Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Tamlyn Shimizu: The City the BABLE Podcast where we bring together top actors in the smart city arena, sparking dialogues and interactions around the stakeholders and themes most prevalent for today's citizens and tomorrow's generations.
I am your host Tamlyn Shimizu and I hope you will enjoy this episode and gain knowledge and connections to accelerate the change for a better urban life.
Smart in the City is brought to you by BABLE Smart Cities. We enable processes from research and strategy development to co creation and implementation. To learn more about us, please visit the BABLE platform at BABLE-smartcities eu.
[00:00:47] Tamlyn Shimizu: So this year we are again live in Madrid, partnering with the third edition of the Global Mobility Call to bring you exciting episodes with some of the top international speakers that we also had the pleasure of inviting to the Global Mobility Call this year. Thanks again to the Global Mobility Call for the partnership. So now we are of course talking mobility during these episodes, but thinking holistically about mobility and how it intersects with innovation and with the most crucial topics facing cities today. I have a fantastic guest with me today who I've actually been waiting a little bit of time to get onto the podcast. So I'm really happy to have him here and have this opportunity to speak to him. He's not. He's not only in his city to make it more innovative, but building an ecosystem ecosystem of partners in the Netherlands to accelerate innovation and to make innovation more scalable. So with me today, without further ado, is Franz Jorna. He's the Chief Innovation and Information Officer at the city of Apeldoorn, Netherlands and board member of the Dutch Metropolitan Innovations Ecosystem. Welcome, Frans.
[00:01:47] Frans Jorna: Thank you. What a pleasure to be here.
[00:01:51] Tamlyn Shimizu: What a pleasure to have you here. So really excited to. We were talking a little bit before this in the speaker speakers lounge as well, and I think I haven't gotten the full picture yet of the scope of your work. So I'm really excited. Now we get to sit down and dedicate this time to learning about it.
Before we get started, I'd like to start off with a little bit of a teaser to get us warmed up.
So the teaser that I have for you today is if you had to describe Appledon's innovation strategy with three emojis, which would they be?
[00:02:24] Frans Jorna: Oh, asking an emojis question to Boomer.
[00:02:27] Tamlyn Shimizu: Okay.
I know you still know what they are.
[00:02:32] Frans Jorna: I think my daughters are going to have a laugh at this.
[00:02:36] Tamlyn Shimizu: It can't just be the two dots with the smiley, you know.
[00:02:40] Frans Jorna: Thank you. I've done my homework.
The first emoji would be such A beautiful, beautiful round face with, with colorful red cheeks, the blush, because that is what Alpadon is, a sweet city where people care for each other.
Social ties matter.
So that would be the first emoji, the second one. And of course I looked up my emojis, there's this beautiful emoji with a face in the clouds.
Apeldoornis still a hidden treasure. Many people, when I say I'm working in Appledoorn and say Appledorn, leading innovation. Why? Well, we come to that in this conversation and it has its downsides because you're not normally looked at, but it also has its, that's great upside because we had the time to make sure that we got it right. And I think we got it right. So that's the second emoji.
And the third one is just a big smiling face because innovation for a large part comes when people have fun together, when there's this zing in the relationship, in the work where flow originates.
So these three, you did pretty good.
[00:04:18] Tamlyn Shimizu: For a boomer, right? So there you go.
Wonderful selections of emojis. Now I want to learn a little bit more about you. And also the listeners like to know a little bit about who's speaking, who's the voice behind the microphone. And so tell me about yourself, tell me about your background. What led you to your role today? Tell me all about it.
[00:04:40] Frans Jorna: Well, there's a couple of defining moments.
I studied political science and public administration out of idealism, wanted to change the world. Coming from a Catholic background where uncles and sisters did work with the poor gypsies, that kind of line of work and so wanting to work with people, deprived communities, so to speak. So I did that.
My education somehow in the middle turned into a management curriculum which I didn't like. And when I graduated, so what have I learned? Some professors said, well, if you want to learn trades, there's a way to do that, so write your dissertation. So I did that and then somehow got into the world of how digitalization affects the way we run our programs in our societies. And I was fascinated because on the one hand I saw the prospect of what data could do, but I also saw many instances. Software data completely derailed programs, organizations led to administrative strategies. And that's just been a fascination for all my life. How does digitalization affect the life of people? The life of people and the life of people working in our organizations. So that's, that's one defining moment. Two is ten years after having handed in my dissertation, someone well known Dutch architect cooked and 11 o'clock said so have you eaten well? Was it nice dinner then? I have a question for you. When are you finally going to do what you always speak about? What she meant is, so yeah, you got it figured out.
