European standards body Etsi has released a technical report on citizen requirements for smart cities.

Its human factors technical committee has released Etsi TR 103 455, a technical report that assesses the different citizen-related issues that smart city-related standardisation in the ICT domain needs to address. These include accessibility, usability, interoperability, personal data protection and security, and how services to citizens are to be designed to increase benefits to the community.

The study gives an overview of existing Etsi and other SDO standards in that field, including Etsi community indicators. It aligns with the UN Sustainable Development Goal 11 to make cities inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable.

Local communities are essentially users of standards, rather than participants in standards processes. As a result, standards can be confusing for them, and the needs of the citizen must be addressed in standards processes.

The report, with the support of the European Commission and Efta secretariat, makes a set of recommendations for the preparation of guidance material to help cities, codes of conduct to help service the citizen, and standards measures needed to design citizen services.

Matthias Schneider, chairman of the technical committee, said the report constituted the first time local community citizen and consumer requirements in the context of standardisation had been addressed. It provides a basis for future standardisation to involve local communities better.

Stephen Russell, ANEC secretary general, added that, as the organisation representing consumer interests in European standardisation, ANEC was hopeful the report would lead to a much-improved understanding both within local authorities and in the standards organisations.

Cities are becoming more of a focal point for economies and societies at large, particularly because of urbanisation and the trend towards increasingly knowledge-intensive economies, as well as their growing share of resource consumption and emissions. To meet public policy objectives under these circumstances, cities need to change and evolve, but in times of ever tighter budgets this needs to be achieved in a smart way: cities and communities need to become smart and sustainable.

Equal treatment for all citizens needs to be ensured, and account needs to be taken of data privacy concerns relating to their personal information. More than ever in a post-Covid-19 world, it will be important to keep these needs at the forefront of societal development.

Etsi provides its members with an open and inclusive environment to support the timely development, ratification and testing of globally applicable standards for ICT-enabled systems, applications and services across all sectors of industry and society. It is a not-for-profit body with more than 900 member organisations worldwide, drawn from 65 countries and five continents.

Members comprise a diversified pool of large and small private companies, research entities, academia, government and public organisations. Etsi is officially recognised by the EU as a European standards organisation (ESO).