Dear Students,
Today you have had a very vibrant interactive engagement with the senior executives of HCL. Mr. Param Sigh, Chief Adviser on Smart Cities to the Mayors of San Francisco and Los Angeles, also joined and suggested a frame work for building smart cities.
1. What are the key takeaways from the HCL presentation?
2. How would your framework be different than the one suggested by Param Singh in building of smart cities?
SMART cities and HCL’s role in system integration. Key projects that really stuck with me were the UIDAI system and the “banking the unbanked” project. The UIDAI system is similar to the social security system in the U.S; the UIDAI system assigns every citizen of India a number. However, it’s more secure than the U.S’ because it requires biometric authentication for each individual. This project has proved to be extremely efficient, as it has roughly covered 4.5x the U.S population in a very short amount of time. The other project is the banking one, where they provided people in rural village bank accounts. There are a multitude of benefits with this project as it makes it easier for governments to transfer money to people and helps people avoid loan sharks. One of the concerns that many people had about these projects were how they were going to get people to start using it given some aspects of Indian culture. In our discussions this is an aspect that is focused a lot on – however, I’m not sure how relevant this question is in terms of these particular projects. In the banking project, I’m sure there might be some efforts of awareness involved, but for the most part people will opt into these programs out of necessity especially if it makes transferring money from the government easier. I think in our class discussions, it’s very obvious that the cultural aspect is really important, but I would like to move the discussion to talk about economics/politics, which are vital to the success of SMART cities. Also, Priya helped me see it in a different way, as she reminded me that culture is dynamic and is created by the people. So even in GIFT city despite how the infrastructure may not reflect the current architecture of most culturally rich Indian cities, there will still be people living in the city that can create and breath life into the glass buildings. Returning back to the discussion, I think HCL does a great job at evaluating the situation to try to cover as many perspectives as possible. I think that for system integration to work, we need to take into consideration, which aspects overlap with one another and how this overlap can be addressed to make things more efficient.
Note: This a rough draft, and if you have any suggestions or constructive feedback or even know how to create better visual imagery please let me know!
For my framework, I want to show how interconnected the systems are. I don’t think that this is a matter of prioritization but rather understanding that people are working on things that happen to be important to them, and there are overlapping aspects between all of them. (Although, I think the WHO? part needs to be established first with a committee setting basic benchmarks and standards as to what makes a smart city smart. This does not necessary mean automation but everyone has access to nutrition).
Ok, imagine that you are looking this at the top down, and then the connections vertical/horizontal happens at every level. The cylinders can be made into different sizes depending on the industry, and vary in different heights. Then at the bottom of these layers is the committee who are setting the standards of what it means to be a SMART city. Finally, at the very bottom is culture. Something that cannot be ignored and should be taken into consideration, but not the main focal point because people can create culture too.
Example of interconnection is that for social welfare if people had more power to purchase then that will boost the economy/private sector. If the private sector is stimulated, there will be higher demands for jobs that will increase the need for transportation to alleviate congestion. However, there might be a skill gap and then education would be impacted as well.
To address the tiered cities that Param Singh suggested, then expanding this on a macro level then you would have cities of different sizes in like a 3D plane. Each city will have different circles representing what is big/small. These tiers can be measured through GDP, utility, happiness, quality of life, life expectancy and etc.
In addition, here is a 3d side view:
HCL describes a smart city as a way to effectively deliver public services to citizens and businesses in an integrated and resource-efficient way, while enabling innovative collaborations to improve the quality of life. The primary factors to be considered when building a sustainable smart city would be economic prosperity, quality of life, and participatory social engagement. I completely agree with this equation, as it incorporates the importance of financial and social welfare, with the happiness of the relevant community. (technical and psychological importance) One main takeaway from HCL’s presentation that stood out to me was that one Smart City model will not fit all, and that all the sectors need to be connected seamless and work together. Especially in this technological age when dealing with a city and country with multiple complex issues, the concept of an omni-channel medium is of utmost importance as cities or countries attempt to keep up with technological innovation. If things are not connected, there will be discrepancies in the flow of information which leads to even bigger problems in the future since parties are not on the same page. I noticed that HCL similarly follows the smart city concept emphasized yesterday by AIMA and other organizations about identifying and satisfying basic needs first (getting an identity), before moving into financial inclusion (implementing a solution which produces concrete data and accurate monitoring of information). This serves to directly address the main issues and incorporating technology to solve this multi-layer problem.