But talking about is something else than really making it. So she invited me to step into the world of executives.
In my case, having studied public administration, political science, I just love the public world. So that became city life, city administration.
First time temporary role, then second time director, smart city at City of Almere, New Amsterdam, as I sometimes jokingly call it. And now in the past few years, first part of the directors team in Apeldoorn.
Until a year ago I said as a director of operations, if tomorrow is as today, then we're doing fine. As cio, the transformation that we are going to have to go through, if tomorrow is as today, we have a huge, huge problem. So I focused my work on innovation, on the transformation of the organization, on handling the social issues that are associated with digital transformation. And that's what I've been doing the past year.
[00:08:02] Tamlyn Shimizu: Really interesting. Thanks for walking us through that. I want to first touch on this Dutch metropolitan innovations ecosystem that we've mentioned. It's a collaboration between cities, data business partners and others, right? National ministries, companies.
It's a big collaboration.
So can you walk us through that partnership? How was it formed and what is the goal?
[00:08:25] Frans Jorna: It was formed on the basis of failure.
[00:08:30] Tamlyn Shimizu: Love it.
[00:08:32] Frans Jorna: So failure.
All mid sized Dutch cities, we all say that we're very, very different, but really we're not. So we tackle the same problems and then in our strive to solve these issues, go at it alone. And the companies we work with are not only working for us, not only being tended by us, they're also intended by colleague cities. And more and more I saw that efforts to free data, efforts to install data platforms to really handle social issues were just stopped because it was one place, one time, one stop solution. Three years ago the mid sized cities published a report, so how are we handling digital transformation? And the conclusion was about 1,000 pilots. And only a small fraction of these are actually scalable.
If you want to scale, if we want to make an impact, and we should make an impact, should come together. We should come together as cities to develop common challenges, a common architecture.
And we should invite companies to not offer their solutions for the same money at different places, but to cooperate as well, to comply to standards or to help us create standards that we then follow. And that led to the formation of a mid sized city group focused on first smart cities and Then sustainable urbanization and the mobility transition. Ministry of Infrastructure saw the value of that group because they saw that many of the efforts, for instance, to create mobility hubs led to nothing because every city was handling it in its own way. And competition among companies led to a lack of scalability. So they invited us to do a bid together with them with the national government for a growth fund stipendium of about 85 million. And we supported that. Bids we drafted our challenges, including this is what we would like to handle by way of innovation assignments.
And two years ago the growth fund contribution finally came through and now we're in the middle of building this ecosystem. So seven cooperating cities on realization, coordination, 13 other cities who have their own challenges. Over in all now some 80 companies, three national ministries and one joint, one architecture effort at one open urban platform and one common data space.
That's what we're building it now.
[00:11:38] Tamlyn Shimizu: It's exciting to hear about. Like, I'm really excited about it when you talk about it because I love these type of initiatives that are really bringing together all the stakeholders that are needed in urban innovation. What question I have though is when you're bringing so many different players to the table, does it not get bureaucratic? Does it not slow, get slow? How do you keep the movement going and accelerate it?
[00:12:03] Frans Jorna: I'm not the word bureaucratic is not what came to mind. What is, what can become problematic is that the speed with which this ecosystem is growing is now increasing so much and that it stands in the way of focus on realization. If we don't get the groundwork done within these three or four years and let ourselves be distracted by many, many apps and use cases that different parties want to, want to launch, we're getting nowhere. Seven cities, 13 companies cooperating. That's basically the core work that I focus on. Cooperating during four years is in itself not bureaucratic. What I arrive at is all sorts of bureaucratic hurdles. For instance, how do you jointly tender seven cities, 13 companies. But that's the essence of innovation. Sometimes innovation is just sorting out the message, finding a way how to handle it and then replicating it. One guy who handles all of the innovation assignments with these companies, he's basically the broker, the broker in between these seven cities and 13 companies. That was pretty, pretty complex. What type of contract do you use? Kind of remuneration scheme.
But having done that, we've now set and created a norm that can be followed for each of the new colleagues that follows after.
So, yeah, innovation is sometimes messy. It's cutting through red tape to be able to avoid it next time?
[00:13:51] Tamlyn Shimizu: Absolutely. Can you give some concrete projects or tangible examples from either Apeldoorn and the wider Dutch metropolitan innovations ecosystem?
