Discover

Goals of this stage

The primary goal of this stage is to define your place and set out the outcomes you want to achieve for your place with the people who will live, work, play and invest there.

During Discovery, you will need to:

• Identify the area you are wanting to design
• Engage early so that you and your communities can understand each other's desires for the place, problems and opportunities
• Establish who is using the place and what they are using it for; and who isn't using the place that should or could be and why this is the case
• Establish the ambitions and strategic context of the place
• Understand the cultural significance of the place
• Understand your authorising environment.

Fully understanding a place and its context will help you to achieve this.

Defining your "place"

Start by defining your place. Is it a park, public space, high street, economic zone, industrial area, a new community or suburb?

Remember, smart solutions can support the ambitions of a place at any scale.

Involving the community

Once you have identified your place, you will be able to identify and involve the people who live, work and visit the area.

Set out a plan for engaging them to determine their needs and desires in relation to your place during the Discovery phase. You will need to identify any barriers to achieving the ambitions you set out for your place as well. So don't forget to think about the people who are not yet using, visiting living or working in your place who might in future.

Understanding the strategic context and the place

A smart places journey begins by understanding your place and its people, as smart technology is one piece of the puzzle to help achieve the community's vision. This is the second principle in the Smart Places Customer Charter.

Smart place initiatives can start with a strategic view of how smart technology can support the overall vision for a place, or with individual opportunities identified to support community objectives, or somewhere in between.

To help understand a place and its future, you should check out local and regional planning documents:

• Your area's Regional Plan. These plans are set by the State and provide each region with the framework, vision and direction for strategic planning and land use, planning for future needs for housing, jobs, infrastructure, a healthy environment and connected communities.
• Your council's Local Strategic Planning Statement. These set a 20-year vision for land use in the local area, the special character and values that are to be preserved and how change will be managed into the future.
• Your council's 10-year Community Strategic Plan and more detailed Delivery Program and Operational Plans. These are prepared in consultation with the local community and provide high-level outcomes that smart places should support.

There are other state priorities, strategies and policies that may apply, and you should uncover and assess these before proceeding.

To supplement this part of the Discovery phase, you should also assess the local character of the place and look at how it functions; and engage with local people.

Resources for discovering strategic context

Identify outcomes or problem statements

It can be tempting to begin a smart places journey with the question 'what uses can be found for technology X?'.

It is better to have an outcomes-focus. To do this, you will need a deep understanding of place-based opportunities and challenges – and then seek technology solutions to address these.

To define outcomes, smart place practitioners can look to existing strategic plans or can define new outcomes to support strategic plans. You can use the customer outcome areas in the Smart Places Strategy to guide this process.

For example, strategic plans may earmark an area as a future health precinct, meaning people working and visiting this place would be coming and going 24 hours a day. One outcome we would need is a safe precinct after dark.

Image

Collapse the Image

Smart Places playbook - customers at the centre

Image controls:

Enlarge the Image

Customers at the centre:

Skills, Jobs and Development:
Smart Places grow knowledge capital of people and businesses in NSW to benefit from the transition of the global economy.

Collaboration and Connection:
Smart Places bring people, business and governments, their data and their service together in a seamless way.

Safety and Security:
Smart Places provide safer places for our people and increase our sense of security.

Health and Well-being:
Smart Places improve the quality of life and wellbeing for the people of NSW.

Equity, Accessibility and Inclusion:
Smart Places will improve physical and digital access for the people of NSW to participate in economic and civic life.

Environmental Quality:
Smart Places increase our sustainability by reducing emissions, resource consumption and environmental impacts.

Alternatively, where there is a known problem to be addressed, problem statements may be more appropriate. A problem statement clearly articulates the gap between a current state and a desired future state and is formulated collaboratively with customers. This can be as simple as work-shopping a series of questions: 'who, what, why, when, where, how and how much', or capturing a customer journey.

This process is best done with customers, so don't forget to involve people from your community in this stage.

