THE #SMARTCITIES: A PRIORITY OF THE WALLOON DIGITAL PLAN... AND THE NRB GROUP

The "Digital Wallonia plan: The Digital Strategy Plan of Wallonia" was adopted at the beginning of 2016 with a lot of expectations and initiatives. It is the result of work that began several months earlier through the exercise of "Digital spring" that mobilised a large number of both private and public Walloon stakeholders.

Digital Wallonia is an ambitious plan that is part of a desire to push Wallonia to a 4.0 revolution and thereby make it a connected and intelligent territory. One of the first positive points of the plan is its bottom-up approach that takes note of traditional methods of public action which can sometimes be obsolete. Thus, a place for collaboration, co-creation, and ecosystems!

With this plan, Wallonia has the desire to play the role of a catalyst and facilitator in order to share the effort with cities and municipalities in the region.

The NRB Group is enthusiastic about this plan and is committed to playing an important role as part of the digital transformation of the Walloon territory. It is noted that the Walloon Region will need some major industrial players at its side to be able to gather together and implement several important programmes in an industrial manner.

The theme of the #SmartCities is an important part of this digital plan with a specific budget of 26 million euros. Initially, there is an important aspect related to the infrastructure and broadband and Wi-Fi equipment in our schools, industrial areas, and DPS (Digital Public Spaces). It is indeed an essential building block; new ways of learning such as e-learningplatforms require, for example, significant bandwidth.

Beyond the infrastructure aspect, it is encouraging to see the Walloon government being part of a federalist and regional approach in building and promoting a "SmartRegion". The ambition is to build a common technology platform that will allow cities and towns to build both cross-platform solutions related to issues such as energy and mobility, but also the ability to develop specific projects that reflect the originality and specificity of each city or town. The chemistry between centralisation and specificity will no doubt be the key to the success of the programme.

The broad guidelines of the Walloon digital policy regarding the SmartCities are the following:

Modernisation of public services

A primary ambition of Wallonia is to transform the public service with innovations and the digital opportunities. NRB also calls for making digital technology a cornerstone of the modernisation of public services and redefining its processes. The E-Counter solution of our subsidiary Civadis that came into operation inBrussels at the start of the year not only has a very nice interface for the citizen, who no longer has to move, but above all it is completely automated and does not require the involvement of an employee. Thus ends the pseudo e-counter that only sent an email to the municipal administration. In a few months, it will be possible to transmit more than 70 different types of documents this way.

Recourse to open data  

Developing a culture of data is also an issue identified by the Walloon Region in its digital plan. The dynamics that can lead to the development of open data solutions can be extremely beneficial to the start-ups ecosystem because they no longer have to knock on the door of each agency to use their data. One of the biggest challenges related to this issue will probably be change management. It will prove necessary to ensure that the sharing of data from a public entity (or even private entities) is perceived as a positive element with high value added for all the citizenry.

These stated intentions will only become reality if all of the public sector employees and politicians receive education about and fully integrate the new requirements (and opportunities) related to the digital age.

We are at the dawn of an ambitious plan that brings digital technology to the centre of "public affairs" with its set of challenges, fears and, above all, opportunities.

It is in this context and on the occasion of the 2016 Managers’ Exhibition that we, the NRB Group, in order to show our commitment to the #SmartCities approach for the cities and towns, are starting this blog on the subject. We hope you enjoy the content and become an avid reader. We also invite you to subscribe to our #SmartCities newsletter in the box on the right side of this page.