Galway Independent Column - 8th September 2010

At a time when unemployment levels continue to be too high, it’s often easier to try to find a quick fix solution than what really matters, which is putting in place the foundation for future growth and investment that will ensure employment and a good quality of life for all.

We’ve often spoken of ‘smarter cities’, ‘smarter travel’ et al and now more than ever we need to concentrate on the ‘smarter’ part. A recent report by IBM’s Institute for Business Value by, among others TCD’s Dr. Constantin Gurdgiev, outlines how, in the 21st century ‘growth, economic value and competitive differentiation of cities will increasingly be derived from people and their skills, creativity and knowledge, as well as the capacity of the economy to create and absorb innovation. To compete in this new economic environment, cities will need to better apply advanced information technology, analytics and systems thinking to develop a more citizen-centric approach to services. By doing so, they can better attract, create, enable and retain their citizens’ skills, knowledge and creativity.

Galway Chamber has long advocated this approach that business will come when the basis or foundation is here and that it is incumbent on us to create the optimum environment and to make that environment ‘citizen-centric’. When Galway Chamber last revisited our Mission Statement ‘To make Galway the Leading Location for Business, Investment and People’ we felt that it was very important to include the word ‘people’. A ‘smarter economy’ is all about people. Gurdgiev calls it the ‘brains and creativity’ as opposed to the ‘bricks and mortar’ drivers of economic growth and activity.

To attract the highly skilled, innovative citizens for Galway, part of this ‘optimum creation’ is, however, about the ‘bricks and mortar’ of the systems here. To explain: we haven’t heard yet whether Galway City Council’s ‘Galway Metropolitan Smarter Travel Area Bid’ has been successful. It’s necessary as is the Galway City Outer Bypass…an optimum ‘smart city’ isn’t gridlocked. Our health services are currently ‘gridlocked’, that’s not ‘smart city’, our school class sizes are too big, that’s not ‘smart’ and there are many other examples.

Gurdgiev focuses on four high-impact areas of improvement for any city wishing to aspire to ‘smart city’ status:
 Reduce congestion in transport systems
 Improve public safety by reducing crime and emergency response time
 Streamline and tailor services for the citizen, including a heavy emphasis on education and training
 Enable appropriate access to healthcare data for better quality of care, early disease detection and prevention.
(In addition to these he also mentions energy, water and environmental sustainability, urban planning and architecture). All of these feed into making Galway a leading location for business, investment and people. We’re not the only city privy to this information. We need to act now.