Regarding Param Singh’s present framework of building smart cities, my current proposed framework wouldn’t necessarily be different, but an adaptation of his proposal. I personally do not see categories such as technology, social, economic, political assessment, intelligent city design, and participative group, as horizontal silos because they are not mutually exclusive in the consideration of a smart city model. I agree with the focus of a human centric design (HCD) process, where there should be an emphasis on directly reaching out to the locals within the community and understand the major problems that they face everyday. Every smart city framework will be different depending on the city’s unique problems and needs of the community, and by addressing these issues holistically to create a more productive, sustainable, and happier community, will it only be effective as a long-term solution. After identifying the basic needs of the community, the social, economic and political assessment should be prioritized and combined with the HCD to create a foundation that the smart city model can be built upon. Comparing potential case scenarios of other countries or cities that face similar issues and identifying the effective technological solutions that may have solved the problem would be useful information collection. This would combine the technology and intelligent city design categories thereafter, and by constantly involving a participative select group throughout the process, the increase in transparency and constant consultation with the locals would ultimately increase the quality of the smart city solution eventually proposed from this revised framework.
As we listened to today’s presentations from HCL, we could all see how complicated the technological development of a smart city actually is. From the company’s infosystem offerings and creating services and applications for infrastructure to its system for a unique, biometrically secured identification number, it was evident that the technological infrastructure for what we would consider “smart” is very elaborate. However, with the multiple perspectives we have received over the course of this trip in mind, many of us were skeptical at the necessity, social inclusion, and ramifications of HCL’s smart city presentation. When these concerns were voiced, Param Singh helped us to understand a collaborative framework for approaching the development of smart cities, which helped all of us gain a better understanding of how the process actually works. However, if I were to change Param’s framework, I would consider not making technology and the social/environmental/political aspects completely independent of each other as he showed on his diagram. In my opinion, what makes a city smart is the use of technology to better address social and environmental issues in the infrastructure and maintenance design of the city. This will enable us to better incorporate all of the ides we have learned over the course of this trip.
If there is a single takeaway from the HCL presentation and our conversation with San Francisco city’s urban planning consultant Param Singh, it would be that one model will not fit for all city types and industry sectors. The value of smart cities is the ability to create a system of systems that is horizontally implementable across vertical city silo’s and that increases communication between urban planners, government officials, and city residents. Despite its high-tech focus on e-governance software, public distribution system, ERP information systems, and UIDAI (the world’s largest citizenship identification program), HCL’s end goal is actually to provide basic amenities for all people 24/7. In particular, HCL has been a thought leader in driving financial inclusion in India with micro ATM and kiosk banking solutions, putting the power of financial control in the hands of the borrowers rather than the lenders.
There were a few most important conclusions I drew from the presentation. 1) Driving economic growth is equally important as providing welfare programs and ubiquitous access to basic services for the rural population. 2) Speedy and reliable e-governance software can both help residents in increasing the accessibility of basic services and support the government in generating revenue. The one point that I still doubted after leaving the conference room was HCL’s argument in support of the “trickle-down theory,” which implies that creating wealth for those who can afford and have the education to work in a city like GIFT will eventually trickle down into jobs for residents living below the poverty line. However, I believe that simply leaving this in the hands of the people, who alone cannot simply find their own affordable housing outside of the slums, enroll in skills development programs that do not have proactive outreach, and become employable automatically in smart cities. As part of the smart city ecosystem framework, there must be a detailed plan for government action to ensure that the wealth gap narrows rather than widens.
