Innovation Labs
White Paper
Intelligent Cities:
A City Process Management Approach
Creating a people-centered future intelligent city
This report is the outcome of a research partnership between Tata Consultancy Services and Singapore Management University.
About the Authors
Teo Chin Seng
As the Executive Director of SMU-TCS iCity Labs and an Adjunct Faculty at the School of
Information Systems (SIS) at Singapore Management University (SMU), Chin Seng is
driving the research to develop an intelligent city management framework and platform
for future intelligent cities. He is leading the efforts in defining a novel way of citizencentric thinking which will enable urban living to be more efficient and effective through
technology.
Prior to this role, with 28 years of working experience in multiple industries, with
specialization in healthcare, residential town management, port and logistics, and
government authority services, Chin Seng was an experienced and innovative CIO who
supported high technology companies, large conglomerates, and government agencies
in the Asia Pacific – Middle East region.
Chin Seng holds an Executive MBA in International Business from Golden Gate
University, San Francisco.
Alfred Wu
As the Senior Director and Chief Architect of SMU-TCS iCity Labs, Alfred leads the
research on defining a holistic IT architecture and core technology platform for future
cities which will address the citizen-centric view and the associated themes and
challenges faced by the city governments in transforming themselves from the as-is
state to future intelligent cities. As a trusted advisor specializing in urban management
solutions, Alfred has been consulted by government leaders in various ASEAN countries.
Alfred has over 20 years of working experience in IT and related industries. Prior to
joining SMU, Alfred was the General Manager of Oracle China, and was responsible for
application business sales and strategy for public sector, education, healthcare, and
communications.
Alfred holds a Master Degree in Computer Science from the Mississippi State University
and Master of Business Economics from the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Alfred is a
life-time member of the Hong Kong Computer Society (HKCS).
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About the Authors
Harish Bhandarkar
Harish currently heads the Tools, Architecture, and R&D group for the Platform Solutions
unit of TCS. He has been working with TCS for over 16 years, in various technology
consulting and senior architect roles in large application deployments, CRM
implementations, product development, and enterprise architecture.
He holds a Bachelor of Engineering degree in Computer Science from Mysore.
Nabarun Ray Chaudhuri
Nabarun is the Business Lead for the Intelligent City initiative at TCS, which focuses on
urban and e-municipality domains. Additionally, he is part of the international delivery
team within the government business unit of TCS. Under his leadership TCS has won
many awards for e-Governance projects.
He has authored several publications, including many papers in international journals,
and is a regular contributor and participant at many national and international forums. In
2007, he was invited as an honorary member of the Provincial IT Advisory Committee for
the Province of Limpopo, South Africa.
Prior to TCS, he has worked with several bilateral government agencies in India and with
the Water Board of the State Government of Uttar Pradesh.
Nabarun has an M. Phil Degree from the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), with a
specialization in municipal finance and urban development, and a Post Graduate
Management Diploma in HR. He is also a certified PRINCE2® Program Management
Practitioner.
Srinivasa Raghavan Venkatachari
Srinivasa Raghavan heads the Intelligent City Business Solutions Group within the CTO
R&D unit of TCS. As a versatile technology professional with a passion for emerging
technologies, he has built technology solutions for customers in various industries and
geographies. Prior to this, he headed the cloud computing practice within the CTO R&D
organization, and prior to that, he headed the architecture practice in TCS' Emerging
Markets business unit.
Srinivasa Raghavan holds a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science and Engineering
from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi and a Master's degree in Aerospace
Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras.
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A well-balanced future city is one that can optimally use its resources and infrastructure to
serve the needs of its citizens and businesses. Government policies, programs, and services
must ensure positive outcomes for all stakeholders. At the same time, the world is witnessing
major trends in urbanization and demographics which are going to create massive and
complex problems for governments. To solve these problems, we need a new holistic
approach beyond an exclusive focus on smart infrastructure, in which people are at the
center of governance and automation. In this paper, we will present a novel people-centric
approach named City Process Management Approach (CPM), which can help cities move
from a technology-centric (smart) level to an intelligent (people-centric) level, thereby
improving the Quality of Life (QoL). We also introduce the key concepts of 'avatar', and lifelong themes which are fundamental to understanding this approach.
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Contents
1. Prelude
8
1.1. Current State of Thinking
8
1.2. Current Megatrends
9
1.2.1. Rapid Urbanization
9
1.2.2. Aging Population and Related Problem of Chronic Diseases
9
1.2.3. Ever-changing Needs for Skills and Competencies
10
1.2.4. Employability
10
1.2.5. Pervasiveness of Information Technology
10
1.3. An Approach for Future Cities
2. New Ways of Thinking
11
12
2.1. Citizen Participation
12
2.2. Modeling Citizen Behaviors
12
2.3. Lifelong Themes
13
2.4. Sustainability
13
2.5. Outcome Based Approach
14
2.6. Monitoring and Management of City Processes
15
3. CPM – A Framework for Future Cities
15
3.1. Our Vision of Future Cities
15
3.2. Citizen-centricity – Core of a Future City Design
16
3.3. Introduction to CPM
17
3.4. CPM Framework Components
19
3.4.1. Policies, Programs, Schemes, and Services
19
3.4.2. Process Management
22
3.4.3. Constraints and Personalization
22
3.4.4. City Services Integration
24
3.4.5. People and Avatar
25
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Contents
3.5. Views of CPM
26
3.5.1. Government View
26
3.5.2. Citizen View
27
3.5.3. Business View
27
3.5.4. Service Provider View
28
3.5.5. Mayor View
28
3.6. Benefits of the CPM Approach
28
3.6.1. Benefits to the Government
28
3.6.2. Benefits to Residents
30
3.6.3. Overall Benefits to the City
30
4. Unique Aspects of the CPM Approach
30
4.1. End-to-end Integration and Interoperability
30
4.2. Situational Awareness for Key Stakeholders
31
4.3. Personalization of Citizen Services –Lifelong view
31
4.4. Policy Simulation and Decision Support
31
5. CPM Scenarios
5.1. Chronic Disease Management
32
32
5.1.1. Challenges and Opportunities
32
5.1.2. Using the CPM approach to Manage Diabetes
32
5.2. Lifelong Education Services Delivery
34
5.2.1. Challenges and Opportunities
34
5.2.2. Using CPM Approach to Manage Continuous Education
35
6. Conclusion
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1. Prelude
There is a growing need to ensure that residents and stakeholders of our present and future cities experience
efficient city services and better QoL. It is vital that these stakeholders, which include governments, businesses, and
non-government entities, have their individual needs anticipated and met. Concurrently, it is also critical to educate
and empower citizens to take informed decisions at various stages of life.
A well-balanced future city is one that can optimally use its resources and infrastructure – which may be at various
levels of maturity – to serve the needs of its citizens and businesses. The governments of the future need to be
equipped with intelligent tools that help them manage and operate infrastructure and resources efficiently.
Government policies, programs, and services also need to be sustainable and constantly improved upon, to ensure
positive outcomes for all citizens. With this approach, each city can evolve from a smart (technology-centric) to an
intelligent (people-centric), livable city.
But, how can this be made possible? This white paper describes the SMU-TCS iCity approach, which proposes a
novel solution for intelligent future cities.
1.1. Current State of Thinking
Take, for instance, a room with ten people in it. If we were to provide each of them a tablet or a personal computer,
and equip the room with various technological innovations, can this room be labeled intelligent? The centers of
intelligence in this room are the people and when there is no intelligent connection between the tablet,
technologies of the room, and the people, it is merely a room full of advanced technologies.
Similar is the case of citizens in a modern city. People living in cities enjoy a modern lifestyle, better education, and
enhanced healthcare delivery than those in the small towns in the interiors. City dwellers also enjoy a higher QoL
through facilities such as elevators, cars, mass rapid transport systems, and more. However, it is not all about
benefits as urban living also entails pollution, loneliness, and a lack of safety and security. While such factors are
inherent in urban living, communication technology has the potential to mitigate these effects by integrating
lifestyles, managing effective government policies, and through the knowledge and information provided to each
person to make an informed choice.
Can there be a middle ground through which we can enjoy all the benefits of urban living and reduce the negative
impact to create a sustainable city? We believe that the answer lies with the intelligent urban dweller. If we can
empower each resident with knowledge and information; if each person can participate in the systems and
processes of a city in an integrated way; and if a city government can have a close and collaborative relationship
with its residents, beneficial compromises will be possible. We base our assumptions on our trust in the intelligence
of people, their value systems, and the systems governing a city. When we get them to work together, it will make it
easier for people to live in a city. This premise holds true even in developing countries where the needs are more
[1]
basic and evolving, and in fact governments are transforming their public services.
[1] Palgrave Macmillan, ‘The Changing Role of Government: The Reform of Public Services in Developing Countries’, September 2004
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As we get back to the scenario of the room, it becomes intelligent and smart when:
a. Each person knows the functions and the value proposition of the tablet and the room's technologies which can
be leveraged by individuals in the room, and collectively by the people as a group
b. Each person operates these devices and the technologies (system) in the room with the common goals of
uplifting the combined group interest
c. Each person, according to their experience and skills, contributes to improving the environment of the room
Each person is a critical part of this body and without them the system fails. Perhaps, the room could evolve into a
library, a logistics hub, a financial trading room, or even a games room, and it will be up to the dreams and
aspirations of the group to bring the room to its evolved 'intelligent' state.
1.2. Current Megatrends
There are a few key trends that are influencing the way future cities will evolve. Each of these trends is complex and