Resources for discovering outcomes or problem statements

Digital equity in smart places

When you are using technology, digital and data solutions to better meet the needs of your communities, it is important that no one is left behind.

You need to proactively consider safeguards to ensure everyone can access new digital services, information and insights.

In communities across NSW and Australia, there is a gap often called the ‘digital divide’. This describes people who are fully able to use digital services or participate online and people who cannot.

Digital inequity, or the digital divide, causes disadvantage. This is because people who can’t get online readily can miss out on educational opportunities, government services, connections to their communities and families, and job opportunities.

Digital equity is impacted by three things:

• access to digital connectivity, like mobile coverage, Wi-Fi or broadband, and access to a mobile device or computer
• affordability of internet services and devices
• the ability of individuals to use the internet and participate in an increasingly digital world.
• to promote equitable smart places, we need tailored policies and programs addressing these three areas.

Who is often excluded

Groups in our community that are more at risk of being digitally excluded include:

• multicultural communities
• people with a disability
• first nations’ peoples
• people who are 65 and over
• people with lower social and economic opportunity.

Additional support is required to address language barriers and assist individuals in adapting to new cultural settings. This includes providing guidance on navigating the various systems and structures – such as banking and government services – so they can go about their day-to-day and participate meaningfully in their community.

Efforts should be made to ensure that digital service design and information are accessible to all of the community, accommodating their unique needs and allowing them to fully engage with digital platforms.

Action should be taken to improve access to devices and reduce the financial barriers associated with connecting to digital services. This will help mitigate existing disadvantages and prevent further entrenchment of social and economic inequality.

Support and resources should be provided to people who have not grown up with technology. This will help them to engage with digital platforms and take advantage of the opportunities they offer.

Understanding digital equity in your place

By conducting targeted research, you can measure the depth of digital inequity in your community.

Armed with insights, you can then work with marginalised community groups to target programs and policies help them to participate.

As a starting point, you can benchmark the performance of your local government area in comparison to others, using the Australian Digital Inclusion Index.

Ideas for improving digital equity

Any interventions you consider should respond to the needs of your communities. Some ideas for addressing inequity include:

• Providing access to connectivity in public places that are safe and accessible at different times of day.
• Providing private places and quiet areas to use public Wi-Fi – so people can concentrate and use services online confidentially.
• Sponsoring and supporting access to devices and mobile and broadband internet.
• Providing in-community support to boost awareness of digital services and improve people’s skills to use them.

Resources: digital equity

Building capability and further learning

Defining a vision for smart places

Having clear direction in place is critical to driving forward Smart Place outcomes. Direction in this instance could be in the form of a smart place strategy or vision, or a more tangible smart place roadmap, or both.

If you are setting out a new strategy or plan for a place, or revising an existing one, you should explore the role of smart technology and include this in the new or updated local strategy.

The community engagement you do during strategy development can help you to identify opportunities and problem statements and consider the role of smart solutions in addressing these.

Within the context of Smart Places, the family of ISO 37100 standards are often considered the building blocks of creating sustainable or 'smart' cities and communities.

Resources to define a vision

Understanding your authorising environment

Before you start identifying solutions for your place, you need to think through the approvals you will need in order to proceed.

These will be particular to your circumstance:

• Where you work, or the organisation you are representing
• Who owns the land and/or assets on the land
• The scale and type of smart technologies you might explore
• Funding you may need and its likely source/s.

You may need planning approvals, there may be legal requirements to consider, and regulatory sandboxes may also apply.

If you are working at a council, you may need Council approvals and may need some funding identified in annual budgets. In NSW Government, you may need Cabinet approval and assurance processes may be needed, such as the Infrastructure NSW Project Assurance gateways, or ICT Assurance.

At this stage you will not know the level of investment needed, so seek to find out delegations that apply and the thresholds for approval levels.

Early engagement with project approvers will help you to identify their information needs and may help build support for initiatives early so your Design and Delivery phases go smoothly.

Discover more about the Smart Places Playbook