors are always compelling! Our abilities as a specie are dramatically skewed towards visual representations which makes visual metaphors extremely easy to grasp and capable of mobilizing our imagination. However, for this to happen they must be new, they should not be already incorporate into our lives. And, let me tell you, everybody was checking Facebook and twitter during this presentation …