Citizen engagement is increasingly being recognised as one of the pivotal activities to get right for Smart cities projects to take off. The Smart Cities Council reports that there was agreement across industry experts talking at last week’s Smart Cities Week in Washington D.C. of the need to ‘talk more and listen more’ to citizens. 

According to the Council, IBM highlights that “until citizens understand the value of the solution…they won’t embrace it”, and Siemens, “we need to be more intune with their [citizen’s] needs.” There was also a really interesting comment from a strategy leader at Leidos, an engineering company, that a Smart city happens in “incremental steps”, accentuating the need for ongoing two-way conversations.

In our experience of working on complex infrastructure projects, this need for ensuring sustained citizen involvement is spot on. It helps to create a shared vision and momentum, particularly important for ambitious Smart city developments. 

People often have multiple questions and needs through each stage of a project. Ensuring they can understand what’s going on and why, share information and provide feedback de-risks the process, broadens the opportunity for innovation and supports greater lasting change.    

At the initial design and planning stage, they might ask, for example, “why do we need it?”, “how much will it cost?”, “have you thought about this?”. As the project moves towards the build period, they might ask, “what’s the disruption to my life?”, “when will it be ready?”. And as they start to use and explore the smart product or building they might want to know how to use certain aspects or to provide feedback on what’s working and what’s not.

The question for many in the Smart cities industry is how to address this need for sustained citizen inclusion in a practical, cost effective and compelling way. Also what tools and digital capabilities can be used to involve the maximum number of people.

This is where Stickyworld can help. If you are looking for an integrated way to involve and connect a diverse group of stakeholders, partners and citizens in your Smart city plans Stickyworld provides an online 24/7 engagement platform. 

It makes it easy to broaden the number of people you are talking to. You can have ongoing conversations based around multimedia content and from live data feeds, building your knowledgebase whilst simultaneously ensuring you creating changes that meet real needs. To learn more about Stickyworld’s solution please watch our 5 minute webinar.