While I acknowledge that some shape or form of Param Singh’s framework is necessary to horizontally integrate smart cities, I hesitate to apply a single framework to the development of all smart cities. In order to make the framework as adaptive and versatile as possible, I would create a step-by-step process that first evaluates a city’s current “smartness” level, beginning with a different definition for “smart” depending on what the city. For example, does the city want to be a tech hub, a residential area, or a manufacturing-centric city? This ensures that cities do not need to feel compelled to cover all the categories, because their needs are different and may not need to exhaustively span standard policies, technology, and intelligent city design. The first step may be to formulate participative groups similar to what Param Singh was speaking about to aggregate empirical evidence on the direst needs of the local city residents. The second step would be to rank the voices, policies, types of city projects, IOT tech stack, macro factors, and city infrastructure by importance depending on the cities’ issues—the difference between where the city wants to be and where the city currently is. In cities as large and developed as San Jose and San Francisco, there are very different issues in different neighborhoods, which make a weighting system important in prioritizing different initiatives for each community. Finally, I would also decrease the emphasis on utilizing advanced technology to make the lives of city residents easier. The framework needs to include a cost-benefit analysis of the number of jobs created and lost as a result of technological implementation. This assessment would outline the cost of establishing social programs that would help the unemployed develop new skills needed for new jobs, and how much this would benefit the specialized economic activities of each city (ex: Dholera is manufacturing-based whereas GIFT city is a financial services hub).
The HCL presentation provided a look into the many types of technology that can be used to address social, environmental, and economic issues. HCL has developed technologies that are being used horizontally to improve the quality of life across many cities throughout India, and it has also developed targeted technology to address more specific needs. For example, HCL has addressed social and economic issues on a large scale through launching UIDAI, the world’s largest citizenship identity program. This program provides every member of society with a unique ID similar to a Social Security number. The 12-digit unique ID allows people to open bank accounts, provides governments with means to efficiently monitor attendance and track individuals, and serves many other indirect social purposes; for example, the ID number gives citizens a public identity and therefore makes them feel as though they are a part of the larger community. On the other hand, HCL addresses many issues through vertical solutions such as SAST, a health insurance platform for the government of Karnataka. This platform solved many health insurance issues the state was experiencing and significantly reduced the claim settlement period, resulting in many social and economic benefits. These two examples illustrate how innovative technologies can address both local and national issues and produce immediate benefits for all the stakeholders involved.
The framework suggested by Param Singh comprehensively covers many of the areas we will need to explore during the semester, but I think that it needs more organization and less buckets. For example, I do not think that technology should be its own bucket, but rather one of the potential solutions grouped with other types of investments, social and cultural initiatives, etc. Also, technology should only be addressed once the vision of the city is clearly understood, weights are applied to the different pain points and challenges, and technology is identified as one of the core solutions to these problems. This progression is necessary to ensure that we do not delve into the issues too quickly and lose sight of the bigger picture, and that we do not focus solely on technological solutions and neglect other solutions that may be in place within other local cities or communities within the city.
Our day today at HCL led us through a variety of services that HCL provides and through the integral role these services play in the development of SMART cities. Our speakers prefaced the discussion by defining SMART cities as those that include economic prosperity, quality of life, and participatory social engagement. HCL and its services contribute to this discussion by providing the infrastructure for digitalization and modernization.
One of the key challenges that came up through our discussion with HCL representatives and Mr. Param Singh was that there are different frameworks for different silos, and this is contributing to a lack of fluidity when talking about the different aspects for a smart city. For instance, our discussion of GIFT City focused mostly on the financial intention of the development, but we saw a need to also consider the socioeconomic and political implications of such a development in our discussion. This made us realize that our SMART city framework must incorporate a variety of macro factors, such as social, political, environmental, etc. As Mr. Singh later led us through this framework, he highlighted human centric design (HCD) as the backbone in any discussion regarding smart cities, which tied together many of our conversations from the past week.
Another takeaway from the HCL presentation was that the different infrastructures exist in different communities. For instance, India has a lot of focus on frugal innovation, because the needs and resources available in the community demand it so. Thus, when considering smart city frameworks, we will have to properly assess the community situation and then tailor the framework to those needs.
