{"id":18862,"date":"2015-11-24T15:47:12","date_gmt":"2015-11-24T15:47:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.businesscloudnews.com\/?p=239892"},"modified":"2015-11-24T15:47:12","modified_gmt":"2015-11-24T15:47:12","slug":"the-iot-in-palo-alto-connecting-americas-digital-city","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/the-iot-in-palo-alto-connecting-americas-digital-city\/","title":{"rendered":"The IoT in Palo Alto: connecting America\u2019s digital city"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"jonathan_reichental_headshot_banff\"<\/a>Palo Alto is not your average city. Established by the founder of Stanford University, it was the soil from which Google, Facebook, Pinterest and PayPal (to name a few) have sprung forth. Indeed, Palo Alto has probably done more to transform human life in the last quarter century than any other. So, when we think of how the Internet of Things is going to affect life in the coming decades, we can be reasonably sure where much of expected disruption will originate.<\/p>\n

All of which makes Palo Alto a great place to host the first IoT Data Analytics & Visualization<\/a> event (February 9 \u2013 11, 2016). Additionally fitting: the event is set to be kicked off by Dr. Jonathan Reichental, the city\u2019s Chief Information Officer: Reichental\u00a0is the man entrusted with the hefty task of ensuring the city is as digital, smart and technologically up-to-date as a place should be that has been called home by the likes of Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckberg, Larry Page and Sergey Brin.<\/p>\n

Thus far, Reichental\u2019s tenure has been a great success. In 2013, Palo Alto was credited with being the number one digital city in the US, and has made the top five year upon year \u2013 in fact, it so happens that, following our long and intriguing telephone interview, Reichental is looking forward to a small celebration to mark its latest nationwide ranking.<\/p>\n

BCN: Jonathan, you\u2019ve been Palo Alto\u2019s CIO now for four years. What\u2019s changed most during that time span?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Dr Jonathan Reichental: I think the first new area of substance would be open government. I recognise open government\u2019s been a phenomenon for some time, but over the course of the last four years, it has become a mainstream topic that city and government data should be easily available to the people. That it should be machine readable, and that an\u00a0API should be made available to anyone that wants the data. That we have a richer democracy by being open and available.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re still at the beginning however. I have heard that there are approximately 90,000 public agencies in the US alone. And every day and week I hear about a new federal agency or state or city of significance who are saying, \u2018you can now go to our data portal and you can access freely the data of the city or the public agency. The shift is happening but it\u2019s got some way to go.<\/p>\n

Has this been a purely technical shift, or have attitudes had to evolve as well?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I think if you kind of look at something like cloud, cloud computing and cloud as a capability for government \u2013 back when I started \u2018cloud\u2019 was a dirty word. Many government leaders and government technology leaders just weren\u2019t open to the option of putting major systems off-premise. That has begun to shift quite positively.<\/p>\n

I was one of the first to say that cloud computing is a gift to government. Cloud eliminates the need to have all the maintenance that goes with keeping systems current and keeping them backed up and having disaster recovery. I\u2019ve been a very strong proponent of that.<\/p>\n

Then there\u2019s social media \u00a0\u2013 government has fully embraced that now, having been reluctant early on. Mobile is beginning to emerge though it\u2019s still very nascent. Here in Palo Alto we\u2019re trying to make all services that make sense accessible via smart phone. I call it \u2018city in a box.\u2019 Basically, bringing up an app on the smart phone you should be able to interact with government \u2013 get a pet license, pay a parking fee, pay your electrical bill: everything should really be right there on the smartphone, you shouldn\u2019t need to go to City Hall for many things any more.<\/p>\n

The last thing I\u2019d say is there has been an uptake in community participation in government. Part of it is it\u2019s more accessible today, and part of it is there\u2019s more ways to do so, but I think we\u2019re beginning also to see the fruits of the millennial generation \u2013 the democratic shift in people wanting to have more of a voice and a say in their communities. We\u2019re seeing much more in what is traditionally called civic engagement. But \u2018much more\u2019 is still not a lot. We need to have a revolution in this space for there to be significant change to the way cities operate and communities are effective.<\/p>\n

Palo Alto is hosting the\u00a0IoT Data Analytics & Visualization<\/a>\u00a0in February. How have you innovated in this area as a city?<\/strong><\/p>\n

One of the things we did with data is make it easily\u00a0available. Now we\u2019re seeing a community of people in the city and beyond, building solutions for communities. One example of that is a product called\u00a0Civic Insight<\/a>. This app consumes the permit data we make available and enables users to type in an address and find out what\u2019s going on in their neighbourhood with regard to construction and related matters.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a clear example of where we didn\u2019t build the thing, we just made the data available and someone else built it. There\u2019s an economic benefit to this. It creates jobs and innovation \u2013 we\u2019ve seen that time and time again. We saw a company build a business around Palo Alto releasing our budget information. Today they are called\u00a0OpenGov<\/a>, and they sell the solution to over 500 cities in America, making it easy for communities to understand where their tax payer dollars are being spent. That was born and created in Palo Alto because of what we did making our data available.<\/p>\n