involves multiple considerations. These trends impact the way we will live and the way future cities will develop. The
service expectations and the outcomes expected by citizens are in fact the derivatives of these key trends. Some of this
impact is the result of the evolution of modern society, while some of it is adaptation to meet the challenges of these
mega trends. Future cities must focus on addressing these challenges. Urban living is getting more complex and the
challenges that they face are 'wicked'[2] problems. Information and Communication Technology (ICT) is a potential tool
that can be used to meet these challenges. We will look at these trends in the following sub-sections.
1.2.1. Rapid Urbanization
[4]
The world is facing an unprecedented population growth that could approach 9.3 billion people by 2050 . Many
more mega cities will appear with population of over 10 million people each and there is the increasing migration
of rural population to urban centers. Most of these emerging cities will be in Asia, especially in China and India.
Therefore, Asia will be a significant player in the development of future cities. The development of Asian cities will
be different from the existing developed cities as many new Asian cities are developing at a faster pace and with a
higher population density.
1.2.2. Aging Population and Related Problem of Chronic Diseases
Despite a growing world population, cities in developed countries are facing an increasing aging population due to
[6]
a low Total Fertility Ratio (TFR) of their population .By the year 2050, even currently developing countries like China
will be faced with the major issue of an aging population. In turn, there are bound to be imbalances and economic
uncertainty. But then the economic dimension is not the only challenge of an aging population –there are other
dimensions like family support, pension, social, welfare, and many other considerations like a shrinking workforce.[7]
[2] Rittel, Horst W. J., Melvin M. Webber, ‘Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning’, Policy Sciences, p. 155-169, 1973
[3] United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA), ‘World Urbanization Prospects - The 2011 Revision’, March 2012
[4] United Nations, World Urbanization Prospects, The 2011 Revision, http://esa.un.org/unup/pdf/WUP2011_Highlights.pdf, retrieved March 31, 2013
[5] Klamma, R., Chatti, M. A., Duval, E., Hummel, H., Hvannberg, E. H., Kravcik, M., Law, E.,Naeve, A., & Scott, P. , Social Software for Lifelong Learning. Educational
Technology & Society, 10 (3), 72-83, 2007, http://dspace.learningnetworks.org/bitstream/1820/910/4/ET%26S_socialsoftware.pdf, accessed June 3, 2013
[6] HNP - World Bank, ‘Some Economic Consequences of Global Aging’, December 2010
[7] Springer, ‘The Power of Global Aging’, February 2010
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Urban living also fosters stress in many other ways. These various forms of stress are in most cases directly
correlated with a sedentary lifestyle and consumption of a modern diet. It changes the profile and results in an
increase of people afflicted with chronic diseases. This leads to issues in productivity, healthcare costs, and QoL.
Thus, an aging population and the increasing cost of managing the chronically sick, changes the expenditure
patterns of governments and increases the stress on the social support system of a city. Therefore, in an aging and
maturing city, the chronic sick population can be a serious economic and social challenge.
1.2.3. Ever-changing Needs for Skills and Competencies
Living in urban areas requires knowledge-intensive skill sets and information to enjoy a good QoL. Lifelong
competency development however has become a major challenge for traditional formal education systems as they
are unable to change their educational policies and pedagogical models to meet the requirements of lifelong
[5]
learning .
Lifelong competency development provides residents with the required skills based on their needs at each stage of
their life. Currently, these learning channels are created in silos and are based on a specific topic. Each resident is
supposed to integrate them to address their needs. Further, technology developments in Internet education, the
use of social media, and growing acceptance of mobile and smart devices have altered the methods of education in
a modern city. In effect, we have moved away from the physical classrooms to the virtual learning space of the
[8]
internet.
1.2.4. Employability
As a city evolves, its economic structure evolves as well and various industries begin to establish themselves in the
city. The people of the city must adapt to these new industries by acquiring new skills, new qualifications, and new
knowledge. If they fail to adapt to these changing conditions, unemployment increases.[11] Moreover, the city has to
shoulder the additional financial and social burden of sustaining the unemployed population.[12]
In the case of an economy with high inequality in income and wealth, and a high degree of rural-to-urban
migration, there is further pressure on urban areas in terms of structural unemployment. Naturally, there are
unemployed people who are not able to find work owing to a mismatch in the skillset and job requirements, even if
there are job opportunities.
Employment in an urban environment and at a population level is a complex and wicked problem.
1.2.5. Pervasiveness of Information Technology
Information Technology (IT) has already made a huge impact on governments and societies. Governments all over
the world are now investing heavily in simplifying and automating their service delivery.
[2] Rittel, Horst W. J., Melvin M. Webber, ‘Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning’, Policy Sciences, p. 155-169, 1973
[3] United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA), ‘World Urbanization Prospects - The 2011 Revision’, March 2012
[4] United Nations, World Urbanization Prospects, The 2011 Revision, http://esa.un.org/unup/pdf/WUP2011_Highlights.pdf, retrieved March 31, 2013
[5] Klamma, R., Chatti, M. A., Duval, E., Hummel, H., Hvannberg, E. H., Kravcik, M., Law, E.,Naeve, A., & Scott, P. , Social Software for Lifelong Learning. Educational
Technology & Society, 10 (3), 72-83, 2007, http://dspace.learningnetworks.org/bitstream/1820/910/4/ET%26S_socialsoftware.pdf, accessed June 3, 2013
[6] HNP - World Bank, ‘Some Economic Consequences of Global Aging’, December 2010
[7] Springer, ‘The Power of Global Aging’, February 2010
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The impact of IT within societies will continue to grow and it will become more and more pervasive. Social media,
mobility, Machine-to-Machine (M2M), Internet of Things (IoT), Big Data, and Cloud Computing are transforming the
way information is being processed today. While these terms are very well understood now, the challenge lies in
using them effectively to address the various problems of cities.
[9] [10]
Social media technology and the pervasiveness of access have transformed the way population behaves.
As
with traditional media like television, social media technology influences a large population within a short period of
time and can have adverse effects. But this technology has a positive impact as well, such as interacting with the
community for social services.
With M2M and IoT allowing sensors and devices to participate in the government’s and citizen’s processes, it leads
to exciting opportunities in homecare, automated fault correction, transportation, utilities, and supply chain
management.
In short, innovations in IT create high expectations among citizens, who would want the city services to be
accessible at all times, from any kind of device, and be responsive to their needs. Future cities should leverage these
technological innovations to deliver next generation citizen services.
1.3. An Approach for Future Cities
Any holistic approach to address mega problems should be based on three basic principles:
a. The information provided to the urban dweller:
Where the city strives to keep the person informed, provides knowledge through lifelong education, and equips
them through activities and training
b. The beliefs and value systems of each urban dweller, so that:
The city strives to coax and influence the population to make choices based on citizenship, and societal and
community good (value system of population and individual)
Each person can exercise their rights to decide and choose
c. The skills and capabilities of a person and the resources of a city to provide lifelong education, including:
Training and skill development to upgrade each citizen. These upgrading programs can be used to improve the
type of employment that the citizen is engaged in or can be oriented to development of life-skills such as coping
with disability
Capabilities and talent management. Each person has their own unique strengths and weaknesses. By helping each
citizen identify their strengths, cities can choose to develop the citizen's capabilities through training and courses
[8] International Journal of The Computer, ‘E-Government in Digital Era: Concept, Practice and Development’, 2002
[9] Far East Journal of Psychology and Business, ‘The Role Social of Media and Modern Technology in Arabs Spring’, 2012
[10] Australasian Journal of Regional Studies, ‘Communicating, Connecting, and Developing Social Capital for Sustainable Organizations and Their Communities’, 2011
[11] International Labour Office - Geneva (Employment Sector, Employment Working Paper), ‘The Changing Forms of Employment, Unemployment, and Labor Protection
Regimes in Advanced Economies, Employment Effects of North-South Trade & Technological Change’, 2008
[12] Review of Social Economy, ‘The Moral Imperative and Social Rationality of Government-Guaranteed Employment and Reskilling’, March 2010
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A holistic approach which ensures a framework that enables a citizen to match their needs, preferences, skills, and
capabilities, with the needs and constraints of the city
The above principles are generic and are not limited to the individual urban dweller. They can apply equally to any
stakeholder in their interaction with the city.
So what are the implications of these principles? What new thinking is required?
2. New Ways of Thinking
Urban living is getting more complex and cities are facing the ever increasing challenges posed by wicked
problems. This section introduces some of the new concepts and approaches that would be imperative for our
future cities to adopt in order to better manage and handle problems
2.1. Citizen Participation
Citizens today want to have a voice in society. They have strong views and can even influence the policies and
decisions of the government. Social and mass media has also ensured that every person can now be heard.
It is important for the governing bodies to actively interact with its citizens in order to obtain timely feedback and
understand what they really want. The governments must define and re-define their policies to meet the real needs
of citizens. Citizens can then actually participate in the city governance by directly influencing the governing
policies.
This means a city needs to find new ways of allowing the citizens to interact and actively participate in the
functioning of the city. [13]
2.2. Modeling Citizen Behaviors
Can modern technology be used in a manner that can bring about positive outcomes by influencing good behavior
in the population? This is possible if such behavior goes beyond political agendas and can in turn, influence
personal and societal roles.
Let us illustrate this with an example. The city wants to influence the aerobic activities of the middle-aged citizen to
encourage regular exercise and reduce activities such as watching television. For this problem, we believe that
technology can help in:

Organizing information and presenting choices to a citizen

Allowing citizens to choose from various options

Helping citizens track compliance to their choices

Using the outcome and compliance to influence citizens in deciding on the best choice for individual and
collective good
[13] Elsevier Inc., Government Information Quarterly, ‘From e-government to we-government: Defining a typology for citizen coproduction in the age of social media’,
October 2012
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In order to achieve this, we need to build a comprehensive human-centric and statistical model of citizens and their
behavior. The model must include factors such as social upbringing, current financial state, current emotional state,
location, environment, social networks, and time. The data must be collected with the explicit consent of citizens,
while fully respecting privacy laws.
Individual behavior can influence the behavior of other citizens, often resulting in mass behavior. Predicting this
can help a city launch the right set of services, which can balance the expectations of different segments of the
population according to each segment’s unique needs and constraints.
2.3. Lifelong Themes
All governments aspire for their citizens to lead fulfilling, happy, and content lives – in short, a better QoL. What can
the government do to improve the lives of citizens? If we take the approach of a citizen centered city, we can focus
on the areas of planning that help future intelligent cities to enable people to live well.
The city needs a system for the consumption of the government, services, and residents. This must be agile and
adaptable to each person’s needs, growing requirements, and societal change. Cities today need to identify and
develop a system of management for the key life processes of an urban dweller. These form lifelong themes for the
citizen. Lifelong themes manage citizen processes in ways that can improve citizen wellbeing and enable cities to
grow in a sustainable manner. In managing these complex parameters, governments need to ensure that the city
moves in the right direction to increase its total value to the citizens. To do so, governments need to provide
horizontal integration across all city domains and systems, leading to unified citizen-centric processes. It needs to
guide citizens by managing the lifelong relationship with the community, city, and the various services provided by
it. The processes sense the city and citizens’ conditions as they evolve, and will automatically cascade to the right
set of activities applicable at that time.
A few key lifelong themes a city must provide to its citizens are – lifelong education, lifelong health, lifelong
wellness, and lifelong employment.
2.4. Sustainability
The world’s population is expected to increase by 72% by the year 2050 and the urban population will probably
grow even more, and cover two-thirds of the global population. Urbanization is not just about people moving into
cities; it involves changes in lifestyle, economic profile, consumption patterns, and investments in infrastructure.
Future cities face the challenge of ensuring that residents in an urban dwelling are living well and in an efficient
way.
Increasing urbanization requires new ways of governing, planning, and management. There are however many
more fundamental issues that need to be addressed in order to make these cities more livable and sustainable. It is
imperative that:
a. The city needs to be effective and efficient. This includes effectual city planning in building infrastructures
such as roads, housing, and waste management measures. Necessities like water, energy, and broadband and
basic services such as healthcare, education, and public security must certainly be provided. The spread of
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information technology in cities has led to the development of smart cities where major city systems are
integrated, and use optimization techniques to facilitate efficiencies in areas like water management, traffic
control, carbon footprint, and public security.
b. The city needs to be responsible - Urban dwellers use city resources and services. If these are delivered in silos
and each person does not see their performance and value in a well-integrated manner, the use of these services
can be unproductive from a system’s perspective. As we live in denser cities, there will be fewer resources to
serve our needs. In addition, there will be fixed constraints in space, resources, and fiscal budgets. When a city’s
systems and processes become integrated and aligned to the lifestyle of each person, it becomes an extension
of that person and has a multiplier effect on the person’s capability. So, when we deliver information and
outcomes through the decisions of people based on a positive value system, the city systems become
sustainable. For example, when a person understands the impact of energy consumption and their individual
consumption patterns, then the person can reduce their energy consumption, making the city greener. The
community can then gradually enjoy a greener and less polluted city. To achieve this, the city needs to provide
multiple ways to deliver information and choices to the population, and these avenues of choice need to be
adaptable so they can be changed with time and evolving priorities of the city.
The human race has become acutely aware of our finite natural resources and the impact that we have created by
consuming these resources within a city. Consequently, we must begin to redesign our cities to be green, efficient,
and less wasteful – enabling a more livable city for the future. Only this can make our modern cities more efficient
and their systems, smarter.
2.5. Outcome Based Approach
Citizens often find it very difficult to navigate through the bureaucracy of the government. Each government
department or agency has its own services, unique workflows, and requirements. Their operations change over a
period of time through changes in government policies and it is almost impossible to integrate the government
services through the internal processes of each of these departments. The citizen however, does not need to know
or worry about the intra and inter-departmental complexities. The citizen only needs to view the overall outcomes.
A city requires new ways of delivering services to its citizens. These services should be simple and more citizencentric. They should minimize the need to interact with government departments and other service providers. The
government needs to look at new ways of improving the outcome of its integrated services for the citizens. This will
have a big impact on the citizens’ well-being and help ensure growth and sustenance. To illustrate with an analogy,
while using an ATM, the customer gets his money as the outcome of his card transaction and does not bother
about the complexity of the ATM’s interactions with the bank’s backend systems. Similarly, in a city, the government
needs to look at ways of providing outcome-based services to its citizens without the complexities of various
government departments.
There are two implications to adopting an outcome-based approach:
a. Integration–The government systems need to be integrated to provide an outcome-based service to its citizens
b. Process management– The government must ensure that the city can manage, analyze, and improve internal
processes from the perspective of the citizens. Through time and motion data, it can understand the behaviors
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of citizens and the performance of the city departments and through Key Performance Indicators (KPIs),
measure and institute changes to further improve the same. This can be done by using a continuous
improvement management approach – what we can measure, we can improve. Key Outcome Indicators (KOIs)
are the basis for city planners and mayors to understand the true outcome of city systems and the tangible
benefits to each citizen. Outcome-based analysis can also be linked effectively with the government
expenditure and fiscal budgets. A well-managed city should be effective in managing fiscal budgets to improve
the city and overall QoL.
2.6. Monitoring and Management of City Processes
Citizens today constantly consume city services and participate in multiple processes that interact with various city
departments and service providers. Hence, it is vital for the city to monitor the performance of its services and gain
current insights into the sentiments of its citizens.
There are multiple dimensions that can be monitored in real-time by a city:

Lifestyle processes of the city population

Performance of each department to fulfill its services to its people and businesses without getting into the
operational details of each department

