Living up to the smart city dream

With HK continuing to trail its regional rivals in the 'smart' race, the government is urged to do everything in its power to take the concept to greater heights. Oswald Chan reports.

Hong Kong is already trailing its formidable Asia-Pacific peers in the region's "smart" race, and experts concur that the city can't afford to loosen its grip any further.

For Hong Kong to be "smart" enough, a hardened resolve and changes to the mindset are desperately needed to curb bureaucratic inertia that's hampering the vision of creating a smart city, with a key role by the Hong Kong government as a leading consumer seen as crucial to the success of the crusade.

A local tech startup has come up with a small, portable smart home accessory brand that it hopes will inject fresh impetus into aiding government departments, enterprises and homes to better embrace the smart concept.

The device, called Yoswit, needs no setup, installation or wiring to satisfy all configuration requirements performed by traditional switches. Downloading the mobile application enables one to control household devices completely with the click of a button on the mobile phone.

The Yoswit brand now spans 40 smart home devices connected to high-definition televisions, desk lamps, standing fans and air-conditioners, with various features such as remote control, multiple timers, away detection, smart automation and status checking.

The brand, developed by Lincogn Technology Co, has set high hopes on the Hong Kong market. The tailor-made furniture units of household fitment group Pricerite are offering Yoswit smart home products to customers, with one major local utility provider mulling applying the Yoswit device to water-heater installation.

Two major Hong Kong developers are also studying the possibility of adopting Yoswit smart products in new residential buildings.

Lincogn said it will also distribute their products to lamp vendors and home improvement stores in Mong Kok, North Point and Sha Tin over the next few months.

Besides relying on distributors, the company's online direct sales in more than 23 countries have soared to HK$1 million from a year ago, with Hong Kong accounting for one-third of total sales.

"Smart devices not only have monitoring and data aggregation functions, but can also facilitate gauging of electricity consumption data that will help the government plan new buildings in future," Lincogn co-founder Colin Ng told China Daily.

Three vital pillars

Smart city is a holistic concept of urban development that strives to create sustainable economic development and a high quality of life through digitalization in the economy, mobility, environment, people, living and government sectors. In Hong Kong, smart transport, electronic health and electronic government are identified as the three vital pillars of a smart city.

Hong Kong residents may be more receptive to smart living devices but, on the whole, the SAR still lags behind in the region's smart city infrastructure.

Hong Kong was ranked as the world's 17th smartest city globally in 2014 - behind its Asia Pacific peers Seoul, Tokyo, Singapore and Melbourne - although it has climbed 15 spots since 2012, according to the IESE Cities in Motion Index prepared by the Spanish IESE Business School's Center for Globalization and Strategy in 2015.

The Office of the Government Chief Information Officer and the Lands Department are scheduled to launch an inter-departmental geographical information platform later this year to share a variety of information through application programming interface (API). The Development Bureau is also promoting the establishment of common spatial data infrastructure and facilitating government departments, as well as public and private organizations, to exchange various data.

The Hong Kong Applied Science and Technology Research Institute (ASTRI), set up by the government in 2000, strives to develop a 5G software-defined network so that the city's mobile computing capability can be brushed up to propel the development of a smart city. The administration has pledged to increase the number of Wi-Fi hotspots to 34,000 by 2019 from the current 18,400.

In the private sector, CLP Power Hong Kong - a wholly-owned subsidiary by CLP Holdings - started a one-year smart energy program in June this year by installing smart meters for 26,000 selected residential customers in 14 districts in Kowloon and the New Territories.

However, despite these undertakings, the pace of development is still slow with the government having wasted too much time on merely conducting research reports on a smart city.

While still touting the bureaucratic rhetoric that "it's inviting the public to give views" on the recommendations for the fourth consultancy study report on smart city development released in June, the government says Hong Kong still has to wait longer as the final blueprint will not be available until the third quarter of next year.

According to the smart city consultancy report, six pilot smart city projects can be considered, including four smart driving schemes involving smart sensors, smart road lamps, intelligent traffic lights and a pedestrian lights system, as well as free Wi-Fi services at bus stations and public transport interchanges.

The fifth scheme involves developing automatic driving, smart architecture and cashless transactions on the campuses of Hong Kong Science Park and the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Another initiative is to boost cultural tourism in Central by introducing digital elements, such as interactive videos and electronic coupons.

