Five Model Practices for Partnerships in Smart City Projects

 US Ignite curates the best practices in designing and delivering smart city projects with leading-edge municipalities. These five practices on handling partnerships can help any smart city service, project, or application – at any phase – find success:

• Inspire the Right People: Inspired and empowered project and technical managers serve to build consensus and enthusiasm within the team and gain additional support for a project.
• Set and Agree On the Project Requirements: Clearly setting and agreeing to project requirements helps capitalize on the partners’ differing capabilities. Establishing project requirements and parameters prompts a transparent understanding of the constraints and expectations of the partners.
• Build Trust Among the Partners and with the Community: The establishment of steering committees succeeds in fostering trust across the community. This governance body acts to institute clear expectations, roles, and responsibilities for the members. 
• Prepare for an Iterative Process and Hold Evaluations: All the partners should be comfortable with unlearning and relearning throughout the iterative process. When evaluating a project, representatives from different stakeholder groups should be involved.
• Look Forward: Smart city projects provide communities and partners a prime opportunity to create a roadmap to replicate and scale projects. Communities should keep stock of the assets gained through smart city initiatives to reuse in future projects and initiatives.

Ultimately, well-organized partnerships lead to successful outcomes for the partners, residents, and municipalities deploying a smart infrastructure project. Communities that master this art stand to make great improvements in the lives of their residents.