Canadian Government Executive - Volume 24 - Issue 02

March/April 2018 // Canadian Government Executive / 41 Governing Digitally Smarter Communities Need Shared Solutions T he notion of a ‘smart communi- ty’ has been around nearly as long as the Internet itself. Born from State of California initia- tives in the 1990’s, researchers at San Diego State University launched the Smart Communities Institute. This body, in turn, helped shape the Government of Canada’s initial smart communities com- petition launched in 1999. Fast forward nearly twenty years and the federal government is at it once again with a new Smart Cities Challenge launched by Infrastructure Canada (this time offering a maximum of $75 million to four communities of varying sizes). Ac- cording to the Government, the challenge “encourages communities to adopt a smart cities approach to improve the lives of their residents through innovation, data and connected technology.” Nonetheless, the largest cities in this country are asked to compete with one another for a single maximum prize of $50 million. To put this amount into perspec- tive, the anticipated 2018 operating bud- get for the City of Toronto is nearly $11 Bil- lion. One can forgive Councillors and staff for diverting their energies elsewhere (notably Amazon’s HQ2 bid and Google’s efforts to create a futuristic waterfront dis- trict that is emblematic of the smart com- munity concept). Things get a bit more enticing for Hali- fax, a city of under 500,000 that can com- pete for one of two prizes of $10 million each, or approximately 1.3 per cent of its anticipated operating budget of approxi- mately $765 million this year. And for the hundreds, if not thousands, of the small- est communities across the country (un- der 30,000 inhabitants), there is a single, though substantive, prize of $5 million. Tensions for the smallest communities are particularly acute and frustrating. How many days should a township of 10,000 people devote this year and next for a longshot chance of $5 million (over sev- eral years). The opportunity cost is inter- twined with a myriad of other provincial and federal economic and social develop- ment support programs, each requiring significant investments of time and paper (albeit with many forms now available for downloading online!). Indeed, what of the Provinces, as surely smarter local governance entails col- laboration across all government levels? It would seem not, however, as the In- frastructure Canada program makes no mention of provincial involvement and any anticipated cost-sharing, with the fi- nal contribution agreement exclusively formed between federal and municipal actors over a two to five-year period (fur- ther stretching already modest funds). Defenders of the Smart Cities Challenge would rightfully point out that its purpose is to catalyze and showcase innovation rather than spawn redevelopment. Cer- tainly, the smart communities contest of nearly twenty years ago galvanized local strategizing across the country, with many initiatives flourishing even in the absence of federal funding. The Obama Adminis- tration’s likeminded effort in 2015 spurred 78 cities to seek to marry technology and transportation in ground-breaking ways. The U.S. Department of Transportation then made a conscious effort to leverage seven finalists as a basis for distributed learning nationally (also providing addi- tional funds to four finalist cities to deep- en their efforts). Accordingly, the outcomes of the pres- ent smart cities incarnation in Canada will depend upon not only local initiative but a new and smarter role for federal authori- ties – in seeking to genuinely partner with community stakeholders and other levels of government. In the realm of transpor- tation planning, effectively aligning in- frastructure planning and funding on the one hand, and technological innovation on the other hand, is particularly essential and complex. Moving forward, however, the federal and provincial governments should seek ways to collaboratively combine resources to entice and support local governments (especially those in rural and remote re- gions) in devising shared solutions for digital innovation. Whether it’s apps for citizen-centric action, back-office cloud so- lutions for data storage, or new transpor- tation services, collaborative governance is the only way forward. The British Gov- ernment has spawned considerable local effort in this regard, as has the Scottish Government in working with the Scottish Cities Alliance to create the Smart Cities Scotland Blueprint. The current smart cities initiative in this country may well provide an impor- tant window on the future. Yet after two decades of e-government and promises for integrated action across jurisdictions, our federalist governance models remain overly top-down and disjointed. The re- sult is lessened collective intelligence with our smallest communities paying the steepest price. J effrey R oy is professor in the School of Public Administration at Dalhousie University (roy@dal.ca) .