Toronto lagging in global technology race
Municipalities around the world are trying to harness open data, information flowing from sensors and more.

TheStar.com
June 7, 2016
David Rider

Toronto is losing ground in the global race to use data, sensors and other high-tech tools to improve city services, engage citizens and create and keep digital jobs.

Experts here and abroad say Canada’s biggest city is on the road to becoming a leading “smart city.” It has a highly educated workforce, robust university sector, exciting ongoing projects and a mayor loudly banging the digital innovation drum.

What it doesn’t have, compared with Boston, London, Singapore and others leading the pack, is a guiding force that prods innovators to set common goals and work together, and sparks creative forces inside and outside of government to push Toronto deeper into the 21st century.

“I don’t think anybody’s got this figured out. Every city’s on a journey,” said Mark Kleinman, director of economic and business policy for Sadiq Khan, London’s newly elected mayor, in an interview after his recent speech to the Toronto Region Board of Trade smart cities summit.

“It’s important there is a shared narrative between government, business and citizens. Toronto’s underlying assets are really good and there are a lot of people who get it and want to move toward the same place. It maybe needs a little bit more leadership and co-ordination, and that’s one of the things we tried to do in London.”

The mayor’s office there has spurred collaborations that let communities use a crowdsourcing website to raise funds to improve their shopping streets, and created a privately developed app that helps commuters know how crowded specific buses and subway trains are, based on real-time sensor data, including the weights of the vehicles.

There is no shortage of examples here.

Waterfront Toronto is ensuring new shoreline businesses and residential units, including those in social housing, all have lightning fast Internet. As well as broadband, the intergovernmental agency is leveraging the use of sensors that capture environmental data, and co-operating with George Brown College’s waterfront campus.

Toronto Public Library has an “open data” website, offers home Internet to low-income kids by loaning out mobile hot spot devices, and has in-branch “digital innovation hubs” where anyone can use 3D printers and video special-effect green screens.

The City of Toronto, meanwhile, has its own open data site, a transportation “big data” team that will soon let Torontonians track average travel speeds on all city roads for the past four years, and 90,000 route records of cyclists who volunteered smartphone GPS data.

Each organization, however, is mostly doing its own thing.

One impediment to moving ahead could be Toronto’s “weak mayor” system, which gives the civic leader merely one vote on a 45-member council, with a few extra tools of persuasion.

Strict public procurement rules meant to ensure that city departments and agencies wield their huge spending clout fairly are also an issue when tech companies are eager to partner with Toronto, including being able to use data for marketing.

Kristina Verner, Waterfront Toronto’s director of intelligent communities, called procurement issues “the biggest stumbling block.”

“It’s one of those nuggets that we have to crack to be able to move the next step of moving our city forward,” she told the smart cities summit.

“There’s no shortage of great things happening in the city. The dot-connecting of all of those opportunities is what we’re really lacking, and this is one of those barriers” to “a true export opportunity that would drive our economy.”

Meanwhile, advocates for open data — primary source data sets that are machine-readable and regularly updated — are frustrated with the quality and quantity of Toronto’s output.

“The City of Toronto is really falling behind” in offering information that residents and businesses can use to help the city make better decisions and create jobs, Mark Richardson recently told a city committee.

“These companies exist on a laptop, so even if the company is founded at The DMZ (business incubator) at Ryerson, they're going to go where the data is flowing.

“You just need to release the data, get out of the way.”