Most people, including many readers of this article, live in cities. Revolutionizing cities may seem like it is not an IT or technical issue, but smart sustainable cities are important for IT professionals. Why is revolutionizing cities relevant to IT communities and society as a whole? Because information technology has been and can be a strategic resource not only to transform a city into a smart city or a smart sustainable city, but also to transform citizens’ lives.
As the body responsible for city IT governance, the city board must include this new model as part of the city’s context and the stakeholders’ needs. But the city board is a stakeholder, too. It needs adequate information about the extent to which IT can help to achieve city goals to support its governance activities of evaluating, setting direction and monitoring. So, goals and metrics for IT in the unique city context are required. This need can be satisfied by selecting, connecting and aligning goals and metrics from COBIT 5 and other relevant publications and producing a single, useful matrix of IT-related goals for smart sustainable cities.
Cities, Smart Cities and Smart Sustainable Cities
The definition of “city” has evolved and IT has been an enabler for that evolution. A city is defined as an urban geographical area with one (or several) local government and planning authorities.1
A smart sustainable city (SSC) is an innovative city that uses information and communication technologies (ICTs) and other means to improve quality of life, efficiency of urban operation, and services and competitiveness, while ensuring that it meets the needs of present and future generations with respect to economic, social, environmental and cultural aspects.2 A smart city applies the new generation of information technologies, such as the Internet of Things (IoT), cloud computing, big data and space/geographical information integration, to facilitate the planning, construction, management and smart services of the city.3
A city’s stakeholders are city inhabitants, government and regulators, the private sector, IT manufacturers and vendors, the international and national investment community, and other cities and nations and their boards and executive managers.
Customizing COBIT 5’s IT-Related Goals and Metrics for Smart Sustainable Cities
The COBIT 5 goals cascade is the mechanism to translate stakeholder needs into specific, actionable and customized organizational goals, IT-related goals and enabler goals.4 It also includes a list of sample metrics for each IT-related goal. Boards and executive managers should review the list, decide on relevant and achievable metrics for their own environments, and design their own scorecard systems.5
Cities establish their goals and metrics with different parameters. For example, according to the United Nations Habitat’s City Prosperity Index, there are five dimensions of prosperity that could be considered: productivity, infrastructure development, quality of life, equity and social inclusion, and environmental sustainability.6 Like ISACA and COBIT 5, some important international organizations considered it desirable for cities to be able to quantify their achievement according to their goals and have published very useful publications. For example:
- The Key Performance Indicators Related to the Use of Information and Communication Technology in Smart Sustainable Cities standard by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU)7
- The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Science Technology and Industry Scoreboard 2017: The Digital Transformation publication8
- Global Indicator Framework for the Sustainable Development Goals and Targets of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development9
- The New Urban Agenda, which represents a shared vision for a better and more sustainable future, one in which all people have equal rights and access to the benefits and opportunities that cities can offer and in which the international community reconsiders the urban systems and physical form of urban spaces to achieve this10
It is worthwhile to try to connect and merge these different resources to obtain a list of IT-related goals and metrics for SSCs, considering the balanced scorecard (BSC)11 dimension as COBIT 5 does. Some metrics are the same for cities as they are for businesses and can, therefore, be taken from COBIT 5. In other cases, a broader or different perspective is required because SSCs include social, economic and environmental aspects.
By connecting and integrating COBIT 5 with these different resources, a sample version of COBIT 5’s IT-related goals for smart sustainable cities, as shown in figure 1, can be obtained.
Conclusion
SSCs, the New Urban Agenda, sustainability and so many other topics are stakeholders’ needs and city requirements, but, more than anything, they are human responsibilities.
ICT facilitates the transition from cities to SSCs and city boards and executive managers have an important role in evaluating, directing and monitoring the achievement of this transition. For this, they not only have to give support, they also need tools, such as a customized version of COBIT’s IT-related goals and metrics to help them accomplish their activities.
Endnotes
1 International Telecommunication Union, “Overview of Key Performance Indicators in Smart Sustainable Cities,” ITU-T Recommendations, Rec.ITU-T Y.4900/L.1600 (06/2016), www.itu.int/itu-t/recommendations/rec.aspx?rec=12627
2 Ibid.
3 International Organization for Standardization (ISO)/International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC), “Smart Cities, Preliminary Report 2014,” ISO/IEC JTC 1, 2015, www.iso.org/iso/smart_cities_report-jtc1.pdf
4 ISACA, COBIT 5, USA, 2012, https://www.isaca.org/resources/cobit
5 ISACA, COBIT 5: Enabling Processes, USA, 2012 , https://www.isaca.org/resources/cobit
6 International Telecommunication Union, “Key Performance Indicators Related to the Use of Information and Communication Technology in Smart Sustainable Cities,” ITU-T Recommendations, Rec. ITU-T Y.4901/L.1601 (06/2016), www.itu.int/ITU-T/recommendations/rec.aspx?rec=12661&lang=en
7 Ibid.
8 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, OECD Science, Technology and Industry Scoreboard 2017: The Digital Transformation, OECD Publishing, 2017, http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/9789264268821-en
9 United Nations, “Annex, Global Indicator Framework for the Sustainable Development Goals and Targets of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development,” https://unstats.un.org/sdgs/indicators/Global%20Indicator%20Framework_A.RES.71.313%20Annex.pdf
10 United Nations Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development (Habitat III), “The New Urban Agenda,” October 2016, http://habitat3.org/the-new-urban-agenda
11 Kaplan, R.; D. Norton; The Balanced Scorecard: Translating Strategy Into Action, Harvard University Press, USA, 1996
12 United Nations Sustainable Development Knowledge Platform, “Sustainable Development Goals,” https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/sdgs
Graciela Braga, CGEIT, COBIT 5, CSX, CPA
Is a certified professional in the governance of enterprise IT (GEIT), oriented to the strategic alignment between business/government objectives and information and communication technology (ICT), including sustainability and green IT. She has worked on audits and reviews for public and private entities using international frameworks such as COBIT, Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission and International Organization for Standardization standards. She is an author and researcher on management and governance of information and ICT in various media, including the ISACA Journal and COBIT Focus. Braga has also been a speaker at Green Standards Weeks organized by the International Telecommunications Union, the United Nations’ specialized agency for ICT, and a contributor to the publication “Implementing SDG11 by Connecting Sustainability Policies and Urban Planning Practices Through ICTs,” developed within the framework of the United for Smart Sustainable Cities (U4SSC) initiative.