Smart City awards: Surat tops list of cities using data for delivering governance

Following Gujarat’s Surat, are Pimpri Chinchwad in Maharashtra and Bhopal in Madhya Pradesh. Pune has bagged the fourth spot.

Surat has emerged at the top among Indian cities to have successfully implemented governance through institutionalised use of data — especially through big data crunching — according to an official assessment released Friday.

As many as 42 in a list of 100 “smart cities” have been certified as having put in place systems to use data-based evidence for governance delivery, under the second round of the ‘Data Maturity Assessment Framework’ by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs.

Following Gujarat’s Surat, are Pimpri Chinchwad in Maharashtra and Bhopal in Madhya Pradesh. Pune has bagged the fourth spot.

“Surat is the best performing city… owing to their efforts of deploying a dedicated team of data experts and incorporating various technological advancements, such as establishment of SuratiLab, an advanced innovation lab for uncovering modern solutions for improved service delivery,” said the report.

According to the report, the western region is the best performing. Its regional average score of 45 is much higher than the national average of 32. There are 26 cities in the western region, of which 10 cities have been certified.

In the second round of the assessment, for 2019-20, it was found that 100 city data officers (CDOs) have been appointed with 13 permanent nominations for leading and performing data-led activities.

A total of 61 cities have appointed personnel to help coordinate data activities for their respective departments, as per guidance of CDO. Twenty cities have conducted their own capacity-building sessions on data related areas in addition to the ministry-organised trainings.

As many as 69 cities have deployed sensors for data collection and 63 urban regions have published over 30 datasets on the Smart Cities Open Data Portal.

The gamut of data collection and analysis includes sensors, portals, special algorithms, big data centres, among others. Fifty cities have showcased better citizen engagement through alerts and notifications.

On Friday, Minister of Housing and Urban Affairs, Hardeep Puri, presented awards in various catagories to cities and states to celebrate 6th anniversary of the launch of PMAY-U, AMRUT and Smart Cities Mission.

The Centre also unveiled the ‘Climate Smart Cities Assessment Framework’ (CSCAF) 2 awards, which were launched in September, 2020 to assess what “climate actions” are being taken by smart cities. The framework consists of 28 indicators of 96 data points. The top nine cities that have been awarded with four-star ratings are Surat, Indore, Ahmedabad, Pune, Vijayawada, Rajkot, Visakhapatnam, Pimpri-Chinchwad and Vadodara.

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