Abstract Objective and research area The Smart Flanders program was initiated by the Flemish Government (Belgium) at the start of 2017 and is being coordinated by the biggest technology research organization in the country. The goal of the program is to support the 13 so-called center cities in the Region (by and large the biggest cities) and a representation of the Flemish Community in the Brussels Region with defining and implementing a common open data policy. In order to achieve this, these cities needed to find common ground and collaborate in ways and on themes that were quite new to them.
Methodology and data In order to establish a status quaestionis around the topics of smart cities and the role of (open) data, a thorough written survey was conducted, followed by a round of in-depth expert interviews with representatives of the 14 cities. Based on the insights coming from both this quantitative and qualitative research, a number of critical aspects were identified that cities can actively work on in diverse ways, with the goal of making a smart city or open data strategy more concrete. Additionally, it became clear a common approach to open data would be required to avoid fragmentation and vendor lock-in. Employing a number of co-creation methodologies, an open data charter was created that contains these principles, which will now be translated into actions by the cities involved. Several data pilots have also been launched to underscore this.
Novelty and relevance By taking an approach that focuses on learning-by-doing it becomes possible to quickly identify bottlenecks in opening up data. This process has co-shaped the writing of the open data charter and the common principles these cities will now work on. In essence, this new layer of discussion and debate was needed in order to make headway on a topic that was being tackled in a very fragmented way. Defining a common set of principles and actively trying to apply them has only sparingly occurred between these cities. The lessons that were learned when it comes to methods of identifying policy challenges and the roles that data may play in them, as well as getting joint support for that, can be of high value for other cities and academics as well.
Results or conclusions The main results so far are a running data pilot on real-time parking occupancy, which is published as linked open data, the open data charter and the principles within, an accompanying document that provides practical guidelines for cities to get started with and, finally, the impact the program itself has had on how cities are organizing around this topic. Based on interdisciplinary academic work (communication science, organizational science and computer science) on open data, this program has yielded insights that are of value both to academia and other practitioners.
