Session 6
Room: Regent
Session title: Data Enabled Transportation: A call for public private collaboration
Presenter name: Jackey Liu
Presenter email: jackey.liu@here.com
Notes/Summary:
This session deep dove into the some of the key challenges in creating better access to data. Disruptive benefits for cities include everything alleviating congestion, leveraging ride sharing, utilizing real-time information for public transport services or even access to parking information. While open data portals exist, many common challenges were expressed across both councils, academia and the private sector relating to the challenges of creating common standards for data collection, the need for scale yet consistency, privacy concerns, and accessibility standards. For local governments who are often under resourced both in terms of skills and funding it is often hard to prioritise data collection and analysis and there is often a reluctance to share data even though it may result in long term benefits. Examples from Scandinavia such as the app Whim, provide good examples of where governments are mandating technology providers to register their data sets, implement open APIs and allow researchers to access data even from private companies.
Two examples from Australia stood out. AURIN provided several examples of dealing with diverse data sets and working with local governments to clean up data sets and make them publicly accessible. A second example explored the Gold coast consortium of councils who collectively prioritised how they could look at integrating existing data about parking into a more cohesive framework for smart city management of their local challenges. The workshop concluded with a consensus that data is only useful at scale and with the collaboration of government, private sector, and citizens.