"The whole point is that the government must act now. Already, it's too slow in developing smart city infrastructure. As the proposed six smart city infrastructure pilot schemes are nothing controversial, there's no point waiting any longer," lamented lawmaker Charles Mok Nai-kwong, who represents the information technology constituency in the Legislative Council.

Industry pundits are of the view that four major impediments are hampering smart city development in Hong Kong.

While smart city infrastructures require a holistic approach in the urban planning process, Hong Kong government departments, however, take a very fragmented approach, leading to uncoordinated policies in smart city development.

"It's absolutely necessary to establish a high-level steering group to forge cross-departmental coordination in implementing smart city initiatives. I'm afraid that the Technology and Innovation Bureau alone cannot have everything on its shoulders in promoting smart city initiatives," said Winnie Tang Suk-ming, founder and honorary president at Smart City Consortium.

Coordinated approach

The June consultancy report suggested that a top-level steering committee under the chief secretary for administration or the financial secretary should be set up to ensure that smart city initiatives be implemented in a highly coordinated approach, and to determine the priority of data dissemination.

After the high-level working group, the report further proposed that a chief data officer be appointed in Hong Kong to drive and implement policies related to smart city planning.

"The government could promulgate its intention of leveraging public-private partnership (PPP) for smart city implementation that would allow the private sector to consider and propose the preferred PPP models to the government," suggested Albert Wong, a consulting director at PwC (PricewaterhouseCoopers) Hong Kong.

Secondly, the quality of government data sharing in Hong Kong is not good enough. According to Open Knowledge International's Global Open Data Index 2016/2017, Hong Kong was ranked 24th in data sharing, significantly lagging behind Taiwan, Japan and Singapore. The city had a zero score in releasing information, such as company registers, locations, fiscal spending and land ownership.

According to the Hong Kong smart city research report by the University of Hong Kong's Department of Urban Planning and Design in 2015, data standardization and the integration of SDI (serial digital interface) database to facilitate easy data transfers between different platforms are among the government's primary tasks.

Compared to other places, Hong Kong is also falling behind in allowing access to government data sources which could fuel creativity and innovation in the community with a robust growth of web applications, Hong Kong-based think tank Our Hong Kong Foundation said in a report in December 2015.

"The Hong Kong government should make its geospatial data to align with the API to disseminate data in a machine-readable manner which is instant, real-time and free-of-charge, so that more startups might develop their applications through integrating government data," Tang reckoned.

"The government must further develop a cross-departmental platform to share information in a coordinated manner. Piecemeal information sharing by different government departments would not help build a smart city in Hong Kong", warned Peter Man Chi-fung, regional director at US blockchain platform solution provider Red Hat.

Thirdly, the administration should do more to engage private organizations in sharing their proprietary information to bolster the development of smart city applications, whereas sharing proprietary information is deemed as detrimental to corporate economic interests. For example, private transportation companies or car park operators in Hong Kong are unwilling to share their data lest it will affect their businesses.

The government can stipulate the requirement of sharing data in its license agreement renewals with transportation companies, industry practitioners suggest.

"Even though every transportation company develops its own app, Hong Kong is not a smart city. When data are standardized so that service providers could develop various apps to provide seamless travel connections to users, this is the smart city vision for Hong Kong," Tang added.

The fourth factor impeding the development of a smart city is the awareness of data privacy protection, and the relative conservative stance of the government, statutory bodies and private companies toward information sharing.

"It's understandable that public utility companies will adopt a relative conservative approach due to the issue of data privacy protection," ASTRI Chairman Wong Ming-yam said. "There's a need to strike a balance between sharing information and protecting data privacy."

"It requires a change of mindset toward the open sharing of information," ASTRI Chief Executive Officer Frank Tong Fuk-kay noted.

Tang believed that the issue of data protection involving smart city projects can be dealt with under existing privacy laws. She recommended that startups also embark on privacy audit consultations to check whether their apps have breached current privacy laws.

The June consultancy report also urged the government to liaise with the Office of the Privacy Commissioner for Personal Data in formulating privacy protection principles that are appropriate for smart city development.

For Lincogn Technology's Ng, the most practical way the government can promote smart city development is to become the consumer to enjoy those smart home devices.

"Imagine if the government adopts those smart home devices in government buildings, public rental housing and subsidized flats, this itself could create a huge market for market players," he said.

If this happens, it would be good news for the 100 startup companies specializing in smart home technologies at Hong Kong Science Park.

Contact the writer at

oswald@chinadailyhk.com

(HK Edition 08/18/2017 page8)