Sentiments of the citizens

Response and feedback of the citizens
Understanding citizens’ sentiments could reveal issues that the system design of a city did not initially consider.
Understanding and acting on some of the root causes of feedback will improve the management of the city, create
more integration and synergies, and help identify new and evolving needs.
3. CPM – A Framework for Future Cities
The previous sections clearly highlighted the need for a new and holistic solution approach that can address the
problems of future cities. We call our novel framework – City Process Management (CPM).
3.1. Our Vision of Future Cities
Our vision of a future city includes a citizen-centric and inclusive society, fostering an environment where citizens
enjoy a high QoL, use city resources optimally, and enjoy a conducive and safe community.
An intelligent citizen has choices, and it is the city’s responsibility to provide timely and personalized information,
so that a citizen can choose wisely and participate effectively.
We will define the terms ‘citizen-centricity’ and ‘intelligent people’ in subsequent sub-sections, as these are key to
understanding our vision and approach.
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3.2. Citizen-centricity – Core of Future City Design
The traditional model of designing citizen services needs to change as modern society demands more participation
and inclusion[14]. The lack of citizen-centric city services will give rise to a number of challenges. To quote the World
Bank: “Unresponsive, unaccountable, inefficient, and ineffective bureaucracies seem impossible to change with the
[15]
current tools in place, requiring a new approach, called citizen-centered reform model” .
Also, in the traditional models of governing, services are often delivered to citizens in silos. These departments can
be large, provide only a specialized service, and treat citizens as end customers.
Similarly, when a commercial entity interacts with city services, it is served in a silo, as an end customer. City
programs that require the horizontal services of multiple departments must be coordinated through common
understanding and agreement, and by having joint committees or working groups. If they do not meet regularly, or
have poor coordination, the stakeholders tend to collaborate in an inefficient way, resulting in an unpleasant
experience for the citizen and commercial entities. We need to orchestrate these services so that each citizen will
see their needs fulfilled from an end-to-end approach. Figure 1 shows the snapshot of the existing approach and
the highly recommended citizen-centric approach.
Current Approach
New Citizen-Centric Approach
Citizen
NGOs, VWO,
Charities
Community
Services
Information
Education
Deliver disjointed outcomes
Co-ordinated effort,
but led by one department
Government
Program
Self, Family,
Caregivers
Citizen
Needs
Independent departments silos
Departments
Social
Workers
Healthcare
Housing/
Environment
Employment
Citizen Needs
Figure 1 – A snapshot of the existing approach and the highly recommended citizen-centric approach
[14] University of Oradea, Faculty of Economics in its journal The Journal of the Faculty of Economics - Economic, ‘Implications of Citizen Participation in Local Public
Administration Upon Citizens’ Satisfaction’, 2010
[15] The World Bank, Washington, D.C., Handbook on Public Sector Performance Reviews, ‘Towards Citizen Centered Local-level Budgets in Developing Countries’, 2003
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Using a ‘citizen-centered’ design, multiple city services can be made to revolve around the needs of citizens and
residents. These services are linked together based on different life events like aging or chronic disease
[16]
management . These end-to-end services provide an integrated view of the entire value chain of services to
citizens and residents. This enables outcome measurement of the entire process.
When services can be measured and integrated, city governments can possess a service delivery framework that is
focused on delivering value and performance to each citizen.
3.3. Introduction to CPM
CPM, a holistic framework, takes a citizen-centric approach to better manage city operations through outcomes,
and leverages IT to transform today’s city to a future, intelligent city. It also addresses the competing needs and
choices among people, government, and limited city resources.
The CPM framework takes into consideration the challenges, mega trends, and new thinking that we have
identified so far, and it:
a. Integrates the services of a city in a horizontal manner to deliver an end-to-end experience for citizens
b. Captures and measures the effectiveness and efficiencies of these services
c. Manages services as processes and uses IT to integrate these processes across different stakeholders and
citizens, throughout their lifetime
d. Promotes participation and collaboration
CPM allows measurement of service levels, and the efficiencies and effectiveness of KPIs, outcomes, and KOIs to
provide accountability of government services. These performance indicators can be used as benchmarks for
continuous improvements in government processes or even benchmarks to compete with other cities.
Intelligent cities, as we have defined, are those enabled by technology to be more efficient and effective, thus
improving the QoL. We could also define them to be eco-friendly, sustainable, and pollution free [17].
Intelligent
People
People
(Knowledge)
Intelligent City
STRONG
VALUES
Infrastructure
Smart City
Smart City
People
Infrastructure
Figure 2 – An overview of an intelligent city with intelligent interactions
[16] Elsevier Inc., Government Information Quarterly, ‘Requirements Engineering for e-Government Services: A Citizen-centric Approach and Case Study’, 2009
[17] Elsevier Inc., Journal of Urban Economics, ‘Are Compact Cities Environmentally Friendly?’, 2012
Singapore Management University
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In the future, citizens should be at the center of the city design. With citizens at the center, we can define the
challenges and solutions of future cities around them.
In addition, future cities should include the design of the space between a resident and the city (using
infrastructures and services) – a space that has rarely been addressed using technology. They can then be labeled
intelligent cities. A citizen-centric approach makes people more intelligent in a holistic manner and helps leverage
IT to automate and provide management in this layer of ‘citizen to city interactions.’ Figure 2 illustrates this concept.
What does the term ‘intelligent people’ mean? It consists of three key areas:

Resident to city interactions– Makes it easier and more efficient for a citizen to use the city resources

Education and knowledge–Provides information and educates citizens about urban knowledge and skills to
enable them to live well in an urban area

Value and governance–Helps citizens cultivate good values and feel secure and safe when living in an urban
area
A person living in an intelligent city has choices and only timely and personalized information can help them make
correct choices. A citizen should be active in contributing to the society, and in return a city should be aware of the
citizen’s needs and provide a convenient way for people to participate.
Internal Functions of Government


Budget Management
Financial Management


Services & Performance Standards
Economic Planning & Development


Social Order and Welfare
Citizen Well being
INTERACTION
City Context
Constraints
Policies, Law & Regulation

Governing Framework

Economic Framework

Social Framework
INTERACTION
Planning, Operations and Monitoring

INTERACTION


Financial

Human Resource

Physical Infrastructure

Social

Priorities
INTERACTION
City Services Integration
Health
Transportation
Education
Environment
Utilities
Public Safety
Revenue &
Financials
Social
Services
Industrial &
Commercial
Taxation/ VAT
Recreation
Manpower
Figure 3– A diagrammatic representation of the people-centered CPM framework
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To summarize, CPM’s citizen-centric design will enable intelligent people to enjoy a fulfilling life with wellness, use
city resources optimally, build a conducive and safe community, and develop an inclusive society.
3.4. CPM Framework Components
The CPM Framework consists of the following functions as diagrammatically represented in Figure 3:

Internal functions of a government (governance)–This involves managing governance and ensuring that
government policies can be translated into government programs and be delivered to the city as services. These
functions are critical to making a city successful. For example, using budget management, a successful
government can optimize its budget to bring optimal benefits to its citizens, thereby increasing the quality of
their well-being

City context (operations)– This involves creating an end-to-end experience for citizens or residents. These are the
processes for governance. When services are delivered to citizens, there are many dimensions to consider, such
as social groups that have different needs, or citizens who require financial help. Often these are planned and
delivered through the processes of policies, programs, schemes, and services

Constraints (rules, preferences, and resources)– Every city has a finite amount of resources and each person has
personal limitations. Together they form the dynamic constraints that a city government needs to consider while
governing. It is about choices, compromises, and sacrifices. Considering constraints in a holistic and balanced
way can ensure that optimized decisions are taken and will result in positive outcomes for all. It enables
personalization and optimization of services, and helps in creating a sustainable city

City services integration– This represents the various services provided to citizens by government departments
and public service providers, and the interactions of the framework with these services. These are essential
services that a citizen or business requires. The departments that provide these services incur huge costs in
delivering the services and end up utilizing valuable resources. Therefore these services should be delivered in
an effective and efficient manner to ensure positive outcomes for both citizens and businesses

