THE City of Stockholm has been recognized as the Intelligent Community of the Year 2009 with an award presented by the Intelligent Community Forum (ICF). The motivation for the award is the city’s long-term actions which have methodically and substantially redefined the possibilities of urban living. Stockholm serves as an example of how technology can play a role to enhance economic and social development.
“The citizens of Stockholm can feel proud. This prize shows the value of working together toward common goals. This is something that further positions Stockholm as a world-class IT-capital” said Sten Nordin, Mayor of Stockholm.
ICF studies the economic and social development of 21st century communities. Each year ICF presents an awards program for Intelligent Communities and the public-sector and private-sector partners who contribute to them. The awards program focuses on honoring the accomplishments of communities in developing local prosperity and inclusion in the Broadband Economy, and to gather data for ICF’s research programs. Some of the previous winners include Seoul, New York and Singapore.
“Stockholm schools, homes for the elderly and social activities are online — that’s the way we show that broadband and Internet are as important for our public service in the City of Stockholm as for all private companies. Achieving this award ‘the world’s most intelligent city’ in the face of fierce competition is very flattering for all citizens of Stockholm” said Ulf Kristersson, vice mayor.
Stockholm is the economic and political capital of Sweden with a population of 795,163 and a labor force of 442,500. Its top industries are high technology, finance, consulting and light manufacturing. One out of every eleven Swedes lives in Stockholm, and in the first decade of the new century, their city has continued to find ways to make “big” work better.
The bursting of a real estate bubble in the early nineties caused a severe economic crisis, in which employment fell 10 percent and a run on the currency forced the Central Bank to briefly raise interest rates as high as 500 percent in an unsuccessful effort to defend a fixed exchange rate. In 1994, with a budget deficit exceeding 15 percent of GDP, the national government instituted multiple reforms and slashed spending to put its financial house in order. The result was to strike a new and apparently sustainable balance between cradle-to-grave social benefits for citizens and strong economic growth based on knowledge, creativity and innovation.
In the midst of the financial crisis, the city of Stockholm decided to pursue an unusual model in telecommunications. The city-owned company Stokab started in 1994 to build a fiber-optic network throughout the municipality as a level playing field for all operators. Stokab dug up the streets just once to install conduit and run fiber, closed them up, and began offering dark fiber capacity to carriers for less than it would cost them to install it themselves. Today, the network has more than 90 operators and 450 enterprises as primary customers. Though the city already has a 98 percent broadband penetration rate, Stokab will also provide FTTP access to over 95,000 low-income households in public housing by the end of 2009.
As an information utility, the Stokab network has become an engine for driving efficiency in every aspect of government. The city’s website hosts a huge range of applications through which citizens can request and receive service online, from applying for social housing for the elderly to a school’s portal that facilitates collaboration among students, teachers, school administrators and parents or guardians. Over 95 percent of renters use the housing department’s portal to find apartments, and the library portal provides online access to the content of 44 individual libraries. After pilot projects in 2005, the city has also instituted a contact center to handle inquiries and complaints from offline citizens and to support users of e-services. There is a special telephone line for the elderly to call.
Much of the efficiency gain happens inside the walls of government offices. Stockholm uses a Web-based tool to manage its operations at all levels. The system aims to automate routine administrative tasks, such as accounts payable and applying for vacation time, and encourage collaboration across agencies. Citizens can follow City Council meetings through Internet video, Internet radio and broadcast radio, as well as having online access to the minutes and documents of each meeting. The city is investing about $72.2 million developing the various services and in using IT to reduce operating costs and improve citizen services. To prevent redundant investments, Stockholm has introduced a coordination program through which agencies apply for funding for e-service projects from a central office.
Stockholm also manages Kista Science City, housing more than 1,400 companies within the ICT sector, plus a support program for start-ups and developing companies. Kista got its start in the mid-seventies as a mixed-use satellite city combining workplaces and apartments. Several companies including Ericsson and IBM placed factories or facilities there, and small to mid-size companies began locating there to gain access to them. In 1985, the City of Stockholm decided that Kista needed more active management and brought together stakeholders, companies and universities in a non-profit foundation to encourage knowledge transfer. This motivated several research institutes to start operations there, including a branch of the Royal Institute of Technology and the computer-science school of the University of Stockholm. As the ICT cluster gained momentum, Stockholm created the Kista Science City Company and the Stockholm Innovation and Growth (STING) incubator. Today, about 31,000 people work in Kista Science City, which houses 1,400 different companies of all sizes. WIRED Magazine, in a review of technology clusters around the world, ranked Kista second, beaten only by Silicon Valley.
In 2007, the City of Stockholm published Vision 2030, identifying the key characteristics the city aimed to have by that year. In 2030, according to the plan, Stockholm would be a world-class metropolis offering a rich urban living experience, the center of an internationally competitive innovation region, and a place where citizens enjoyed a broad range of high-quality, cost-effective social services. All employees of the city receive online training three times per year on the goals of the program and the changing nature of their responsibilities. The city also uses Web-based tools to track progress toward its goals and publishes good examples on the city-wide intranet to inspire others. All these factors combine to make Stockholm the “smartest” of all IT-intelligent cities globally.