As an alternative framework to the one presented by Mr. Singh, I would also consider restructuring some of the factors. For instance, we can also look at smart cities with multiple flows, where the needs and current situation of the community feeds into some vision. Then, the vision branches to social, political, economic factors, which convenes onto some governance policy. This way, we can ensure that the vision encapsulates the needs of the community and the actual capabilities of those members.
1. From the first company, HCL brought up an important point that: economic prosperity + quality of life + social = competition. I found this very interesting because I have never looked at smart cities in this simplified way. This means that competition is the driving factor. I find this fascinating because India is not a very capitalist society, for example, there was no ATM in the airport. Additionally, I learned that HCL will be working on a cloud based hospital information system. This will allow for those below the poverty line to afford healthcare and would bring up all of the details of a patient to the branches. Continuing, HCL is working on standardizing documentation across India so that all a person needs is his number and bio evidence. Something else that I found really interesting about the talk from Param Singh was that it’s important to utilize the Internet of things network to create social change through his framework. I found an interesting point as well that one city solution will not fit all cities.
2. How would your framework be different than the one suggested by Param Singh in building of smart cities?
My framework would first be culture enveloping the entire framework. This is heavily important because although a city could be technologically advanced, it is important to incorporate a culture into its main idea because the essense of a culture is what brings in tourists, retains community happiness, and allows for a population to thrive. My framework is also a cyclical moment instead of a horizontal analysis stacking one on the other. The catalyst to my cycle is the social, economic, and political needs of a city. Following, the next part of the cycle would include the education and business sectors because they are the parts of society that actually tackle these issues. For example, education is a great example, like Google and most of Silicon Valley emerged because of its close location to prestigious universities (Standford and Cal) with deep ties and resources to open source innovation and entrepreneurship. Business is the second sector because businesses are constantly trying to innovate to stay afloat and create revenue for their businesses. They do this by addressing society’s needs- such as the social, political , and economic needs. A smaller circle that envelops both education and business would be the technology aspect of innovation because technology is a main driver of innovation across the world. Speiccially, this sector includes incubators, venture capitalists, and serial entrepreneurs. As humans progress, we rely heavily on education to get us where we need to be. The last part of the cycle is user participation. This is actually the most important part of the entire cycle because to implement any change, is it vital to have people, citizens using and applying the new technologies and changes. People must embrace the change. This cycle moves together and overlaps. This is the framework that I believe is best to implement. The difference between my framework and Piram’s framework is that my framework is one that is weaved together and is brought together in a non-horizontal way.
Today, we met with the marketing team at HCL, a leading IT and tech company in India. HCL’s data-driven products and presentation contextualized the business environment of smart cities within their greater framework. However, our greatest takeaway from today is the discussion on the social, political, environmental, and economic effects of smart cities. Specifically, how does the investment in and use of IoT contribute to issues like unemployment, wealth disparities, and gentrification? Fundamentally, there is a large difference between user (resident/citizen) needs in smart cities in India and the United States. The goal of all smart cities – in India, the U.S. and around the world – should be to leverage technology to make data-driven decisions to create and distribute value to all residents.
Today we visited HCL, India’s leading IT and technology company, to learn more about the company and its role as an innovator in a variety of industries. To lay the groundwork for our collaboration, HCL offered it’s definition of a smart city: “A smart city effectively delivers public services to citizens and businesses in an integrated and resource efficient way while enabling innovative collaborations to improve quality of life and grow the local and national economy.” Furthermore, we heard about HCL’s activity in providing software-based solutions, identity management services, and strategies for financial inclusion for all individuals. The presentation sparked a passionate and productive conversation between our team, HCL executives, and Param Singh. One of our key breakthroughs was that the two objectives of providing for the basic needs of citizens and implementing IoT solutions do not have to be mutually exclusive. In fact, it was clear that each party placed these goals at the heart of building smarter cities. Furthermore, we established that creating smart cities is a process. Just as we cannot have the iPhone 7 before the iPhone 6, we must progress incrementally toward more efficient cities. In regard to altering Param Singh’s framework, I would be sure to utilize a human-centric approach. While I understand that his framework includes a social component, I believe that a social and cultural focus is critical in ensuring that smart cities do not simply employ technological improvements in the short term, but that our innovation must incite continual and sustainable progress.