People and ‘avatar’– People are at the core of the framework and all the CPM functions are meant to deliver
lifelong services for each citizen and improve QoL. Citizens interact with various functions through an avatar and
access a personalized service aligned with their needs. However, the avatar is not limited to these functions. As a
technology, it also embodies the important and relevant information about the citizen, which is critical to deliver
personalized services. In a citizen-centric model, all services are tailored as per the profile of each avatar. The
services are also organized accordingly to ensure that the person can choose amongst relevant services and
make an optimal decision that is based on their needs
3.4.1. Policies, Programs, Schemes, and Services
Urbanization can increase affluence levels, education levels, and the standard of living among citizens.
On the flipside, as a result of a more sedentary lifestyle, chronic diseases are on the rise amongst citizens. These are
simple truths about the complexity of urban living.
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A modern city includes new infrastructure such as broadband Internet, digital media broadcasting, high-speed
mobile networks, international connectivity, and low-cost telecommunication. These are considered more
important than traditional essentials such as roads, utilities, and electricity. These new infrastructure elements have
influenced and accelerated urban changes. On a positive side, these technology evolutions enable urban dwellers
to live better, travel efficiently, and connect amongst themselves and with international communities. On the other
hand, such acceleration can amplify negative societal sentiments and population behaviors which may result in the
fast emergence of social unrest. It can also result in a high degree of discontent within the population.
Recent developments in the global space, such as the Arab Spring, has made it clear that with technology,
situations can evolve very quickly within a short period of time and influence a large proportion of the population
to act. Therefore, in managing an urban population, there should be an efficient way to bring the process of
planning, setting policies, developing programs, and deploying these programs through schemes and services,
quickly and effectively. It would be a valid way to counter the speed of change within a population. If technology
can influence the sentiment of the population quickly, the system of governing should react as rapidly with the
help of technology to meet changing needs. This may not be the only solution, but is an approach that meets the
needs of a fast-acting population.
The process to follow includes the drafting of government policies, translating these policies into programs, and
converting these programs into services. When we are implementing these policies within the boundary of a
government department, it is straightforward and can be managed in silos. But often policies are related to a
resident or a business, can cover multiple departments, and must employ complex logic and rules to utilize these
services. Conventionally, these departments get together to draft a common understanding of these processes and
if there is a change, these meetings must occur again.
We propose that this process can be automated and managed through the CPM framework, through a
‘management of programs’ approach.
Government Planning
and Policies
Government Policies
Control and Management
Private/ Commercial/
Supporting Departments
Government Programs
Programs
Services
CPM
Citizens, Residents, Businesses, NGOs
Physical Services
Services
Provisioning
Eligibility
Automation and
Coordination
Consuming Services
Figure 4– An overview of the policies, programs, and services
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Governance through Policies, Programs, Schemes, and Services
Typically, in a city, government plans are translated to policies to ensure that they can be implemented. These
policies should include details like duration, eligibility, and funding.
As illustrated in Figure 4, these policies are implemented through programs. Implementation of these policies can
be carried out through a single program or multiple programs. Each of these programs should include planning
parameters that the policies would want to achieve. An example is a policy to provide wellness for aged people,
where the healthcare program outcome could be a reduction in the number of in-patient hospitalization days to
not more than two in a year. Not all policies can be implemented through a platform like CPM. An example is a
social policy to reduce tobacco smoking. The implementation of such policies could be mass advertisement, roadshows, and symposiums. The success and failures of such policies can only be measured through indirect statistics
such as the growth and reduction of lung cancer, and cigarettes sales.
Schemes and services must be ‘citizen-facing’ for use and consumption. Extending our aging example, the relevant
schemes and services could be a healthcare bouquet of services that includes monthly checkups and free
prescriptions. These services could be supported by automated appointment booking for medical check-ups and
automated cash subsidies at the counter when the prescriptions are filled.
Citizen Lifelong Processes
Urban dwellers experience different challenges at different phases of their lives. Some of these phases are
temporary like formal education or period of unemployment. But others could develop into permanent challenges
such as disability, a medical stroke, or a chronic disease. The citizen’s financial status, social support group, their
health status, or their education and skill levels further complicate these challenges. Personalization to each
citizen’s needs will require these challenges be considered as a whole, as trade-offs need to be made to provide
each citizen with the optimal solution.
Program Objectives
Overall Objectives
Provide Financial Support to
Elderly Citizens with Financial needs
Be Active
Be Financially Independent
Live well
City Services
Outcomes for Elderly Citizen
with Financial Needs
Affordable Home
Good Living Conditions
Basic Utilities
Access to Water and Electricity
Active Community Activities
Staying Healthy and Alert
Affordable Healthcare
Maintaining Wellness
Basic Daily Subsistence
Living with Dignity
Figure 5 –An overview of an aging program
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The list of lifelong processes is endless. From our experience, a few major examples, especially in emerging
economies are –lifelong education, lifelong employability, chronic disease management, and aging management.
These processes are inter-dependent. A sample lifelong aging program is illustrated in Figure 5.
While designing city services around life themes of a citizen or resident, through government programs, we need to
consider multiple issues, constraints, and provide multiple choices for the citizen. An example is the disease selfmanagement program [18].
Program management is an approach where we can define a set of processes and methodology and use
technology to translate these programs into processes, rules, measurements, and outcomes.
Government programs could involve government fund allocation, self-payment by a citizen, or payment through a
commercial organization. Financial management in program management ensures that the outcomes and
performance of government programs are as planned.
3.4.2. Process Management
Process management is the centerpiece of a citizen-centric platform as it orchestrates multiple processes around a
person and integrates services across departments.
It has the ability to manage ‘clusters of services’ and this function allows multiple services to function together to
seamlessly run a government program. For example, a government program to manage chronic disease in a
population is a cluster of services.
As the citizen or resident uses the various schemes and services in the governance area, the process management
component will track the utilization, quality of services, and outcome of these services.
As we are using process management for managing each life theme, we could develop intelligent ways to optimize
each theme or interrelate these themes to offer an optimum solution for the citizen.
If a person has preferences, constraints, and identified needs, this component will help government services deliver
according to these constraints and preferences. Therefore services to each citizen can be personalized.
3.4.3. Constraints and Personalization
The basic element of CPM design is a set of processes that integrate the services in a city. As illustrated in Figure 6,
managing constraints in city planning is possible through historical statistics and by projecting these statistics into
the future to plan infrastructure or new government policies and programs. We believe that using a process
engineering approach will allow us to better manage constraints at a finer level and in detail.
Constraints at the Citizen Level
Each citizen has his or her unique conditions such as health, financial status, disability, and other special needs. To
personalize services and information for each citizen, we need to consider these constraints and address them
through policies.
[18] Linköping University Electronic Press, Culture Unbound, ‘Standardizing the Lay’, 2012
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Services
(Base Processes)
Lifelong Themes
Aging
Deployment
Assessment
(Programs)
Combination of citizen and city processes
Insights and Improvement
Program 1
Citizen’s
Personal
Lifestyle
Process
Program 2
Chronic Diseases
Program 3
Analytics
Program 4
Cityspecific
Process
Employment
Actual Outcomes
Key Performance Indicators
Lifelong Learning
Planning criteria
Constraints


