This document discusses sharing resources and applications between communities to scale smart city initiatives. It argues that sharing is key to overcoming limitations in resources and expertise for individual communities. The document outlines a playbook for shared smart city applications that involves identifying problems, stakeholders, and solutions. It provides examples of applications like low-latency video streaming and underground infrastructure monitoring that have been successfully shared across multiple partner communities. Finally, it discusses elements needed for intentional and sustainable sharing between strategic partner communities.

1. Won’t You be My Neighbor – Sharing as a key to
scaling
Scott Turnbull
Smart Gigabit Communities
Scott.turnbull@us-ignite.org, @streamweaver,,
@us_ignite, https://us-ignite.org

2. 501c(3) Based on Washington DC & Working Nationally
Founded in 2012 with inspiration from National Science
Foundation and Whitehouse OSTP
Accelerate The Smart City Movement
Creating scalable P3 partnerships
Addressing the complexities of modern deployments through
common practices
Create pipelines for local innovators
Raise visibility of funding opportunities, regional partnerships

3. US Ignite Diverse Initiatives
PAWR & Data Exchange
US Ignite Forum
Smart Gigabit Communities
“Fight every battle, every where, always …” - Littlefinger, Game of Thrones

4. Adelaide
Salt Lake City
Richardson
Austin
Lafayette
NC Ignite
Kansas City
Flint
Madison
Urbana-Champaign
Cleveland
Burlington
Washington
Albuquerque
Jackson
ChattanoogaPhoenixSan Diego
Colorado
Springs
Eugene-
Springfield
San Francisco
Las Vegas
Lincoln
Lexington
Red Wing Vaughan, CA

5. Why Share Between Communities at
all?
Expectations of the world ahead are high:
Impending “service gap” poised to divide communities even further
Stakes for under-prepared workforce and lack of exposure is dire
Resources are low:
Every community can’t adopt a Data Scientist, Chief Privacy Officer, Chief Data Officer,
Smart Transportation Team, …… (on and on and on)
Focus on technology and not people:
Lack of engagement often number one reason for failure of smart city projects
“Community is not a problem for technology to solve, technology is a tool for communities to
use.”

6. Playbook for Shared Smart City
More or less the same as your typical Smart City Application
◦ Start with the specific causal problem you want to address, drill beyond ’High Level’
◦ Take the vision and immediately involve professionals who study it and can identify specific issues
◦ Strong role here for University researchers, Civil Servants, Non-profit leaders
◦ Charter a group of community movers and shakers
◦ Identify resources & implementers, break down blockers, Connect with end users
◦ Find your champions
◦ Wrangle everyone above, maintain focus on the issue.
◦ The help find the adaptors, define measures of success.
◦ Empower your adopters, people who connect the end users to the solution
◦ Engage your implementers
Now Leverage Sharing
◦ Extend the champions role to connect to other communities
◦ Have a mechanism to deeply engage with other communities with similar problems (more than
conferences)
◦ Develop the discipline for regular environmental surveys of the problem space.

7. Sharing starts with practice
Most direct and easiest form of sharing
◦ Best Practices can be available but to create actionable practice need significant drill down
◦ Standards are published a-plenty, but traction is still difficult.
Barriers still remain
◦ Lack of empowered adopters within communities
◦ Still largely grassroots effort without clear benefit and buy in at higher level and with end users
Examples within US Ignite ecosystem
◦ 10 city partnership to create data exchange
◦ The world of data too large, starting with economic development data
◦ Significant work (nearly a year) gone into buy in, examining practices, planning and implementation
◦ Shared workload across units keeps individual commitments down.
◦ Still need a central point to coordinate all the effort, outcomes, and work
◦ Itself a partnership with ATIS

8. Shared Services and Applications
Rubber meets the road, attempt to make a direct impact in the community
Best when bi-directional
◦ Relationships with other partner communities to create pipeline for local enterers outward.
◦ Pathway into the community for services/applications with proven impact externally
Create a feedback loop for success
◦ Success creates further opportunities or refines practices
◦ Aggregating services with similar central concerns (privacy, etc) allows development of shared
policies as well.
The usual suspects still difficult to manage
◦ COST! New revenue streams are unlikely so new services are enabled by prior work in cost
savings and capacity building
◦ Legacy workflows/systems, stake skillsets, analysis paralysis, etc all still difficult