My key takeaway from the HCL presentation is that the 100 smart cities envisioned by Prime Minister Modi will all look and be different. Although that may seem obvious, we seem to have forgotten it as we have been trying to figure out the right framework for scaling the development of smart cities. At the end of our meeting with HCL, I realized that every city is different with different demographics and needs. Thus, frameworks are not one size fits all. We can develop one overarching general framework, but I now realize that each city—whether its differentiated by population size, demographics, or industry—will have a unique framework that cannot be applied to other cities. Another reason why a “one size fits all” framework is impractical is because rigid frameworks can stifle innovation. Instead of following a single framework, companies innovate through iteration. The example that was given was the iPhone. The sophistication of the iPhone 6 could not have come about without the iPhone 5, 4, and 3.
Param Singh’s framework is very comprehensive and includes many aspects that should be considered when developing a smart city like technology stack, cultural assessment, governance, policy, etc. His current framework is static and we do not necessarily know which aspects should be prioritized. I would change his current framework into a flowchart so that we can understand the sequence and relationships between the different stakeholders and entities.
Today we were introduced to the various smart city solutions that HCL provided to the government in terms of healthcare, manufacturing, transportation, logistics, telecom, and utilities. Mr. Vikram Garg provided a brief overview of the technology and how it works. One initiative in particular that I found very interesting was the UIDAI system (the largest citizen identification management system) and the Banking the Unbanked program which has proliferated throughout the Indian country with the help of HCL. Mr. Biswanath Sen Gupta reiterated that India, from villages to urban centers, strives on the mobile system. Villagers with Facebooks and Whatsapps but no running water. Paradoxes like these provide a market opportunity for mobile driven platforms and market penetration for profit as well as social good. For example, mobile banking provides an opportunity as such. Airtel, another partner we will visit can provide an opporutnity for that!
I believe that the key takeaway from the HCL presentation is that we can use these large technology companies to make our companies more efficient — but that does not define a smart city. As one of the executives pointed out, a city is not smart immediately — there is not one plan that can make a city smart overnight. A city must try, fail, and evolve in order for it to become smart. That said, Param Singh pointed out that we can’t just start with one company’s solution or a plan that only addresses one problem in a city — there must be a framework by which we analyze the problems at hand, the players and the audience affected, and create an sustainable and scalable plan from the collected data. My personal idea of a framework is something that ANY city can use and is horizontally designed so that it includes all affected parties (political, industrial, and citizens). Param discussed the importance of human centric design because ultimately the humans are the ones living in the city (not the tech companies pushing smart technologies). Therefore, I believe a framework should have a human centric survey, decision making, and proposal process at the forefront. My first step would be a survey to figure out the citizens’ idea (not the city officials’) of the social, political, and economic problems the city is facing and which ones they would like to see addressed the soonest. Second, I would create a centralized board of officials from each sector of city services, top private companies, academics, and social sector heads to look at the data and decide what problems they can reasonably address given the amount of funding available and political boundaries. After the problems to address have been decided, private companies should be allowed to propose their plans for addressing the problems and a corresponding business model that shows scalability, sustainability, and ROI for the city. After all proposals have been seen by the board, there should be a vote in which all members of the diverse board will choose the optimal proposal. That way, because of the diversity of members on the board and the use of private companies in a public-private partnership, a city looking to become smartER will choose the proposal that has the maximum benefit to the maximum amount of citizens at the maximum efficiency.