Citizen
Resource
Constraints



Choices
Crisis Management
Govt. Priorities
1
2
Constraints



Utilization traffic
Financial/ Affordability
Physical limitation
Constraints



Optimization
Planning Resource limitations
Continuous Improvements
3
4
Figure 6 – A diagrammatic representation of the personalization approach
Constraints at Life Theme Level
When a government designs policies and programs to meet the challenges of life themes such as aging, it has to
consider many factors. These factors include the city resources, amount of money allocated to support these
policies and programs, the criteria for target population, duration, and other evaluation criteria. We develop KPIs,
KOIs, and outcomes from these criteria and constraints. When these programs are implemented, we can use these
measurement criteria to evaluate the effectiveness of policies and programs.
Constraints During Deployment
During deployment, the constraints become complex as people’s needs constantly change. When a policy is in
force, the constraints of the citizens may change, demanding a further fine-tuning of policies and programs.
Therefore, we need to constantly reflect these changes in the deployment process. It is at this stage that we need to
understand the data on citizens’ utilization patterns of the programs. Utilization patterns include frequency of use,
extent to which the planned KPIs and KOIs are achieved, and outcomes. These form evolving constraints once we
deploy these policies and programs.
For example, when a program has overwhelming utilization– above what we have planned – the resources such as
healthcare facilities may not be able to take the load or the initial allocated budget is utilized prematurely. These are
dynamic operational constraints. Similarly during a crisis, there will be dynamic constraints that appear suddenly,
which requires prioritizing and optimizing of existing resources.
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Assessment and Evaluation of Personalization
At each of the above three layers of constraints, we need constant assessments to ensure that each citizen is
managed fairly and adequately keeping in mind the changing conditions and constraints. This means, evaluation as
a feedback path needs to be considered by governments to offer a citizen the right program and to improve
policies and programs. The challenge however lies in aligning the citizen with government policies and programs
as closely as possible. This alignment, combined with the special needs of each citizen, represents CPM’s
personalization services. Figure 6 illustrates how constraints and personalization are handled, and how the citymandated and citizen lifestyle processes are interspersed to deploy a personalized life-long process, while
respecting constraints of stakeholders.
3.4.4. City Services Integration
The CPM framework supports the integration of services offered by various government departments, which are
currently being offered in silos. A lifelong process will be the umbrella under which these services will be
horizontally integrated by the process management component. For example, when a citizen is young, they
interact with pediatric healthcare, education, and perhaps for some special needs such as disability. When they
become a working adult, they interact with primary healthcare, employment services, and skill upgrading services.
In short, lifelong processes at different stages of life require changes to suit individual conditions, constraints, and
special needs.
CPM’s city services integration is limited to data and services that are relevant to the services that citizens need. In
the above example, as a child, the healthcare information for pediatric use could be limited to the chronic disease
status rather than detailed medical information, which is private and confidential. The status of health will
determine the school in which the child will be enrolled.
CPM also coordinates and orchestrates multiple processes and data. And if there are dependencies in processes, the
citizen need not be confused by its complexity, but instead be offered choices and options to make a decision. If a
child has a learning disability, depending on the pediatric healthcare record, the parent may be given a choice to
home-school the child or choose amongst the few schools with facilities for learning disability. Similarly, the
disability would be assessed under a set of different conditions when the child becomes an adult and wants to be
trained as a skilled worker.
To each government department, the framework can provide a means to gauge feedback on the status of services
that a citizen had initially requested. Some of these requests could have been aborted due to the decision of the
citizen or failure to conform to the criteria of a specific government department. In such a case, the education
system will know that a child has a learning disability, and has been enrolled in a special needs school which is
outside the normal formal education system.
Similarly as an adult, the city manpower will be aware of the special needs of this new working adult and will offer
training. Other relevant information provided would include hospital appointments, education enrolment
information, employment information, and qualification required to be eligible for social welfare. Such useful and
relevant information about the needs of a citizen does not include the domain intensive information for each
government department. Conforming to the key principle of CPM, the framework will provide timely information to
the stakeholders, including the status of each citizen request.
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3.4.5. People and Avatar
People are at the core of this new approach. To deliver the right personalized services to a person, we need to know
the person well – this includes a single, holistic view of the citizen and their needs, while fully respecting their
privacy.
As security and privacy are extremely important in the government arena, the CPM framework will enforce a
granular level of data privacy while the citizen interacts with the various services offered by the government and
public service providers. We call this concept the avatar.
Citizen
Avatar
Information
Avatar
Agent to apply
for services
Avatar
Schedules/
Appointments/
Plans
Figure 7 –A diagrammatic representation of the avatar
Defined as an embodiment or personification of a principle, attitude, or view of life, an avatar is an information
replica of the person. As illustrated in Figure 7, the information avatar acts as an information container which can be
used to navigate through city systems and services. For confidentiality and privacy reasons, each person must give
consent to the parties to access their avatars.
Our avatar concept is broad and generic, and can be adopted for various interactions between citizens and services.
It is based on specific variations such as the device, service, and stakeholder who needs access to citizen data. For
example, a citizen using a smartphone can have a specific avatar, like a ‘healthcare avatar’ while interacting with the
hospitals via the framework, and an ‘analytics avatar’ which, though, providing the mayor with the required data,
hides the citizen’s personal information. This means that a citizen will be represented by various avatars, which
embody different data attributes and behavioral patterns, and comply with the government rules and regulations.
Avatars can also be used as personalization agents as they store preferences and constraints related to a person.
These personalized profiles can be attached to each avatar and can then be used with the person’s consent,
whenever required. Similarly, commercial entities can have their ‘entities avatar’ which provides similar benefits
such as registration for business or applying for a license.
Hence, information avatars utilize the current state of technology to transform the way services are delivered to the
population, from current norms of a generalized program for a large population to one that is custom built for a
person or particular group.
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3.5. Views of CPM
CPM integrates a city’s processes efficiently, bringing greater benefits to the city stakeholders. For the city
government, it is designed to bring management tools, controls, performance reports, and feedback to ensure
better governance and care for the city residents. These are the two primary groups of users of CPM: management
and consumers.
1. The city management is accountable for the operations, and the city government has the political responsibility
of governance
2. Consumers are the end-users of CPM; they can be government departments, service providers, businesses,
organizations, and residents
Government Planning
and Policies
Outcome Views
Control and Management
CPM
Services
Management
Services
Provisioning
CPM
Services
Avatars
Service Provider View
Views
Management
of Programs
Physical Services
Eligibility
Government View
Mayor View
Private/ Commercial/
Supporting Departments
Government Programs
Citizen View
Business View
Citizens, Residents, Businesses, NGOs
Figure 8–An overview of the stakeholder's perspective of CPM
From the view of different stakeholders in a city, the needs and presentation of information are varied. As a single
source of information, CPM maintains a consistent view of different stakeholders. Figure 8 represents various
stakeholder views that is provided by CPM, and features that enable it. The following sub-sections describe these
views in detail.
3.5.1. Government View
A city’s government will focus on meeting local objectives and goals, as well as meeting the KOIs of the federal and
national government. These KOIs are set by each government and cover a wide area[19].
They can range from healthcare, housing, transportation, to financials such as economic performance and budget
management.
[19] Ministry of Finance, Singapore, ‘Singapore Public Sector Outcomes Review (SPOR)’, 2012 http://app.mof.gov.sg/spor.aspx, accessed March 31, 2013
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CPM contribution to this wide coverage of KOIs will be limited to:

The performance of city programs

The performance of various city life themes such as aging, and

The performance of citizens as derived from the data of their interaction with the city services through the
avatar
As government employees can use the CPM, the consumer view of the government displays the status of services
that the citizens are getting from other departments.
3.5.2. Citizen View
The citizen view (consumer) is divided into three main groups of functions:
1. Information and knowledge: Citizens are well-informed on the various government programs and schemes, and
the eligibility required to avail these applicable policies. Information is presented and sorted based on their
needs and unless it is mandated by the government, the citizen can exercise their choice at every step.
2. Enrolment and consumption: A high level of automation is vital for citizens to interact effectively with the city
services. For example, on retirement, CPM can facilitate enrolment in all neighborhood social clubs, if citizens
choose to do so.
3. Life theme aids: Through the concept of avatars, citizens can automate their lives. For example, a citizen’s
healthcare avatar is also enabled to provide timely reminders about prescription charts and scheduled doctor
visits.
3.5.3.Business View
The business view (manager and consumer) of CPM consists of four main areas:
1. Business-related transactions with government departments, for services such as applications for a business
license
2. Enrolment and participation in government programs for businesses
3. Information and educational materials
4. Employee and customer status and regulatory compliance
All these views of information and transactions are conducted through the use of the business avatar as it
represents the company profile.
The business view enables an establishment to operate more efficiently in the city. The intent is to focus on
information relevant to each business based on its profile, helping it avail those schemes and government
programs that can enhance business.
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3.5.4. Service Provider View
A service provider (manager and consumer) can be a commercial entity, a public service provider, or a government
department. CPM will help a service provider with the following:
1. Service level performance
2. KPIs, KOIs, and outcome reporting
3. Customers’ feedback system
These are limited to the data CPM captures while managing the interactions of citizens with the service providers.
For data not directly managed or tracked by CPM, it helps aggregate the domain data managed by the service
provider and presents them in context with other citizens or business data.
This provides service providers a vital source of information, which can be utilized to determine service standards.
Further, a filtered version of the service provider’s performance could be presented to citizens or businesses.
3.5.5. Mayor View
The mayor is responsible for the operational performance of the city and the welfare of its citizens, and has a
political scorecard. [20]
Each city is unique and has a different scorecard that combines the operational performance of the city with the
political scorecard. For example, if a city has a high unemployment rate, the scorecard will be biased towards
employment and jobs.
The CPM provides the mayor with reports that will help understand the performance of the city against the
scorecard. Also, CPM provides the details of all transactions that it handles into a performance report for the mayor.
For example, in terms of government programs that CPM handles, the mayor will gain insights into the utilization of
these programs, service levels, outcomes, and a view of the population benefiting from these programs.
In effect, CPM provides the ‘pulse’ of the population at a level of detail that is not available today.
3.6. Benefits of the CPM Approach
The CPM framework offers a number of key benefits to its stakeholders. We summarize these benefits based on its
key stakeholders –government, residents, and the city itself.
3.6.1. Benefits to the Government
Clarity
To the government, CPM offers clarity on public administration and public opinions in a number of dimensions, as it
is based on the data generated at the individual level. These include:

Population and demographics at a granular level such as the district and ward

Live trends of what residents are thinking about and the services being consumed
[20] The Australian Journal of Public Administration, ‘Managing Performance at Local Government Level: The Cases of the City of Brisbane and the City of Melbourne’, June 2009
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It also provides benefits in terms of:

Closed loop management from policy making to services delivery to operation outcomes, back to policy
evaluation for new policy making. This helps decipher the efficiency and effectiveness of public policies and
programs

Cost effectiveness of public services, from a fiscal management perspective
Bringing the People Aspect into Urban Planning
CPM makes possible the merging of city infrastructure and city population models. This opens up a completely new
paradigm for urban planning which used to be solely dependent on statistical modeling. Through CPM, population
data and operations data, representing the human-centric aspect of the city, can be added to the top of city
infrastructure, and various simulations and visualization techniques can be applied on the data to gauge different
perspectives of a future city.
Listening to the Voice of the Citizen
CPM enables a two-way communication between people and the government.The sentiments, comments, and
feedback from the people can be aggregated and analyzed by governments to provide inputs to policy creation.
3.6.2. Benefits to Residents
Convenience and Better Service Experience
To individual residents, the biggest benefits CPM offers are the convenience and personalized service experience.
While fully complying with the security and privacy requirements, CPM maintains the profile of each resident and
government and public service providers that aim to provide each person with convenient and fluid service
experiences across all interactions, as per their needs and preferences. With consent from the residents, specific
personal information will be used in a secure and trusted manner by public and private service providers to
understand the needs of every resident, so that personalized services can be provided.
My Personal Lifelong Journal
CPM not only offers services, but also captures the history of service interactions throughout a citizen’s life for all
the service providers who use it. This history can be used to build lifelong journals for each person. Such a journal
does not merely improve the service experience for a resident, but enables each person to understand himself
better. New ideas, innovations, and services will eventually be developed based on the lifelong journal approach.
Transparency and Accountability from Governments
Much of the data captured in CPM –in the public interest of the residents – can be and should be shared by the
government in the spirit of the open data movement. This data provides the residents the means to understand the
city, and its government and operations.
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Participation and Feedback
Other than service delivery, CPM allows residents to take positions, and make comments and suggestions on urban
matters, including policies. People participation will ensure enhanced communication between the people and
government. Such communication will improve the trust, collaboration efforts, and development of the city.
3.6.3. Overall Benefits to the City
Balance between Economic Growth and Social Harmony
A successful city provides the residents much more than the basic needs of shelter, food, and jobs; and fulfills our
vision for future cities as described earlier. CPM offers the government a base to build statistical and human-centric
models, besides tools to analyze and evaluate public policies overtime. This allows them to learn from the past, to
monitor situations in the present, and predict the future. The government can then promote balanced
development of a city, and seek a sustainable economic growth with limited negative side effects in social and
environment matters. In effect, people are happy to live in the city.
4. Unique Aspects of the CPM Approach
CPM brings many unique capabilities to urban management to fulfill the needs of a city’s stakeholders, including
political leaders who are accountable for its constituents, and public sector managers who are responsible for city
operations such as transportation and utilities for the people.
4.1. End-to-end Integration and Interoperability
CPM as a framework offers end-to-end integration and interoperability of information and services to all its
stakeholders. This helps bridge the gap between city operations and citizens. Two specific scenarios are mentioned
in chapter five to further illustrate CPM capabilities in business applications.
Horizontal Process Integration
From an integration point of view, CPM manages integrations in three dimensions. The first dimension is horizontal
business process integration across city operations to allow residents to fulfill their needs in the form of urban
services. This can be facilitated by connecting to necessary urban functions, be it healthcare or education.
Vertical Outcome Aggregation
The second dimension is the vertical outcome aggregations which allow stakeholders to view and understand
business outcomes of the services which they consumed or delivered at specific service levels. Aggregation of
business outcomes does not stop at the services level. Service KPIs can be aggregated and consolidated to offer
parameters to assess higher level KOIs. In addition, we can assess strategic outcomes at a city level to provide
visibility of outcomes to public programs and policies. This offers a base for true and objective transparency.
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Cross Integration of Processes and Outcomes
Taking a people-centric approach, CPM aims to optimize the service delivery experience in every interaction
between residents and its service providers across the whole service delivery cycle. Data captured across such
interactions will be used to measure and derive service outcomes. Through such service data, vertical (domainspecific) outcomes can be computed from the horizontal business processes.
End-to-end Interoperability
CPM enables end-to-end interoperability in urban operations and living. On one end, the data generated at the
level of an individual can be aggregated and analyzed with similar data from other people, helping the government
discover the pulse of the city. From the public sector angle, factors such as the master planning of a city, and new
government policies and programs, can be transformed into services which are available, accessible, and utilized by
eligible people whenever they need it.
4.2. Situational Awareness for Key Stakeholders
Leveraging its integration and interoperability capabilities, the CPM approach enables capture of useful data on the
way people live and consume services through meaningful analytics in real-time. A common term for such analytics
is living analytics. Through living analytics, each key stakeholder is aware of what is happening around them, and
the list of possible choices they can take under the circumstances, helping them to live better. This is indeed the
fundamental tenet of CPM – to bring intelligence to the people, so that they can choose intelligently and live
better. Through their choices, the city will be transformed into a better home for them.
4.3. Personalization of Citizen Services –Lifelong view
For individual citizens, CPM enables personalization of citizen services beyond the best practices of today’s
Government to Citizen (G2C) offerings. Taking a lifelong view, the CPM approach captures useful and meaningful
data about citizens throughout their lifetime, while respecting their right to privacy. This data allows the
government, public service providers, and their service delivery partners to analyze and better understand
consumers and citizens. So now each service provider can offer relevant personalized and unique services to a
citizen based on the individual needs, taking into consideration factors such as affordability.
4.4. Policy Simulation and Decision Support
For decision makers such as political leaders and public service managers, the CPM approach provides the data and
capabilities to build a living model to understand the city. They can analyze different scenarios based on the
hypotheses, test public policy implications or specific emergency situations, and predict possible outcomes and
resources required for decision-making and operation execution. In addition, they can closely monitor key
measures and fine-tune execution steps if needed.
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5. CPM Scenarios
CPM is an innovative urban management framework which can be applied in various areas. In early chapters of this
paper, we discussed many aspects of CPM and briefly introduced the lifelong themes. In this chapter, we will
describe two scenarios to illustrate how the CPM framework can deliver services and value for urban dwellers.
5.1. Chronic Disease Management
5.1.1. Challenges and Opportunities
Based on the information from the World Healthcare Organization (WHO), chronic diseases are of long duration,
progress slowly, and are by far the leading cause of mortality in the world. They account for 63%of all deaths. The
typical diseases include heart disease, stroke, cancer, chronic respiratory diseases, and diabetes.
Impact of chronic diseases can be more challenging in cities due to the ever-increasing aging populations. Age is a
common risk factor which prompts the onset of these diseases.
Preventing and managing chronic diseases is a huge concern in healthcare. There are not many effective methods
to address this challenge if we adopt a traditional healthcare services approach. The common causes of chronic
diseases in cities include smoking, drinking, imbalance or excess consumption of certain foods, and lack of
adequate physical activity. It is obvious that a healthy and disciplined lifestyle can help prevent and manage
chronic diseases. Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) and social enterprises, different from the traditional
healthcare service providers such as hospitals and clinics, will have a bigger role to play in the prevention and
management of chronic diseases. This is because these service providers can provide more cost-effective services,
and play a complementary role to traditional healthcare service providers. In this section, we share how CPM can be
applied to the management of diabetes.
5.1.2. Using the CPM approach to Manage Diabetes
NGO Services for Prevention and Management of Diabetes
There are NGOs in many cities, similar to the Diabetic Society of Singapore, which have been offering services to the
public in fighting diabetes. The typical services of a healthcare NGO include:

Awareness and education program for public awareness

Diabetes prevention program for adoption of better lifestyle

Diabetes management and care program for patients

Diabetes support program for experience sharing and social support
A typical NGO today will use a website for information sharing and utilize a basic case management solution to
maintain the patients’ profiles. It will also record information about the services delivered to these patients.
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CPM Approach
The CPM approach offers functions and features to help NGOs in the prevention of diabetes and its management
including:

Comprehensive customer profile

Lifelong journal

Comprehensive process and case management including calendar and activities management

Care plan for personalized services

Outcome evaluation

Collaboration in the form of social media

Information avatar for services consumption
CPM Processes
Follow Care plan
through calendar
Do Self
Assessment
Perform
Medical Test
Evaluate
Risk
Schedule
Doctor
Appointment
Receive Rewards
and Incentives
Collaborate with
Community
Agree to
Enroll with
NGO
Monitor
data based
on health plan
Figure 9 – An overview of the CPM process for chronic disease management
Using CPM, a typical process for managing diabetes will be similar to the one represented in Figure 9 and includes:

Self-assessment: A person visits the NGO’s website and performs a self-assessment to see if they have high risk
for diabetes

Registration: The person registers with the NGO and provides necessary information

Appointment booking: CPM recommends the most convenient clinic for the person and makes an appointment
for them to see a doctor
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Singapore Management University

Visit a doctor: The person visits the doctor and learns that he is a Type-2 diabetes patient. The diagnosis results
will be sent back to CPM

Referral: With the consent of the patient, the doctor can put him under the care of the NGO, given that the
integration between the clinical system and CPM application is in place

Case assignment: A care giver in the NGO will be assigned the case of the patient

Creation of care plan: The care giver will study the patient’s needs and create a care plan for them

Agreement of care plan: The care giver will convey the care plan to the patient and meet them to gain their
understanding and agreement to start the plan

Care plan execution through calendar: The care plan will be then entered into the calendar for plan execution on
a daily basis

Care plan monitoring: The calendar will trigger the data collection for diabetes management and update the
patient’s lifelong journal

Provide reward and encouragement: CPM applications could offer rewards such as gift vouchers to encourage
the patient to comply with the daily activities required by the care plan

Collaborate within the community: The patient can ask questions, share experiences and knowledge, and also
provide feedback on related public services and policies related to helping people cope with diabetes

Generate outcomes: For the government, it generates the service outcomes of the care plan based on that data
captured in the patients’ lifelong journal, to help with the policy updates
Throughout this process, various avatars of the patient will interact with the relevant services such as calendar,
community, and the hospital.
5.2. Lifelong Education Services Delivery
5.2.1. Challenges and Opportunities
In the fast paced urban environment, new information and knowledge are required for individuals to equip
themselves at every stage of life for better jobs, improved health, and enhanced relationships with people and the
environment. Therefore, lifelong learning is one of the most important areas for a city dweller.
From a city government’s point of view, it is becoming more and more important to equip residents with new
knowledge. Some of these areas include the need for industrial transformation, a harmonious social environment
between the new migrants and existing residents, and controlling healthcare costs for aging population. It is also
critical to continuously train and impart education outside formal education.
Lifelong education, in our view, is a form of lifelong learning services, provided by the education service providers
certified by a city government, using the Internet and mobile technologies wherever appropriate. In this section,
we illustrate how CPM can be applied to lifelong education to support the service providers as well as the
individual learners.
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5.2.2. Using CPM Approach to Manage Continuous Education
Certified Continuing Education and Training (CET) Services
Every city will typically have existing CET service providers, offering a broad spectrum of lifelong education services
to equip people with the right skills. This ensures that they can be employed based on the demand of skilled
human resources in the city.

A subset of the services provided by such a lifelong education institute can include:

Generic skills needed for common jobs

Industry sector-specific skills

Career services

Employer services to help employers train and re-train employees

Lifestyle and productivity skills such as equipping older people with IT skills
Services are also offered through a combination of physical classroom education, websites, and mobile phones.
CPM Approach
The CPM approach will offer new functions and features, including:

Comprehensive learner profiles

Lifelong journal in learning and education

Personal learning space supported with collaboration tools such as social media

Learning plan for personalized learning

Outcome evaluation
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CPM Processes
Register and
Create Profile
Intervene
Learning
Plan Learning
Execution through
Calendar
Assess
Learner
Receive Rewards
and Incentives
?
Create
Learning Plan
Undergo
Learning
and Receive
Content
Assess
Grade
Provide
Certificate
Evaluate
Outcome
Figure 10 – An overview of the CPM process for lifelong education services delivery
A typical CPM process in lifelong education will be similar to the one in Figure 10 and includes:

Registration and profile creation: The learner can register on a website to create their own learning profile. This
includes certificates and skills they have acquired in the past as well as education goals and objectives for the
future

Learner assessment: The learner and a qualified assessor from the institute will work together to assess the
certification and skill level

Creation of learning plan: The learner collaborates with a qualified advisor to develop a learning plan that will
help achieve the specific learning objectives in a finite time period, based on a mutual agreement

Learning plan execution through calendar: The care plan is pushed into the calendar for plan execution on a
daily basis

Learning and content delivery: The learner consumes learning modules including exercises through its preferred
service delivery channel following their calendar

Learning monitoring: Learning outcomes are visible to the learner, and relevant teachers and authorized
administrators

Learning intervention: The teacher can choose to intervene in the learning process if they believe that a module
needs to be added to the plan to assist the learner in achieving their set learning objectives

Grading assessment: The institute will be provided with the official grading that is recorded in the learner’s
lifelong journal
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Singapore Management University

Provide certificates: Upon completion of the necessary education modules with satisfactory results, formal
certificates will be awarded to the learner, which are also recorded in the lifelong journal

Provide reward and encouragement: The institute can provide a reward to the student if they are is doing an
excellent job in learning

Collaborate within the learning community: Throughout the process of learning, the learner can ask questions,
seek inputs, and share experiences and knowledge in communities with other learners and teachers

Generate outcomes: For the service provider and government, outcome evaluation generates outcomes of the
learning progress
6. Conclusion
We have seen that the various trends in urbanization and demographics are going to become more and more
pressing on various governments, resulting in wicked problems. To solve these problems, we need a new approach
beyond an exclusive focus on smart infrastructure – a transformational approach which positions people at the
center of governance and automation. Yet, such an approach needs to be holistic and must be aligned with the
massive investments made by governments in service automation. We have presented a novel approach named
CPM, and described its dimensions, illustrating it with real-world examples.
Yet, each city is unique, with its own culture, maturity of IT, constraints, and challenges. To implement CPM, a deep
understanding of the city in terms of its internal functions, city contexts, constraints, existing city services, and the
level of automation, is required. How does the city define the vision, and identify the most relevant lifelong themes
which create the maximum impact, and how do the various dimensions of CPM impact decisions and
implementation choices?
Subsequent whitepapers will look at the specific dimensions of CPM in more depth.
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Singapore Management University
About Singapore Management University (SMU)
A premier university in Asia centered around “The World of Business”, the Singapore
Management University (SMU) is internationally recognized for its world class research and
innovation, and its interactive approach to teaching. Established in 2000, SMU’s mission is to
generate leading edge research with global impact and produce broad-based, creative and
entrepreneurial leaders for the knowledge-based economy. Home to some 8,000 undergraduate
and post-graduate students, SMU comprises six schools: School of Accountancy, Lee Kong Chian
School of Business, School of Economics, School of Information Systems, School of Law and
School of Social Sciences. These schools offer a wide range of bachelor’s, master’s and PhD
degree programs. SMU emphasizes rigorous, high impact cross-disciplinary research that takes
advantage of our location in the center of Asia, our university-wide focus on the World of
Business including both private and public sectors, our strong working relationships with
partners in business and government, and our ability to collaborate university-wide across our
six schools and various research centers and institutes. SMU has well established relationships
with leading foreign institutions, including Carnegie Mellon University, the University of
Pennsylvania’s Wharton School and the School of Arts and Sciences, and the University of
Chicago’s Booth School of Business. The SMU city campus is a state-of-the art facility located in
the heart of downtown Singapore, facilitating strategic linkages with the business, government
and wider community.
For more information, visit www.smu.edu.sg
About TCS-SMU iCity Lab
The TCS-SMU iCity Lab is a research facility set up through a partnership between TCS and SMU
to develop industry standards and IT frameworks for the emerging intelligent city (“iCity”) model
of urban development. The partnership combines TCS’ industry leading IT services expertise and
culture of innovation with SMU’s globally recognized excellence in research and education and
for the world of business and management in both the public and private sectors.
For more information, visit www.smu.edu.sg/centres/icity/
Contact
For more information, contact innovation.info@tcs.com
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