Challenge Issy-les-Moulineaux is a small city on the outskirts of Paris with a reputation as one of the early French leaders in the Smart City space. Despite a strong reputation for technology, Issy’s experience with Open Data was very limited. Few datasets were available to the public and were difficult to find, hidden on a page of the city website away from public view. Staff lacked the capacity and knowledge to make smart choices about opening their data, leaving efforts stuck in the starting block. The senior management, under the leadership of visionary mayor Andre Santini, knew that action was needed to bring Open Data to Issy but did not have the wherewithal to act.
Involvement in Citadel Through the Citadel on the Move project, Issy-les Moulineaux was able to build their internal capacity to open data. Through focussed, practical guides like our Business Requirements for Open Data, Issy learned about how to choose the right formats and standards to release high-quality Open Data. With such guidance as a starting point, Issy, with the support of Citadel, organized their own interactive workshop using our ‘App4Dummies’ model to rapidly upskill staff and give them the ability to find, open and use data in less than 4 hours. Issy was supported throughout their Open Data journey by Citadel’s suite of tools that transform any dataset into a simple smartphone app in a matter of minutes.
Results As a result of the Citadel project, Issy has been recognised as a national Open Data champion, while the knowledge gained from Citadel also gave Issy the confidence to put in place a forward-looking Open Data strategy. Together with French-based provider OpenDataSoft, Issy has now built a state-of-the-art Open Data portal where residents can find more than 75 datasets, all in easy-to-use Citadel formats, including a novel new financial transparency app (Rapport financier 2014/Financial report 2014) which can be used by other local government entities around the world. Using Citadel tools, Issy has also created 83 apps for local people on subjects as diverse as tourism, transport and tree locations. The city has already convinced several other French regions, including Grand Paris Ouest and Rhone-Alps, to follow their lead in opening data using Citadel guidelines. The city now plans to take their Open Data strategy even further, releasing real time transport data to spark. Speaking about Citadel’s impact, spokesman Matteo Satta said “Issy has always had a reputation as a Smart City. Now thanks to Citadel, we are developing a reputation as an Open Data city too.”