In recent years, HCL has pushed for a series of initiatives in attempt to address many of India’s social, political and economic issues while using innovative technology as a backbone mechanism to creating tangible changes. For example, HCL has looked to mitigate some of India’s security issues by developing and launching the UIDA system, now one of the world’s largest citizenship identity program. UIDA provides individuals with unique a multi-digit ID similar to the American social security number which will allow them to open bank accounts, sign contracts, and much more. UIDA integrates extra security measures such as requiring biometric authentication from ID holders. Simultaneously, the government will better be able monitor and track the activities of its citizens and decrease the possibility of historic crimes seen in the country such as identity theft, terrorism, and other. What I took away from the introduction of these solutions is that in the India, people are well aware of the social, economic, and political issues the country faces and have taken many steps to form creative solutions to address them. Creating new technologies is not the challenge. The real challenge is how to integrate these technology solutions seamlessly into the Indian society. In the past few days, I have noticed that India continues to be a very traditional country and experiences widespread polarization of wealth and socioeconomic status. The problem is how to convince ordinary citizens to adapt these technologies into their every day lives. The reality is that when people are working to make ends meet on a day-to-day basis, often times, they are not concerned nor interested in trying new technological solutions that may or may not increase their overall quality of life. The executives emphasized that education is the key to address that problem. Providing citizens with reasons to adapt these technologies and to convince them that these systems will improve their quality of life is the key to ensuring a successful adaptation in the country. The hard part not just in India but also throughout the world is what approaches should be taken to educate the population.
In addition to my first takeaway, during our meeting, I realized a stark difference in attitudes towards smart cities between the students and many of the executives of HCL that we met. During the Q&A session, a student asked about what the executives themselves thought of super-developed cities such as GIFT city. In the past few days, many of the students including myself have been cautiously optimistic and even slightly pessimistic about the conceptualized smart cities due to its perceived inability to deal with social, economic, and political issues such as bridging the wealth disparity gap. However, when asked, the executives did not seem to be as worried about that. They came to a general consensus that they were optimistic about GIFT city and believed that despite its focus on the financial and tech industry, the city will generate economic growth that in the long run will benefit those who have more underprivileged stances. For now, the priority was to innovate and ensure that India can continue to develop although they believed technological innovation and addressing social issues were not mutually exclusive. Since I came to India, it has perplexed me as to why we as students were consistently doubtful of the success of GIFT or other smart cities while top executives were consistently positive. After thinking about it , I realized that one explanation could be the difference in culture between Americans in general and the Indians. Coming from the United States, we have always known to be one of the most developed countries in the world. We, especially in the past few years, because we are so developed, have had the opportunity to focus on many of the social issues that infiltrate our society and thus place a higher emphasis on solutions to such issues. On the other hand, India is still very much in its development stage. While they are interested in addressing issues such as social inequality, they are also concerned in remaining innovative to remain competitive in the quickly changing world economy. Thus, it is my belief that the development of GIFT, to them is a representation of India’s progress in its overall stance in the world.
In the second half of the presentation, Param Singh walked through a very intricate framework for smart cities that took into account technology, social, economic, and political issues. However, there are a couple of changes I would make to the framework. First and foremost, I would adopt top-down framework for creating smart cities. I would first define what a “smart city” is for a particular region because the definition can alter from location to location. Then, I would delve into the city’s “smartness” goals. For example, does the city want to be a technological hub or a leading in environmental sustainability? Determining the “smart” goals of the city can be developed through surveying government interests as well as civilian interests. After deep analysis, I would come up with a comprehensive list of goals that are both ambitious yet achievable. I would then proceed to creating a metric that would evaluate how close the city is to achieving its ultimate goals. After the background evaluation, I would come up with a list of tangible projects based on the goals to initiate to move the city along. Lastly, one other thing that I would do differently from Param’s framework is to get rid of the “technology” section of the framework. I do not believe that technology should be its own section because technology should serve as an integral tool when addressing the needs and goals of the community. Focusing on technology itself is not enough to form a smart city.
Two critical pieces were determined following the meeting with HCL.
1. The definitions of smartness are entirely vast- more explanations than there are projects
2. Smartness can be divided into urban planning and IoT integration with automation
These understandings are extremely important in helping us to better define our scope and understand what our role is in terms of contributing to the implementation of initiatives. One example of how we can define our role is to develop a framework which can serve as a unifying mechanism for priorities and goals of critical stakeholders in implementing solutions. After Param introduced his framework, we were tasked to develop our own to fill in the holes after gaining more information and insight from India’s examples. I think moving forward, the most value we will add emerge in these areas of bringing together communication, collaboration and execution in projects.
