ASCA establishes three smart city work groups

The Australian Smart Communities Association (ASCA) has established three new work groups aimed at fostering collaboration between cities, private industry and the R&D community.

The three new work groups are focused on smart city standards, funding and procurement, and city-industry collaboration respectively.

ASCA Executive Officer Paul Budde, the CEO of telecoms research and consultancy company BuddeCom, said in a blog post that the main focus of the standards work group will be interoperability.

Funding and procurement is meanwhile “perhaps the single most difficult issue to tackle in smart cities, [and] current models are not suited to the collaborative nature of smart cities”, he noted. The rigid procurement systems will need to be modified to address future smart city projects.

Finally, the city liaison work group will seek to determine the best way for cities and industry to collaborate on smart city initiatives, he said.

“What are the expectations of collaboration from each group? And how do we create paths that can be replicated around the country? Content-wise each city will be different, but what would be the best model for successful collaboration?”

The work group is working with three local councils to identify what collaboration models will work in the future.

ASCA is also considering holding a work group on regulations, Budde added.

ASCA is holding its annual conference, the Telstra Australian Smart Communities Conference, in Adelaide in late May. The three-day event will involve at least 40 speakers, 16 sessions including panel discussions, workshops and demonstrations, as well as site tours and exhibitions.

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