9. Elements of Shared Success
SHARED CHARACTERISTICS
Have communities of intention
◦ Strategic leaders explicit about needs to
address
◦ Foster entrepreneurs and empower adopters
Mechanism to connect with other
communities
◦ Some forum to contact, question, and advise
◦ Active in building community bridges
Have a means of hosting and delivery
◦ Digital Town Square
FALLACIES
Not Open Source Software
◦ If you build it, they will not notice (by
yourself)
Not Mobile Applications
◦ There is no controlled platform for
deployment
Commercialism will solve this alone
◦ A product to sell isn’t sufficient
Solutions will arise to meet a need
◦ A problem to solve isn’t going to address
itself

10. LOLA
Service
◦ Low Latency audio/visual streaming
◦ Permissive (not OSS) use community.
◦ Requires partners for remote collaborative
performances.
◦ Shared in over 20 communities
Setup
◦ Ultra low latency connection < 20ms
◦ +hardware both ends(camera, audio)
◦ Performers!
People
◦ Performers (again), AV Engineers
◦ Teachers or community organizers
◦ Network Engineers for VLANs

11. Underground Infrastructure
Monitoring
Service
◦ Scanning of underground pipes/conduit (Mix of OSS
and Proprietary)
◦ Low energy ground penetrating radar
◦ AI driven off-site analytic engine
◦ AR visualization for city planners
◦ Shared in 7 communities so far
Setup
◦ Transportation of radar, field equipment
◦ High bandwidth/low latency connection
◦ Engineers
People
◦ Civil Engineers from city
◦ Scanning crew
◦ Technical staff for AR/VR
◦ Network Engineers for VLAN

12. Electronic Double Up Food Bucks
Service
◦ Digital aid to double for SNAP purchases
◦ Phone based recommendation engine
◦ Real-time high accuracy tracking in store, linked to
service database.
Setup
◦ Device is simple, a phone!
◦ Connect state wide SNAP program to system
◦ Connect vendor inventory DB to system
◦ Promote to community.
People
◦ Database engineers
◦ Vendors
◦ Recipients
◦ SNAP program managers

13. Anatomy of community application
sharing
LOCAL ONE OFF/HAPPY ACCIDENT
Identify the need & target audience
Survey environment for solutions
Coordinate setup and execution
Manage stake-holders
INTENTIONAL & SUSTAINABLE (US
IGNITE SGC APPROACH)
Strategic Planners
◦ Steering Group, critical for removing blockers
Partner Community
◦ 27+ Smart Gigabit Communities
◦ US Ignite events foster relationships (monthly demos,
summit, one on one calls, etc)
Funding/Cost Recovery
◦ Grant/Partnership matching
Solution Discover & Coordination
◦ Application Database
◦ Foster Development Community
Consistently Deliver Service
◦ Digital Town Square

14. Local Acceleration
01
02
03
04
Broadband access, Gigabit access,
Edge Computing, Mount Points, etc.
Infrastructure
Start-up accelerators, researchers,
Developers, hackathon, Reverse
Pitches, etc.
Innovation Ecosystem
Data policy advocates, community
connectors, operational visionaries, etc.
Champions
Services that don’t stop at municipal lines,
increase impact, increase skill base, etc.
Regional Partnerships

15. Regional Acceleration
5
4
3
2
1
Purchase Consortiums,
sharing local resources,
P3 negotiations, etc.
Partnerships
Data sharing,
interoperability, privacy,
P3 agreements, etc.
Policies
Expand reach of
services, streamlined
pathways, aggregate
market, etc.
Access
Crime reduction,
transportation efficiency,
educational access, etc.
Goals
Attract businesses,
access to markets,
shape national policy,
etc.
National Partners

16. Shape national policy, inform
or adapt to standards, bring
regional needs to national
dialog.
Influence
Implement what works and
focus on your unique needs,
shared expertise, etc.
Practices
Attract businesses &
investors, connections with
grants and foundations,
Reach
Interoperability on a
national level
Ecosystem
National/Global
Acceleration

17. Thank You
scott.turnbull@us-ignite.org
@streamweaver
https://www.us-ignite.org/
@us_ignite