A Smarter London Together: Listening exercise – your opinion counts

Theo Blackwell, the Mayor of London’s new Chief Digital Officer for London wants to keep our lead in data and innovation. He is doing this with the Mayor’s Smart London Board, our advisory group of experts and leaders in data and digital technologies. Together, they have started a Listening Exercise for a new Smart London Plan, which they will launch at London Tech Week in June.

The Mayor is asking the tech community, citizens and practitioners what can be done to ensure better digital collaboration across London’s boroughs and public services, better data-sharing, improved connectivity and digital skills, and to ensure that technology is designed around citizens’ needs.

Over the next few months City Hall will be talking to hundreds of experts from research, businesses and tech, and thousands of citizens about London’s digital future.  They will be drawing on the best examples nationally and internationally, in partnership with Bloomberg Associates.

The Mayor is asking for your help now to shape our plans, on how we approach city-growth pressures with data and digital technologies, and to do so together.

How a plan will help

The new Smart London Plan will show how data and digital technologies can be used to meet the Mayor’s commitments for a future, inclusive London in his mayoral strategies and the London Plan.

London’s growth to over 11 million people by 2050 will strain our environmental, housing, healthcare, transport and wider infrastructure across all 33 boroughs if the city’s public services don’t harness data and digital technologies. The new Smart London Plan builds on past progress and take on board lessons learnt from other cities in the UK and across the world.

What is Smart for London?

A ‘Smarter London’ uses data and technology together for the good growth of our city. It mobilises the power of data as the fuel for innovation to design and develop safe, open and inclusive solutions for city challenges London faces over the next decade and beyond.

To stay ahead of the technology curve, rather than follow it, a Smarter London needs new city-wide collaboration between public institutions, utilities, our world-class creative, scientific research and tech communities by and for Londoners.