IBM launches its 'smart' campaign

BY MARIA GALLUCCI
The News
Aug. 17, 2009
(featured on the technology special in the biz section)

Heavy congestion on the highways. Cumbersome legal forms. Inefficient municipal electric and water systems. All of the problems that plague governments worldwide are issues that U.S.-based technology giant IBM hopes to address through its Smarter Planet campaign.

IBM hosted its "smarter cities" summit in Mexico City last week, sponsoring a series of seminars to encourage Mexico's public sector to talk about solutions for municipal and national transport, energy, water, telecommunications and other systems. The summit, first held in Berlin earlier this summer, will travel to New York City next month.

The Smarter Planet campaign essentially strives to spark progress in the public sector by consulting governments and cities on a problem-by-problem basis.

In the southwest U.S. city Albuquerque, for example, IBM provided a business intelligence solution that improved the city's ability to generate informative reports by 2,000 percent, according to IBM. Belgium's Crossroads social security bank automated 42 services for employers in 2008; as a result, 23 million declarations were made electronically last year, a switch that saved Belgian businesses an estimated 1.7 billion euros per year. In Stockholm, Sweden, improved public transit systems reduced traffic by 20 percent and lowered fuel emissions by 12 percent.

At the Tuesday conference last week, IBM's Jonathan Breul sat down with The News to discuss the campaign and the opportunities it presents to the global public sector. Breul is the executive director for the company's Washington-based Center for The Business of Government and a U.S. partner in IBM's Global Business Services.

How is IBM working with the public sector to build a 'smarter' society?

The whole Smart campaign is a worldwide one. We're turning up the volume, the attention and speaking out across the world about challenges and opportunities. It particularly works and fits in the public sector, because the public service is the one that's got to pick up the ball on so many of these problems and meet challenges before they arrive, not afterwards.

What has kept the world's governments from being more efficient? What is holding them back?

There are two things: one is leadership, and the other is a preoccupation with the problems that are right in front of them. The immediate always drives out the important.and crowds out the longer-term and more urgent things.

The move towards `smarter' is a big change, and it is strategic and requires thinking in large and longer terms. That is difficult, and that requires leadership and focus.

In which areas can the public sector increase efficiency?

There are six areas: the people, all the relationships with business, transportation, communications, water and energy. Those are six of the big core systems that cities have to deal with. In a sense, you could start with any one of those, but they are all interconnected. Cities need to start thinking in those terms.

If global governments fail to revamp their systems, what could be the consequences?

It's crime; it's dirty water or lack of water; it's congestion. It's people who aren't getting the health and human services they need. It's all the things that matter that the public service is doing. Public service.has got to provide for the health, safety and welfare of its citizens. It's everything that matters for the citizen.

IBM points out citizens' demand for private sector services in the public sector. What elements do citizens want?

With the ability to pick up a smart phone or another device and instantly communicate with anyone and draw [information] off the Internet.when you have citizens who are comfortable and now expecting that kind of behavior from the private sector, they're going to expect the same from their police, water, electric; they expect everything else to operate in the same way.

And it can. We've got the tools to make that happen, now it's a matter of taking that capability to the public sector and figuring out how to apply it to all the important thing a government does. It's been a wakeup call.

What are some of the campaign's long-term goals?

It goes back to whatever the citizen demands are. This is not just an exercise in technology. Technology is presented as opportunities to deal with citizens and problems. I think the most exciting thing is we can start thinking about, dreaming about and tackling the kinds of problems that were beyond us before.

Lots of things that weren't possible before we can deal with now. It allows national and state governments to start thinking about health care, energy and social services reforms.