Insight: the value of SCORE is ‘social interoperability’

SCORE is developing a unique aspect of European collaboration on digital technology that is broadly needed: Where others are connecting machines, we’re connecting humans.

Last week @claus and I visited the Connected Smart Cities Conference in London as well as the Open and Agile Smart Cities general assembly. We were there to learn from other projects and connect with them – in particular, the SynchroniCity project and OASC in which @brynskov is also involved – as well as share some of our experiences.

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The General Assembly of OASC voted on embracing the proposed ‘Minimum Interoperability Measures’, basic agreements on how to exchange data that should make it easier to develop sustainable digital systems and connect different systems to each other. The SynchroniCity and BioTope projects are aimed at implementing shared components for (mostly) IoT data and data marketplaces.

All of these enterprises aim to create protocols for machine to machine between systems in separate organisations so that they can work together. These protocols are essential if we want to work together, to speed up innovation and decrease the financial burden of the digital transformation.

We can build software that can collaborate across organisations. However, if the people organisations are unable to collaborate the value of these collaborations will always be low.

The SCORE partnership develops the protocols for humans to collaborate. We’re developing a shared language and process that will make it possible for us to share the challenges we’re facing, build trans-organisational teams and to develop solutions for those challenges together.

Where these other projects have technical standards and codebases to share, we’re developing a process and a vocabulary for collaboration.

Many people we’ve talked to from other projects listened in awe to what we’re doing and many of them said that they need what we’re developing. I take that as an indication that we’re on the right track and that it will be of value to everyone for us to share as much of our lessons as we can.

Nice write up @Boris!

Three small comments to add:

1. This SCORE community can serve as the ‘interface’ for interaction between cities looking to codevelop/replicate open source solutions
2. Not only the vocabulary/language for collaboration - but also the tools (ie our excel sheets, forms, work plans, etc)
3. @timvanachte and @pjppauwels did a workshop together with the SCIFI project - update to follow?

Nice! And blush. Thanks for sharing thoughts.

An additional side note (or two): This, to me, is close to the “communities of practice” thinking, living labs and open innovation, and, more widely, to “ecosystem facilitation”, and, ultimately, “(digital) commons”. The terms we use surely shape and colour
our perceptions, but there’s merit in building on and aligning with existing thoughts/movements, to start from an ambitious baseline. A logical consequence would be to spend more time on (1) talking/listening and (2) training.

Which leads me to mention the inevitable (not Spanish Inquisition, but) upcoming SCORE questionnaire as a way to get consensus on how the landscape/potential paths are perceived by the partners.

Most likely, not everyone will align, especially when it comes to social/cultural/political issues, so we’ll have to manage diversity. But that’s a beauty and a strength, I think. To quote the poet: Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict
myself, I am large, I contain multitudes.

Enjoy the weekend, everyone!

Cheers,

M