A presentation for the global Consortium on Smart Cities at CTG, Albany University

I have volunteered to present myself -applied research and projects- at the quarterly meeting of the Smart Cities and Smart Government Research-Practice Consortium (SCSGRPC), the Center for Technology in Government (University at Albany). This is happening on Thursday, Feb the 8th (at 17h Madrid time)- when 27 members of the consortium have been called upon for the quarterly meeting. We will be working online. 

VIDEO recorded with the first part of my intervention [6 minutes] will be available here soon.

Prof. Olga Gil working at the Office of the Rectors,
IEJRP Lisbon Congress, 2017

Meghan Cook and Theresa Pardo asked me what I have learned from these hectic last six years in my return to Academia, and the two years joining the Consortium. I have learned mainly four things:

First of all, the Consortium gives me a sense of purpose and focus on a long term strategy for my research which is interesting. 

Second of all, I have been proactive contacting members of the Consortium when I need to work collaboratively. 99% of the members I contacted show commitment and help. For instance, I prepared a proposal for EU applied research funding of 10 million euros in 2016-2017.  In drafting this proposal and preparing the international network, members of the consortium where of outmost help and interest. Here I want to thank specially to Gboyega Odjo, who devoted a lot of time to this endaveour, and I feel specially in debt to, and also to Albert Meijer and Manuel Pedro Rodríguez Bolivar. There were more pleople from the consortium joining in the tight last stages, or through members´ recommendation. I want to thank you all of you for your commitment and kind help!!! 

Thirdly, I have learned that for newcomers as prospective leaders, EU projects need coachers with experience as previous leaders. Thus, a professor with this expertise is a rare jewel we should indeed treasure.

And lastly, I have learned that going hand in had with a strong university, as opposed to a weak one do make a difference in terms of credibility when asking for a big part of the pie in funds.

Now, the work I am doing in 2018

I work at Universidad Complutense de Madrid, at the School of Political and Social Sciences. This is public university and a big one, and we have over 4.500 students just in the social and political sciences school alone. The school is particularly strong on administration, theories and  public policy.

I am working on the regulation of data in cities and other levels of government and power, ethics, governance and theoretical implications. I teach on this subject at UCM. Here is the access to the Open Course Ware (in progress).

On research, publishing and advising postgraduate research I will present five highlights: 

1.  I am publishing on platforms for the agregation of preferences in cities and countries in a comparative perspective. See one example in this PowerPoint:
2.  I am a member of CITADEL H2020 Empowering Citizens to Transform European PubLic Administrations. H2020 Framework Program (under GA 726755 with 3,6 million euro, running from 1/9/2016 to 1/9/2020) directed by Daniel Diaz-Fuentes, from the University of Cantabria. This is a joint project with the innovation Basque firm Tecnalia as general coordinator. 
3. I am further working on the analysis of platforms for e-participation together with a team of researchers in the informatics and mathematics school at UAM in Madrid. We focus on the analysis of data on platforms, and the use of recommender systems to make these platforms more useful to users. In particular, I study the governance and power implications of these platforms. These are recent works I am pleased to share with you: on e-governance, and on e-participation [enclosing this link soon].
4. I am also working with two posdoc and doctoral students, advising on their thesis. We are preparing work to publish on New Chinese Cities, with Zheng Tian-Cheng, and on Participation in Smart Cities, with Elicia Cortés.
5. From March 2016 to March 2017, I developed a join team to draft a proposal for the European Union H2020 Program. Even though I fail to get the 10 million funding from the Commission, I managed to unite 31 partners, including six cities European and two followers in Latin America (Cali) and China (Shangái). Together with the innovation firm Zabala, we presented a proposal entittled Co-Creating Green Node Networks in Neighborhoods for Urban Inclusion and Social Regeneration (SCC-02-2017). This proposal received a rating of 3.5 out of 5 from the European Commission evaluators. It has not been funded, but I have learned a lot through the process. This short proposal and comments from the EU evaluators are available for members of the consortium here if you are interested:

• Short proposal and 31 member list 
• Comments from evaluators 

Previously, I had I published the book that I wrote in English (unpublished in English yet),
"How Cities Are Governed? Smart Cities” [Free downdload: http://tinyurl.com/smartcitiesUCM] The book covers the smart city plans of over eight cities in three different continents: the comparative cases of Shanghai, Iskandar, Cities in Japan, New York, Amsterdam, Malaga, Santander and Tarragona.

This book is based on the theoretical framework advanced by members of the consortium in 2011 to study and analyze smart cities (Chourabi et al, 2011). Chourabi´s work has been widely cited in Spanish afterwards.

A member of my research team, Julio Navío, from UNED University, had an offer to publish it in Spanish at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, where he had presented the English version. One of my postgraduate students, Maider Perez de Heredia, translated the English manuscript to Spanish. The work for this research was funded by Colegio Oficial de Ingenieros de Telecomunicación and Accenture.  Part of the funds raised by Prof. Olga Gil for this research went to finance the budgets of the Department of Political Sciences at Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (5%) and to FUAM (20%). Gil was a professor at Universidad Autónoma de Madrid from  2012 to 2015.

These funds from the private sector paid for all the trips and registrations to scientific congresses in the last four years. Olga Gil is very thankful for that!