Agenda item

To consider the attached report by Graham Hughes, Executive Director (Cambridgeshire County Council).

The Executive Board:

(a)        NOTED the progress of the Smarter Cambridgeshire workstream to date.

(b)        AGREED, in principle, to support the investment of up to £280,000 to implement a Smart Technology Platform subject to a more detailed investment proposal in early 2016.

Consideration was given to a report which provided the Executive Board with an update on the progress of the Smarter Cambridgeshire workstream and outlined a proposal for the implementation of a ‘smart’ technology platform to facilitate the Smart Cities approach within the City Deal programme.

Noelle Godfrey, Connecting Cambridgeshire Programme Director, presented the report and highlighted the following updates from the workstream:

·         the Smarter Cambridgeshire Project Board, comprising officers representing the five participating organisations, had been established and was now overseeing the multiple strands of the Smarter Cambridgeshire work stream;

·         the wider Smarter Cambridgeshire Advisory Group, with representation from both Universities and local technology companies, had met and further workshops were planned;

·         a successful ‘hack’ event, to encourage wider community engagement in the Smart Cities agenda, was held over the weekend of 31 October and 1 November.  The event included talks and demonstrations as well as teams coming together to work on solutions to City challenges using digital technology.  There were more than 50 participants overall, with 8 potential solutions pitched to judges at the end of the event;

·         work was progressing in support of a number of demonstrator test bed work packages, including:

-       a planning workshop for identifying the key components for a ‘Smart A14’;

-       outline agreement for station gateway way finding improvements;

-       enabling work packages to support the development of a dynamic journey planner;

·         a collaborative joint bid had been submitted for the ‘Innovate UK Internet of Things’ competition, which involved joint working with Milton Keynes and Leeds City Councils with support BT and the involvement of several other commercial organisations, and had reached the second round in the process.

In terms of the Smart City technology platform, it was reported that an outline proposal had now been developed for the implementation of a platform to support the delivery of the Smarter Cambridgeshire workstream within the City Deal programme.  This comprised a city management network, a data hub and sensor deployment plan and was the result of work undertaken to create a smart architecture blueprint.  Further details relating to the platform were set out in the report.  The £280,000 of further investment being sought was to set up the foundations in order to allow the platform and related aspects of the workstream to develop further. 

Councillor Tim Bick, Chairman of the Joint Assembly, provided the Board with an update following consideration of this report by the Assembly on 7 October 2015.  The Assembly had welcomed the report but Members requested that future reports specified what the requested funding would actually be spent on, noting that in this case it was for the procurement of necessary hardware and software.

Noelle Godfrey acknowledged the comments and reported that a detailed proposal would be submitted to the Joint Assembly and Executive Board for consideration in February and March 2016, respectively. 

Councillor Herbert thanked Noelle Godfrey and her team for the work that had gone into preparing the joint bid, which had now reached the last six submissions, together with the work that went into holding the successful ‘hack’ event.

The Executive Board:

(a)        NOTED the progress of the Smarter Cambridgeshire workstream to date.

(b)        AGREED, in principle, to support the investment of up to £280,000 to implement a Smart Technology Platform subject to a more detailed investment proposal in early 2016.