Led by Outcomes

What are the outcome(s) that you want to achieve? This should be aligned with current Mayoral strategies and with your own local strategies and plans. It is important that you start from a point of identifying what your local needs are, rather than starting with a technical solution that you try to retrofit to a local situation. As the local authority you will know what your needs are, and will often be a combination of evidence based priorities and political priorities. 

​

Commissioning Cycle – Once you know your outcomes, you should then familiarise yourself with the basic commissioning cycle for local government and best practice surrounding this process. There are many sources for this, a good one is the Local Government Associations guide here, specifically page 7.

User centred design – putting needs of the end user at the centre of how a solution is design will improve how well that solution works and how long it can operate for. There is a very good explanation of what this is from Bloomberg.

​

There is a useful guide to how to approach user centred design here with links to a number of sources.

There is a useful guide to the roles of user centred design specialists here.

​

You should always strive towards equitable outcomes – IoT should be used to benefit all Londoners. COVID-19 has shown how new technology can further disadvantage those who are already disadvantaged, especially those that do not have access to technology. This highlights the importance of digital inclusion in any technology based solution. DCMS provide a good toolkit for digital inclusion.

​

Co-design and collaborate

Ethical and Transparent

Protect people’s privacy

Stakeholders – Identify who you need to involve in the design of your solution. Ideally you want a mix of public / private and academic experts and also to involve those who will use the solution once it is commissioned. A good guide to this can be found in this BEIS guide to stakeholder engagement.

​

Ethics - The government has its Data Ethics Framework. In addition, DCMS’s Data Ethics Template lays out these principles in detail which IoT framework should tailor for London/IoT specific processes.

Data Protection Impact Assessment (DPIAs) – We recommend that you conduct a DPIA for each solution you commission and publish the DPIA online. Detailed guidance on what this is and how to do one is available from the Information Commissioner's Office. You can use or adapt their sample DPIA template.

​

​

Co-design – There are many ways to codesign a solution with those who will use the end product. A good guide from Australian government on how to approach this can be found here.

Transparency – There are many example of where government opens itself up to citizens and shares its activities. In London, the GLA have the Smart London Trello board and also Talk London.

Data sharing and storage - We recommend that you create data sharing agreements and data storage guidelines from the outset. A good example of this is the ICO Data sharing code of practice, specifically pages 25, 93 and 98.

​

​

Privacy by design principles are a good place to explore how to build privacy into a solution, albeit they may be a bit high level for some projects. For a more detailed approach you can look at DCMS guidance on IoT

​

​

Safe and Resilient 

Compatible and Consistent

Positive Environmental Impact

Cyber security – Free support for local authorities from NCSC.

​

You should utilise the free information and resources from the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) for the public sector on cyber security, including, secure by default guidance, how to develop apps, setting up secure systems, reporting systems for phishing emails and a Toolkit for Board discussions (pdf here).

Open and Agile Smart Cities – (OASC) is a non-profit, international smart city network that have established Minimal Interoperability Mechanisms (MIMs) , a set of common (realtime) APIs to access data, context information to structure data, and a common, but optional, data platform to store and serve data. The OASC MIMs are an evolving set of technical mechanisms selected from a baseline of global best-practice, driven by implementation in the member cities of the network, and feeding into standardisation activities such as ETSI, ISO, and ITU.

​

Sustainable technology – You need to ensure that the technology you eventually procure not only delivers outcomes that are sustainable and low carbon, but that the tech itself is sustainable (i.e. planned obsolescence, amount of energy used to run and store data etc). A good place for support in doing this are the European Unions Green Public Procurement Handbook and the UK Governments selection of sustainable procurement tools.

​

London's Resilience Strategy – Sets out London's priorities for resilience, including Cyber Security.

British Standards Institute – The BSI have some existing standards and tools to help cities design and implement smart city services. The BSI is also looking to launch a project called Future Cities to build on these tools and improve them, making them more city needs focused.

​