50% smart city citizens may voluntarily share personal data, Gartner says

In accordance with the fast growing technology dependency, a report by Gartner on Thursday said that nearly 50% people living in smart cities will voluntarily share personal data by 2019.

“…Gartner predicts that by 2019, 50% of citizens in million-people cities will benefit from smart city programs by voluntarily sharing their personal data. The volume and diversity of the data generated by citizens will continue to grow in line with the proliferation of consumer devices and the IoT,” the report said.  

It further added, “The rapid pace of technological and societal change has given government CIOs a new sense of urgency and a willingness to experiment with smart city and open data initiatives.”

Gartner also pointed out that 20% of all local government organizations will generate revenue from value-added open data through data marketplaces by 2020.

Anthony Mullen, research director at Gartner said, “As citizens increasingly use personal technology and social networks to organize their lives, governments and businesses are growing their investments in technology infrastructure and governance. This creates open platforms that enable citizens, communities and businesses to innovate and collaborate, and ultimately provide useful solutions that address civic needs."

Benefits of data sharing were also cited in the report through government and commercial collaboration.

“As this hyperconnectivity picks up pace, however, citizens will become more aware of the value of their "life data" and will be willing to proactively exchange it for "in the moment" value,” the report added.

Volume of machine-readable data generated on how citizens interact with government and their city will rapidly grow, creating a huge opportunity to develop open data portals that can increase efficiency, improve citizen experience, drive innovation and generate revenue for government organizations, the report said.

"Open data portals in cities are not a new thing, but many portals today have limited machine readability and therefore limited business value," said Bettina Tratz-Ryan, research vice president at Gartner. "The city becomes 'smart' when the data is collected and governed in a way that can produce valuable real-time streams, rather than just backward-looking statistics or reports."

Citing that some cities have already built data marketplaces the report named, Copenhagen’s Data Exchange, Utah and Singapore’s partnership with Amazon Echo and Microsoft respectively for public services.

“The next step in building a true marketplace is to present and orchestrate this data for more business-oriented benefits,” the report said.

Ryan further added, "Users will have a number of options to 'pay' for data access depending on the use case. A normal citizen may simply participate via data democracy and have free access in return for providing their own data, whereas commercial use may require sharing revenue with the data owner, or buying a license to access an enriched data source."