In March, the Ministry of Construction approved the Smart City standard, and in April, guidelines for financing such projects appeared. Now funds from the federal budget intended for the implementation of the program for creating a comfortable environment of the national project “Housing and Urban Environment” can be partially directed to the digitalization of urban services. On the basis of these documents, regions will develop and approve their programs for improving the urban environment, and the volume of subsidies allocated for the implementation of the Smart City will depend on the implementation of the mandatory points of the standard.

For most basic areas, the deadline for implementation is 2024. These include the creation of a single intelligent center for urban management, the introduction of digital platforms for involving residents in solving urban problems, the introduction of systems for intelligent metering of utility resources, public and environmental safety, energy-efficient urban lighting, transport management, etc. According to the authors of the standard, in less than within five years these directions must be implemented throughout the country.

Technological and management solutions will be tested as part of pilot projects. Applications for inclusion in the pilot (digitalization roadmaps or their projects) were sent by 41 cities from 27 regions, but the Ministry of Construction was able to select only seven cities. It is obvious that the quality of document development does not fully correspond to the scale of even the mandatory part of the standard. But the depth and detail of preliminary preparation are critical for the successful implementation of such projects.

In Russian realities, in the absence of experience, a high-quality strategy and a roadmap, there is a risk that the pressure of deadlines and the desire to receive subsidies will lead to the chaotic implementation by cities of “individual know-how”, which is not further integrated, does not scale and only fragmentarily improves the quality of city services. Yes, reporting obligations will be closed, but in reality this will only complicate the real digitalization of municipal services.

It is important for cities to concentrate not so much on setting tasks, lists of those responsible and schedules for the implementation of specific technologies or solutions (for example, by what year will each stop be equipped with information about bus waiting times) - it is much more important to work out decisions on management forks. Each project will require a detailed operating model for acquisition, operation, and scaling, including whether the municipality will purchase the infrastructure or contract for its maintenance through a service model, attract private investors through a PPP model, or finance it from the budget.

The experience of implementing a paid parking system in one of the largest cities in the country (I deliberately do not name the city - the problem is not with a specific governor or regional team) convincingly demonstrated the importance of an integrated, well-thought-out approach: at some point the authorities realized that they could only impose a fine some of the violators - there was simply no information about the rest. As a result, it was decided not to fine anyone. As a result, many car owners still do not consider it necessary to pay for parking. Recently, the city faced another problem: some of the displays at smart stops stopped working or were dismantled. The fact is that the administration decided to abandon service contracts with companies that previously installed and serviced the scoreboards they owned, in favor of purchasing these scoreboards as the property of the city. This decision may have made sense from an economic point of view, but from an organizational point of view it turned out that previous contracts ended before the city was ready to switch to a new model. And such problems or errors in one form or another are inherent to everyone who has managed to do at least something towards the digitalization of the urban economy.

It is obvious that the complexity of smart city projects is associated not so much with the novelty of the technology, but with the need for modern management practices, the lack of which even large Russian cities can complain about. In the world, this problem is usually solved by hiring management consultants, but in Russian conditions not every municipality can afford this. Most will be forced to implement projects on their own, without having the necessary resources or experience. They urgently need not only successful examples of the implementation of individual technologies, which is partially implemented in the “Smart City Solutions Bank” project, but also specific practical recommendations with an analysis of many factors.

It is clear that there is no resource to develop even a road map for each city. However, in terms of fundamental things this is not required. A description of the final state of the system and its key components, scenarios for their correct completion and scaling can be realistically developed in the format of a boxed solution for several types of cities. To become a truly working tool, it must represent a complete package of technological, methodological and management documents, a list of recommended vendors, an approach to calculating the economics of the project for the city and the investor, organizational and legal instruments, and a list of key performance indicators. Properly compiled checklists will help local teams adequately assess their profile and capabilities: for example, there may be other entities in the city that will take on the task of implementing smart city solutions - for example, in Yekaterinburg, a digital model of the city’s centralized heating system is being implemented by a private energy company.

In any case, this will give a significant impetus and help structure such projects correctly: if the city is now ready to implement only some part of the service, it should immediately be clear how exactly the next technological solution will be integrated, how the service will be maintained throughout its entire life cycle, etc. so that in a few years, figuratively speaking, the metal construction set will not have to be combined with plastic parts from Lego.

In the case of parking, the “box” would suggest that you need to start with regulating interdepartmental interaction, which will allow you to exchange data about violators and collect fines, synchronize this with the process of creating infrastructure (markings, parking meters, support centers, etc.) and properly informing citizens, and then start the service.

In addition to creating a “box,” the teams allocated for the implementation of pilot projects must be systematically trained, and they must have the opportunity to turn to some kind of single window for recommendations and best practices when working on real projects. Such interaction will be a good source of feedback for the federal center and will allow us to understand what kind of support cities really need, for example, at the legislative level, in order to more effectively solve environmental improvement problems with the help of technology.

The author is an expert on strategic development

Smart city out of the box