Smart cities focus on the most pressing needs and the greatest opportunities to improve the quality of life for its local society. A city is suitable to be called as a smart one if it’s efficient, sustainable, and also livable. A smart city integrates user-friendly technologies into everyday life to fulfill our needs and help us reach more opportunities.
For the last few years, Indonesia has been putting much effort to build as many smart cities as they can. Traffic jam, natural disaster and maximizing public transportation sector have always been the main issue in many cities in Indonesia. All these problem will be hard to solve unless the government has an integrated solution to cover these problem simultaneously, and that’s where the smart city solution comes in. Our government hopes that it will not only help them solve urgent problems, but at the same time improve the life quality of its citizen. The role of IT industry has much increased since then. But how exactly the role of IT industry can help the implementation of the smart city?
A Communication Bridge between Government and Community
These days, when people find there is something wrong with certain issues, they take it to the internet. And it helps that most government institutions now have at least one social media handle, which allows us to express our concern or complaining about certain issues. See, this is one way where IT industry is able to play a role as a communication bridge between the government and local society. The communication process has become easier and more flexible than anything before.
One of the excellent examples of IT utilization for a smart city is the implementation of Government Interactive Response Center (GIRC) in Jakarta. Delivered by Blue Power Technology (part of CTI Group) and IBM, GIRC is a technology with a smart combination of emergency management, sensor, and video analytics that enables us to receive real-time information and data. That way, the government is able to take immediate action when there’s an emergency, as well as taking feedbacks from anyone.
GIRC uses Emergency Management as its main device. There’s a dashboard with complete information about emergency situations and recommendations. You’ll find options for human resources and tools that can be used to handle a certain emergency. You can even identify if there’s a linkage possibility between some particular events.
It turns out that such action has actually been implemented in Surabaya since 2002, with the concept of e-government and e-procurement. Those technologies allow the local government to monitor Surabaya from any aspects. In fact, last September, there was a meeting between Komisi Pemberantas Korupsi (KPK) and all mayors of Indonesian cities. They’re finally, officially agreed to implement the e-government concept. KPK even thanked Surabaya for their willingness to hand over the concept so the other local governments can also implement it.
And if you have heard about Informasi Banjir Online (Online Flood Information) application, it’s also a great example of how technology can even help saving lives. The application has a flood sensor that is able to measure water height in real time. The data, then, will be sent to the Command Center and broadcasted to the entire city. And since it’s real time, the government institutions can take immediate action to respond the information.
We are looking a bright opportunity where technology is highly able to help communities narrow the gap with bureaucracy, and at the same time helping city governments to get a more accurate picture of what is really happening in their city.
Smarter, More Streamlined, Cost Effective Citizen Processes
Technology platforms like Business Process Management (BPM) and Enterprise Content Management (ECM) will enable various government institutions of the city to manage their process in an efficient and cost-effective way. For example, there’s a smart parking system in which the parking sensor is placed in some public parking spots. This technology enables the city government to monitor and manage the local income from parking activity. It also allows us to know if there are available parking spots in certain areas. Pretty neat, right?
Not only does it provide a positive contribution to the community, the IT industry itself will experience a massive growth. As the smart city continues to thrive and the number of smart cities in Indonesia increases, IT industry will create an unlimited amount of opportunity in its business. As a leading distributor and provider of infrastructure and IT solutions in Indonesia, CTI Group encourages all Indonesian IT companies to work hand-in-hand to support our cities to become a smart city and improve life quality of the nation. To find out how we can help you, please check our latest solution of Solution eCatalogue.