On a localized scale, companies like HCL are extremely effective in executing these solutions. We learned of several success stories from the HCL team which use technology to solve problems with operational efficiency and better capture of data. The next step is thinking about financial sustainability and agency to scale these projects.
The ecosystem of HCL expanded beyond technology in 2010 to cover other focus areas such as information systems, healthcare, vocational education, and talent care. In building smart cities, HCL leverages its innovations to effectively deliver public services to citizens and businesses in an integrated and resource-efficient way. Coordinating with the initiatives of the national government, HCL simultaneously enables innovative collaboration to improve quality of life.
Providing both vertical services and solutions—including eGovernance, telecommunications, utilities, and defense—and horizontal services and solutions—including IT infrastructure and enterprise application services—HCL has developed numerous services and projects that are propelling cities into creating smartness. Relating to the framework suggested by Param Singh, HCL’s implementations contextualize the need for a multi-faceted concept. HCL has taken on the initiatives of enhancing the experience of citizens through integrated e-Governance solutions, cloud-based hospital information systems, smart transportation and logistics, and the like. Additionally, HCL is working to drive financial inclusion in India by “banking the unbanked” through the deliverance of banking services at an affordable cost to villages and low income areas. It puts together different entities such as the government, banks, technology partners, business correspondents, and the beneficiaries. As such, HCL works to promote economic growth and reduce income inequalities. Within the framework concept, HCL takes its vision in relation to the stakeholders involved and creates solutions via policy and technology to improve socioeconomic conditions.
What are the key takeaways from the HCL Presentation?
HCL’s role in developing smart cities in India is setting up IT powered infrastructures that provide cloud-based solutions. Most of HCL’s initiatives use smart card technology that enable easy/fast access, real time updates, and transferring of information. With the help of HCL, hospitals and pharmacies can easily find patients’ medical history, traffic checkpoint sites can quickly verify driver and car information, airports or DMVs can virtually pull identity data, and people can transfer and borrow money with very little fees. After listening to HCL’s impact stories, I realized that big technology companies play a huge role in transforming the quality of life in both underdeveloped and developing communities by making technology cheaply available to the masses.
How is my framework for building smart cities different from the one suggested by Param Singh?
Param’s smart city framework is an integrated framework that works down from vision, governance, and strategy to intelligent city planning and design. While my framework is an integrated framework that’s both vertical and horizontal, it starts with user needs / eco, socio, politico, and environ factors ultimately shaping the city’s vision. Once the vision is established, the city fulfills the vision through organized infrastructure and human-centric technology design. This process is repeated with the help of a feedback system as more needs and problems arise.
HCL has shown us that information technology can provide a solution to many of India’s basic infrastructure needs. In order to keep track of the population of the world’s largest democracy, HCL developed the UIDAI system for India, which provides a unique identifying number to each citizen to use to open a bank account, borrow money, keep track of medical records, obtain welfare benefits. etc. While functionally identical to social security numbers in the US, the key difference lies in the feature that whenever a citizen uses his unique number, he must biometrically verify his identity, which dramatically cuts down potential identity theft problems that usually come with the SSN. UIDAI is one technology that when made available at a low cost to the entire population, will streamline access to a wide variety of basic services to Indian citizens of nearly all socioeconomic statuses.
Mr. Singh’s framework covers a wide variety of social, cultural, technological, industrial, environmental, political, and economical issues to create smart cities. To improve the framework beyond a check list of issues to cover, I would introduce more structure to it. The analyst should first identify what kind of city the smart city should be, whether it be a financial hub, a tech city, or a haven for free trade. Then, identify the various stakeholders and prioritize the types of issues from Mr. Singh’s framework that are most relevant to these stakeholders. In this way, the analyst can customize the framework for the city he is looking at.