Now we get to today, and the Internet of Things. We\u2019re still \u2013 like a lot folks, especially in the government context \u2013 defining this. It can be as broad or as narrow as you want. There\u2019s definitely a recognition that when infrastructure systems can begin to share data between each other, we can get better outcomes.<\/p>\n

The Internet of Things is obviously quite an elastic concept, but are there areas you can point to where the IoT is already very much a reality in Palo Alto?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The clearest example I can give of that today is our traffic signal system here in the city. A year-and-a-half ago, we had a completely analogue system, not connected to anything other than a central computer, which would have created a schedule for the traffic signals. Today, we have a completely IP based traffic system, which means it\u2019s basically a data network. So we have enormous new capability.<\/p>\n

For example, we can have schedules that are very dynamic. When schools are being let out traffic systems are one way, at night they can be another way, you can have very granular information. Next you can start to have traffic signals communicate with each other. If there is a long strip of road and five traffic systems down there is some congestion, all the other traffic signals can dynamically change to try and make the flow better.<\/p>\n

It goes even further than this. Now we can start to take that data \u2013 recording, for example, the frequency and volume of vehicles, as well as weather, and other ambient characteristics of the environment \u2013 and we can start to send this to the car companies. Here at Palo Alto, almost every car company has their innovation lab. Whether it\u2019s Ford, General Motors, Volkswagen, BMW, Google (who are getting into the car business now) \u2013 they\u2019re all here and they all want our data. They\u2019re like: \u2018this is interesting, give us an API, we\u2019ll consume it into our data centres and then we\u2019ll push into cars so maybe they can make better decisions.\u2019<\/p>\n

You have the Internet of Things, you\u2019ve got traffic signals, cloud analytics solutions, APIs, and cars as computers and processors. We\u2019re starting to connect all these related items in a way we\u2019ve never done before. We\u2019re going to follow the results.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s the overriding ambition would you say?<\/strong><\/p>\n

We\u2019re on this journey to create a smart city vision. We don\u2019t really have one today. It\u2019s not a product or a service, it\u2019s a framework. And within that framework we will have a series of initiatives that focus on things that are important to us. Transportation is really important to us here in Palo Alto. Energy and resources are really important: we\u2019re going to start to put sensors on important flows of water so we can see the amount of consumption at certain times but also be really smart about leak detection,\u00a0potentially\u00a0using little sensors connected to pipes throughout the city. We\u2019re also really focused on the environment. We have a chief sustainability officer who is putting together a multi-decade strategy around what PA needs to do to be part of the solution around climate change.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s also going to be a lot about sensors, about collecting data, about informing people and creating positive behaviours. Public safety is another key area. Being able to respond intelligently to crimes, terrorism or natural disasters. A series of sensors again sending information back to some sort of decision system that can help both people and machines make decisions around certain types of behaviours.<\/p>\n

How do you expect this whole IoT ecosystem to develop over the next decade?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Bill Gates has a really good saying on this: \u201cWe always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten.\u201d\u00a0 It\u2019s something that\u2019s informed me in my thinking. I think things are going to move faster and in more surprising ways in the next ten years for sure: to the extent that it\u2019s very hard to anticipate where things are headed.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re disrupting the taxi business overnight, the hotel business, the food business. Things are happening at lightning speed. I don\u2019t know if we have a good sense of where it\u2019s all headed. Massive disruption across all domains, across work, play, healthcare, every sort of part of our lives.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s clear that \u2013 I can say this \u2013\u00a0ten years from now\u00a0won\u2019t be the same as today. I think we\u2019ve yet to see the full potential of smart phones \u2013 I think they are probably the most central part of this ongoing transformation.<\/p>\n

I think we\u2019re going to connect many more things that we\u2019re saying right now. I don\u2019t know what the number will be: I hear five billion, twenty billion in the next five years. It\u2019s going to be more than that. It\u2019s going to become really easy to connect. We\u2019ll stick a little communication device on anything. Whether it\u2019s your key, your wallet, your shoes: everything\u2019s going to be connected.<\/p>\n

Palo Alto and\u00a0the\u00a0IoT Data Analytics & Visualization<\/a>\u00a0event look like a great matchup. What are you looking forward to about taking part?<\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s clearly a developing area and so this is the time when you want to be acquiring knowledge, networking with some of the big thinkers and innovators in the space. I\u2019m pleased to be part of it from that perspective. Also from the perspective of my\u00a0own personal learning and the ability to network with great people and add to the body of knowledge that\u2019s developing. I\u2019m going to be kicking it off as the CIO for the city.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jonathan Reichental is the man entrusted with the hefty task of ensuring the city is as digital, smart and technologically up-to-date as a place should be that has been called home by the likes of Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckberg, Larry Page and Sergey Brin.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":149,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1990,893,1991,1909,986],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18862","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-features","category-internet-of-things","category-interviews","category-iot","category-smart-city"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18862","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/149"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18862"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18862\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18863,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18862\/revisions\/18863"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18862"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18862"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18862"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}