The European Platform for Intelligent Cities is a European Commission-funded project (ICT PSP) that aims to wed state-of-the-art cloud computing technologies with fully researched and tested e-Government service applications to create the first truly scalable and flexible pan-European platform for innovative, user-driven public service delivery.

Topics in this issue of the EPIC newsletter:

1. Brief Project Update - Summer 2013
   
2. Overview of our Smart City in a Box solution
   
3. Invitation to Join EPIC at the 4th ENoLL Summer School
   
4. Smart Cities - The Need for Interoperability
   
5. EPIC featured at 26th Bled eConference
   
6. EPIC Shares Smart City Tips With The Balkan States
   
7. EPIC Discussions at U.N. eGovernment Working Group

EPIC enjoyed a busy Spring and Summer finalising the EPIC platform and its smart city services based on user feedback, and packaging its results into a commercially viable option for cities moving forward. Key activities that took place include:

• Entering EPIC into a prestigious innovation competition in Belgium to win a business incubation grant, the next stage of which takes place this September.
  
• Hosting a panel, a workshop and summer school tutorial at the annual Samos eGovernment Summit in Greece this June.
  
• Preparing an EPIC workshop for the European Network of Living Labs (ENoLL) Summer School this August in Manchester
• Undertaking the projects Final Review meeting in Brussels with the European Commission
• Revamping the EPIC website with project results and, to be launched later this Summer

EPIC “Smart City in a Box” provides an achievable one-stop shop for cities wishing to start on their Smart City journey, offering a Roadmap for how, where, when, and why to get started, a platform for delivering smart services, and the services themselves.

The Smart City Roadmap presents a concrete and useful roadmap for cities and city administrations in their journey towards a smart city and the implementation of smart city solutions using the European Platform for Intelligent Cities (EPIC). The roadmap contains multiple steps, starting from defining a strategy for smart city development to the design and implementation of smart city services using this cloud platform and service catalogue. It helps to understand the potential value of leveraging cloud computing for delivering smart city services, in support of city administrations, citizens and businesses. The roadmap has been developed in close interaction with the EPIC stakeholders, ensuring the roadmap is lean, to-the-point and usable and addresses the right supporting requirements throughout any end-to-end implementation.

The EPIC Platform offers an innovative tool for collaboration between the public and private sector. The platform, based on cloud computing infrastructure, offers a flexible, lightweight solution to the delivery of public services. EPIC works by transferring technology-based public services to the cloud. EPIC then makes these services available on-line thereby eliminating the need for costly in-house infrastructure. In addition, EPIC combines services with datasets (such as points of interest data) to offer cities a complete solution to public service delivery and citizens a seamless user experience.

EPIC delivers services to our users and Smart City customers in the form of portlets, individual service components which can be easily combined and interchanged. This combination of portlets is complimented by EPIC's open-standard based Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) which allows our platform combine different services and components seamlessly. The use of open-standards is a central tenet of EPIC and has been embraced fully to maximize the compatability of our solutions with the full range of hosting platforms. Simply put, EPIC's open-standards both avoid costly vendor lock-in and maximize potential applications of the solution.

The EPIC Service Catalogue provides the cornerstone for delivering and managing Smart City services that are currently available on the platform. The Service Catalogue is able to search the EPIC platform for available services/applications and to gather available information on the services for publishing purposes. It will provide the starting point for any city administration, SME or other integrator to investigate the possibilities of the platform and the leveraging of already existing smart city services.

Julia Glidden, from the EPIC consortium team, addressed a workshop entitled ‘Smart Cities – The Need for Interoperability’ on Friday March 3, 2013 hosted by the UK Government’s Business Innovation and Skills Department. Designed to explore the way in which Smart City ‘Standards’ can help achieve common outcomes in the UK public sectors, delegates to the workshop were interested to learn more about (1) EPIC's Cloud marketplace approach for making SME's life easier for creating and marketing smart services, and (2) Citadel’s promotion of the use of accessible Open Data formats for the release of government data and creation of mobile application templates to facilitate the development of cross border and intra-City services. In line with EPIC's vision, the workshop ultimately called for an accessible Smart City framework that aligns with existing standards and advances options for standardisation.

The 26th annual Bled eConference featured the theme of eInnovation this year, providing a perfect platform for the EPIC project. In a special session on Regional Innovation in Europe, EPIC was presented as a case study on how to scale local innovations on a regional and pan-European scale. At a session on Smart Cities and Regions, the EPIC team highlighted the project’s use of the cloud to deliver Smart City innovations in a regional context. Finally, at a closing session on Living Labs and Smart City, the EPIC Road Map was presented as a tailored made vehicle for bringing Living Lab innovations to market.

The Development Agency Zagreb invited Julia to address the 2013 Zagreb Forum: Creative Cities & Europe on 12-13 March. Picking up on the Forum’s theme, Julia used the address to promote Open Innovation and Co-Creation as key starting points in any Smart City journey. By way of example, Julia discussed the way EPIC has developed a Smart City Roadmap for cities to follow to start their smart city journey, and how Citadel on the Move is currently engaging cities and cities to use easily accessible Open Government Data to unleash new service innovation. The advantages of Smart City concepts like EPIC and Citadel on the Move, Julia argued, is that it enables any city, anywhere – regardless of size or budget – to use their city as cost-effective innovation platform.

Julia Glidden of 21c was one of 14 international e-Government practioneers invited to New York on December 4 and 5 for the United Nations Expert Group Meeting on the 2014 UN e-Government Survey. The two-day session was designed to gather expert opinion from around the world on the six thematic themes featured in the UN’s prestigious bi-annual survey: 1) whole e-Government approaches, 2) e-Participation, 3) Multichannel Service Delivery, 4) Usage, 5) Digital Divide/Vulnerable Groups and 6) Open Government Data. Feedback from the workshop will be used to inform the 2014 Survey’s methodology and questions. During the event, Julia had the opportunity to act as Rapporteur for the eParticipation break out session which addressed the challenge of encouraging policymakers and citizens alike to make use of new social media tools in a policymaking context. Julia used the opportunity to introduce three EU-funded initiatives, EPIC, Puzzled by Policy and OurSpace, to a wider international audience. The Working Group concluded by a presentation from Mr. Mohammed Al-Qaed, CEO of the eGovernment Authority in the Kingdom of Bahrain on the outcomes of recent Member State workshop on the Survey.

EPIC is more than just an IT platform - it is a one stop shop where medium sized Cities in Europe can find real, affordable solutions (products and services) to materialize the “Smart Cities” concept in an highly achievable and cost-effective manner.

Website: http://www.epic-cities.eu/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/home.php?sk=group_192134087487293
Twitter: @CLOUDintheCITY