The City of Cape Town this week published a blueprint for how the metro aims to become a data-driven municipality.
Speaking at a launch event in Woodstock on Monday, mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis said the city has pledged to take service delivery into the digital age and ensure “unprecedented” levels of data transparency. The data strategy, he said, sets out details of how the city aims to achieve these goals.
“We are on a journey as a city to try and embed the intelligent and strategic use of data into everything that we do,” said Hill-Lewis. “We are increasingly measuring our services and infrastructure performance so that we can better manage delivery to the public.
“We have installed digital tracking systems across our water, sanitation and energy infrastructure, and invested in human resources to monitor and dispatch rapid response teams where issues arise.”
Data-driven city management leverages data collection methods such as internet-of-things devices and other sensors, public and private databases, and crowdsourced data are fed into large data analytics tools to provide decision makers with real-time data for planning and monitoring of how city resources are utilised.
Frontrunners in data-driven city management include New York, where data analytics is used to predict fires and reduce crime, and Barcelona, where data from IoT sensors is used to manage traffic, monitor air quality and optimise waste collection.
Openness and transparency are key components of data-led city initiatives like Cape Town’s. By making data collected publicly available, the idea is that the business community and the public can be kept abreast with the various aspects of running the city, encouraging better-informed residents to engage more in public affairs.
‘A public good’
“It must be a resource to the public. We have this wealth of incredibly valuable data on any number of things happening in our city … [and] as much of that must be made available as a public good as possible,” said Hill-Lewis.
As part of its effort to become a data-driven metro, Cape Town has appointed Hugh Cole as chief data officer. Cole is also the city’s strategy director.
Read: Could Cape Town become Africa’s Silicon Valley?
Cole said his priority is to bed down a new set of data governance arrangements, setting out the operating model (including clear roles and responsibilities).
He said some of the use cases the City of Cape Town has already initiated using data-driven techniques include:
- Developing spatialised tax data (showing where people are employed in the city) in partnership with national treasury and the South African Revenue Service to help identify where transport and other infrastructure will be needed.
- A collaboration with the World Bank and the International Growth Centre to develop spatial economic models. This looks at the effect that decisions in one part of the city have on the rest of the metro. Examples are the effects that land use changes or major infrastructure investments in one part of the city have on land use, land values and transport across the metro.
- Development of cost-benefit analysis tools that have eliminated the city’s reliance on expensive external consultants.
Some of the tools used by the City of Cape Town include geographic information systems software, advanced machine learning tools like PyTorch and, although still under development, some artificial intelligence tools as well.
“I am excited to see where this strategy document leads us. I think it is an important stepping stone towards a truly data-led and evidence-led government,” said Hill-Lewis. — (c) 2024 NewsCentral Media
