Smart City. Open Source Solutions
Open Source for Municipality and Local government
Smart City
A smart city is a technologically modern urban area that uses different types of electronic methods and sensors to collect specific data. Information gained from that data is used to manage assets, resources and services efficiently; in return, that data is used to improve operations across the city. This includes data collected from citizens, devices, buildings and assets that is processed and analyzed to monitor and manage traffic and transportation systems, power plants, utilities, urban forestry, water supply networks, waste, criminal investigations, information systems, schools, libraries, hospitals, and other community services.
Smart cities are defined as smart both in the ways in which their governments harness technology as well as in how they monitor, analyze, plan, and govern the city. In smart cities, the sharing of data is not limited to the city itself but also includes businesses, citizens and other third parties that can benefit from various uses of that data.
The smart city concept integrates information and communication technology (ICT), and various physical devices connected to the Internet of things (IOT) network to optimize the efficiency of city operations and services and connect to citizens. Smart city technology allows city officials to interact directly with both community and city infrastructure and to monitor what is happening in the city and how the city is evolving. ICT is used to enhance quality, performance and interactivity of urban services, to reduce costs and resource consumption and to increase contact between citizens and government.
Smart city applications are developed to manage urban flows and allow for real-time responses. A smart city may therefore be more prepared to respond to challenges than one with a conventional “transactional” relationship with its citizens.
Open Source Solutions
Many municipal, local and regional authorities are involved in open source software and communities.
The following are just some of the resources that can help municipal and local departments and agencies understand the value of open source software and how these agencies can collaborate and implement similar initiatives to create the best value for their citizens and municipal and local governments.
If each Mayor’s Office develops its own website and/or IT solutions, then this leads to excessive consumption of resources and, in addition, puts an additional burden on local and municipal budgets.
The ultimate goal is to create an IT strategy for a “typical site or solution of municipality, where, in addition to functionality, security issues and work with sites on mobile devices, including the availability of mobile applications, would also be taken into account.
If there were a functional standard site or solution, then the City Hall, in addition to hosting, would have to maintain the content of the site up to date.
Digital technologies in Civic Tech and GovTech.
Moldova joins the Digital Public Goods Alliance.
Open Source for Government
Many local, regional, and national governments are engaged with open source software and communities. Below are only a few resources that may help departments and agencies understand the value of open source software and development communities within the public sector, as well as how public institutions can engage with, and implement similar initiatives to realize the greatest returns for their citizens and governments.
The Government Open Data Portal in Moldova.
Also see:
1) Strategy “Chisinau – Smart City” 2030 – A concept of modernization through digitalization of several components of the Chisinau City Hall activity.
2) UNDP Moldova: project Moldova Sustainable Green Cities.
3) EU regional and urban development: Smart cities program и City initiatives
4) Open Source for Government
Recommendations.
If any of the solutions interests you, or you think that it has a good perspective for development, or you can adapt the software to the needs of citizens, authorities, businesses or NGO-s in Moldova, then you can:
- submit suggested improvements as Pull Requests (GitHub), or
- publish the modification as your own Fork (Github) for users with similar preferences.
1. International Solutions
| # | Open Source Solution | Web | Licence |
| 1 | opencivicdata / scrapers-us-municipal Scrapers for US municipal governments. Source for municipal scrapers. To find out more about the ins and outs of these scrapers, as well as how to create your own, head on over to docs.opencivicdata.org’s scraping page. |
opencivicdata.info | MIT |
| 2 | OpenUpSA / municipal-data API and website for exploring municipal financial performance. |
municipalmoney.gov.za/ | MIT |
| 3 | City-of-Helsinki / helsinki-design-system Components, principles, documentation and templates for the City of Helsinki design system. |
no website | MIT |
| 4 | City-of-Helsinki / open-city-app Mobile app for open cities built with React Native. |
no website | MIT |
| 5 | govflow / govflow An open, modular work order and workflow management system for local government and residents. |
https://govflow.org/ | MIT |
| 6 | govflow / govflow An open, modular work order and workflow management system for local government and residents. |
https://govflow.org/ | MIT |
