How do you create a smart city strategy?

A smart-city strategy proves its worth when it helps a council decide what not to fund. It starts with public-service problems and the city's capacity to act on them. It answers four questions. Which outcomes matter most to residents and the council? What capabilities are missing to deliver them? Which shared foundations should every project reuse? And how will investment be governed, evaluated and, where necessary, stopped?

An honest evidence base

Priorities set without evidence reflect whoever lobbied hardest, so the first task is to understand what already exists. Service teams and residents can say where time is lost, money wasted or the public poorly served. An inventory of the city's networks, platforms and data sources, with the contracts, licences and renewal dates attached, shows what constrains its choices. And departments are usually already running digital projects of their own, which the strategy should coordinate so that effort is not duplicated.

The most important question concerns organisational capacity. Are there people to manage data, contracts and new services? That is often the real constraint. The review should end by separating the problems a digital intervention could help with from those where the obstacle is mainly organisational, physical or financial.

Choose a few outcomes and measure them

A manageable number of outcomes, each with a baseline, a measure and an accountable owner, will achieve more than a long list. Indicator frameworks such as ISO 37122, which defines indicators for smart cities, and the ITU-coordinated U4SSC key performance indicators can help structure the choice, but they are tools for framing and comparison. No outcome should be chosen merely because its data is easy to collect.

Agree the shared foundations

Projects need to cooperate without being forced onto identical products, which means agreeing principles that every initiative inherits.

The Open & Agile Smart Cities network's Minimal Interoperability Mechanisms are one reference for a minimal, sufficient level of interoperability that cities can adopt incrementally.

Pay for running it, not just building it

A grant can pay for a pilot; it will not pay for year three. Every initiative should state who will pay for subscriptions, maintenance, device replacement and staff time once the pilot is over. A city may need data stewardship, contract management and training more urgently than it needs another central dashboard.

A roadmap that can say no

The roadmap should contain decision points with clear criteria for continuing, changing or stopping each initiative, along with named responsible bodies and stated investment assumptions. Publishing what the strategy is trying to achieve, and reporting progress honestly, including what did not work, is what turns it from a brochure into a plan.

Testing the draft before approval

A draft strategy can be checked in an afternoon. Does every outcome have a named owner and a baseline? Does every initiative have a stop criterion? Is each shared foundation, such as the data standards, actually referenced in a procurement document? And will residents take part in evaluating results, not just in the launch consultation?