SMALL CITIES CAN BE SMART CITIES!

The term “smart city” has become widely used over the past couple of years. The main goal of the “smart city” initiative is to enable cities to manage their assets efficiently, in order to improve the lives of its citizens. How? By integrating information and communication technologies, including Internet of Things (iOT) solutions, in a secure and sustainable way.

There are various researchers that rank “smart cities”, locally and world-wide. In an international ranking study (IESE Cities in Motion Index) NY, Paris and London ranked at the top of the list. This was based on multiple parameters, including economy, technology, human capital, social cohesion, international outreach, the environment, mobility and transportation, urban planning, public management and governance.

The goal of building a smart city is to improve the quality of life for the citizens by using technology. It should allow city officials to interact directly with the community, the city infrastructure and to monitor what is happening in the city. But the question is, can small cities become smart cities too?

BETTER CONNECT WITH CITIZENS – SUPPORTING MOBILE

Following the smart city guidelines and becoming a “smart city” is a long and expensive process that requires high investment in human resources. For many municipalities it is even impossible to plan or implement such a process.

But there are a few changes and improvements that every municipality can implement in order to better interact with the community and improve its service. One is to connect with citizens via mobile.

As consumers, mobile accessibility seems to be obvious. However, the truth is that public sector services severely lack mobile presence and functionality. In a worse-case scenario, we are still forced to call or send a fax (?!) for any action we wish to take; and with cities that are little more advanced we are forced to use old technologies such as Silverlight or flash, that are not even supported on mobile devices.

CITY CIO? MAKE YOUR SERVICES AVAILABLE ON MOBILE!

Mobile has become our first screen, and this is why it can no longer be ignored. If it’s your municipality’s website, your bill-pay application, your city services website, or your schools and libraries application – finally you can easily make them all accessible on mobile.

Over the last few years Zuznow has developed and deployed a one-of-kind platform that helps organizations to easily convert their existing web-applications to all mobile devices, both for mobile-web surfing and for native app download.

Using a propriety technology based on AI, Zuznow manages to automate the entire process, reducing time to market and costs of mobile projects by more than 90%! No API is required, and the solution can run in the cloud or on-site.

With great success in the finance industry, Zuznow is now offering unique solutions for municipalities who are ready to go mobile. Municipalities that are not willing to compromise on the process or the result will find the Zuznow solution very appealing.