Going into the G20 Summit in Osaka, Japan, and the Summer Davos in Dalian, China, the World Economic Forum and Open & Agile Smart Cities (OASC) have announced their collaboration to support smart cities & communities worldwide in their digital transformation.

Open & Agile Smart Cities was co-founded by Aarhus University and is chaired by Martin Brynskov. The network is growing rapidly and OASC has now become one of the initial backers of the G20 Smart Cities Alliance on Technology Governance led by the World Economic Forum. The ambition of the alliance is to establish universal norms and guidelines for implementation of smart city technology based key principles such as interoperability, openness, transparency, and protection of privacy of data.

"OASC is thrilled to be part of this global effort led by the World Economic Forum to support cities and communities with a global framework,"
said Martin Brynskov, Chair of Open & Agile Smart Cities, on the occasion of the alliance launch.
"Openness and interoperability are key to scaling up digital smart city solutions that help tackle the challenges that cities are facing in the 21st century - on the cities' terms and conditions."

The alliance will coordinate with members from the Global 20, Urban 20, and Business 20 communities to develop new global guidelines for the responsible use of data and digital technologies.

Jeff Merritt, Head of IoT, Robotics & Smart Cities for World Economic Forum said:
"We are excited to formally launch the cooperation with Open & Agile Smart Cities. For several months already, the Forum and OASC have been working together with the clear ambition to support cities and communities worldwide. Today's announcement is the first milestone in what we expect to be a fruitful partnership and highly scalable success story."

Digital Interoperability has entered the world stage

The overall aim of the collaboration between the World Economic Forum and OASC is to promote responsible deployment and use of smart city technologies, addressing local challenges. Furthermore, the Forum and OASC will jointly work towards designing and implementing policy frameworks and programs to advance these efforts on a global scale.

"Digital interoperability has entered the world stage,"
explained Martin Brynskov, and continued: 
"The World Economic Forum is a leading global organisation, which has recognised that interoperability of digital solutions is crucial for the success of cities and communities, as also reinforced here at the G20 by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. It's a great privilege to work side by side with the Forum to shape the digital transformation of our global societies."

The cooperation between the World Economic Forum and OASC was communicated ahead of the G20 Meeting in Osaka 28-29 June 2019. Co-located with the G20 Summit, Martin Brynskov presented at the Super City Smart City Forum 2019 on 29 June in Osaka upon invitation by the Cabinet Office, Government of Japan.

If you want to learn more about digital interoperability in Japan, read the Open & Agile Smart Cities' article here.

The first edition of this article was published at oascities.org here