Advice to Aspiring CIOs for Smart City Projects

Coming from the public sector background with a policy and planning mindset, I focus more on strategy prior to thinking about implementation. Based on my experience, what is crucial for us, as a company, is to help government clients and the citizens understand the implications of the decision they are undertaking. Because they are thinking about technology as ‘magic,’ they tend to wash their hands off any issue that is related to technology. For example, when I talk to the representatives of a city, one of the common topics is the usage of video cameras. One of the challenges that I place in front of our clients is that how can we accomplish everything without the usage of cameras, as it has a very strong impact on the privacy of the citizens and the related legislations. If we really examine what the city is trying to implement, then we often find that we can achieve as much as 99 percent efficiency without using a single video camera.

We can use radars instead of cameras. Radar functions exactly like a camera when it comes to parking management and traffic control, without the violation of privacy compliance. However, the only task radar won’t do is to personally identify the characteristics of a criminal perpetrating a crime. But the question is how many cameras does one need to detect the criminal. As many leaders in the government space believe that any technology should protect user anonymity, departments such as public safety and transportation are forced to justify the need for a sensor that can identify a user. The idea is that most of the governance tasks can be completed without putting people’s identity and personally identifiable data (PII) at risk. By allowing the capture of PII data in a restricted manner, what we can accomplish is a much smaller pool of sensitive data. We can eliminate the barriers for more cities to adopt new sensor-driven technologies, with cameras as an option. As sensitive data is reduced, cities can be more confident in sharing data with different parties and stakeholders for the better citizen services delivery. By taking such measures, we are removing the barriers between government and technology.

At the moment, it is easy to exchange information. This is balanced by the fact that data extraction is difficult as most of the databases exist in hundreds of monolithic blocks that are complexly interconnected with each other. A smart city environment requires effective data management mechanism for secure leveraging of public data. Being pioneers in data gathering, we control the classification of data according to specifications such as public health, public safety, email validity, and more.

My advice to fellow peers is to enlighten the government about the effect of policies they have in place for smart city projects. A technological shutdown due to a cyber attack will make people lose their trust in technology, hampering our relationship with them. We, at Huawei, don’t own or deal with the end-data. We only provide opportunities for other companies to work with data in a transparent and compliant manner. It is imperative for our clients from the government expanse to understand how they can protect public data.