[00:14:01] Frans Jorna: Yeah, just a couple of examples. So there are projects like how do we create bike lanes, bike highways through our cities and incentivize our citizens to use them, leave their cars at home. How do we lower the number of cars that people have in our inner cities from 1.2 per household? So in the end, 0.6 or even 0.3. Normally city councils will be wary the idea of cars disappearing. They can simply not picture that that will actually work. Having a digital twin that allows you to model and even play with different variables, your building program onto your city infrastructure and then take them along to show yes, this can be done. Or as we found out, taking our building program and then finding out that this building program, if carried out in this way, leads to a city standstill in one part of the inner city of apeldoor sometime in 2026 allows us to use data to come up with smarter urbanization plans. Allows us to find out what mix we should apply in terms of modalities in these parking hubs, multimodal hubs, even allows us to find out what information citizens need to take their bike instead of that bike.
[00:15:45] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah, really interesting. I heard you talking earlier about this data platform that is used by all partners to share data. Let's get into it a bit more because I think our listeners would love to know more about that. What is that? How are you doing it?
[00:16:03] Frans Jorna: Basically, data platform is one of the most mystical terms there is true consists of various components. Technically all of the components are. There are here.
What is hard is to bring them together in a way that makes sure that the open urban platform can actually be sustained and be further developed. You need to free the data, you need to add visualization layers.
You need a transaction and payment scheme in such a way that data can be validated. It can be for a first print, be purchased.
And then if the application works, you need a mechanism where the data is actually offered its data time that the API is open. So there are 13 companies each developing their own component of this data platform. In the meanwhile, most of these cities have their own data platforms.
We all have Azure data platforms. These days what we are looking at is basically nodes. Build a central node between all of these open urban data platforms that these cities have. Allow companies to do what they're best at, focus on their component and make sure that requirements for each of these companies components that they need from the others are there. So some focus on the freeing of data, other focus on on purchasing schemes, other focus on pure applications like how do I add satellite view of cities and air quality to data platforms. So this is the way that we approach it.
[00:18:09] Tamlyn Shimizu: What are the biggest challenges that you're coming across with that?
[00:18:13] Frans Jorna: The biggest challenge is basically business models. So innovation sounds fun and the companies are partners in an ecosystem, but they are also always competitors to a certain extent.
So making competition creative and getting them together in a consortium where they actually focus on what they're good at, but then allow the others to do what they're good at and then seeing that if they really focus out schools, this will have consequences for the business model that they've operated on to this date.
So the business model of each of these companies is slowly changing and I see more and more of these businesses sort of setting these DMI activities apart in a spin off as new business being their business line in spite four years time and hiving it off from their old business lines, which they know will in the end to a certain extent disappear if the DMI is really functioning.
[00:19:25] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah, really, really interesting project initiative. I'm fascinated to see how competitors can work more closely together on this. So I'm really excited to follow it in the future.
So when we talk about scaling innovation, that's the goal, Right? But cities sometimes have unique contexts. Maybe not so much in the Netherlands. You find them more uniform. I'm not sure.
But how do you ensure that scalable solutions remain adaptable and effective in different urban environments?
[00:19:59] Frans Jorna: Keep the technological basis simple and standardized.
Socially, we are very different. So even Abeldorn is a very different city from the city of Helmond in the south that we cooperate with or the city of Dordrecht. Our history is different.
The way that people relate to each other is different.
So yes, I mean there are differences there, there are differences, but you do not need to sort of take these differences into account when developing the technology.
Make sure that in the way that technology is used that there you profit to maximum extent of your differences.
[00:20:48] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah, interesting. So you think that the technology, if we just simplify it, then it can be more adaptable across different contexts.
[00:20:59] Frans Jorna: Yeah, that's the only way. So simplify it to such an extent that it can be validated, that it can be understood. The more complex you make it, also the more wary people will be of what it is and how it actually works.
[00:21:16] Tamlyn Shimizu: How do you see that representing these days in the space of AI?
[00:21:21] Frans Jorna: That's interesting question One, my main concern with AI and our main concern with the digital transformation is the effect it has on our energy consumption and the way we live on this planet. What I have seen AI doing is increase sometimes with a eight fold factor and the energy footprint of an average city. Is it AI that is the problem? No, it's not AI. It's the fact that we use AI and we maintain all of the other old ways and then it's an add on.
AI can help us to structure our not so structured data.
Legacy. Data legacy.
[00:22:15] Tamlyn Shimizu: I thought you were going to say our own brains.
[00:22:18] Frans Jorna: AI can.
AI can offer us a very, very good mirror of what it is that we say we want. Only then it get to gets interesting.
But AI is what it is. It's language models, it's our preferences to the perfection.
We present that in images, in music, in film. And I'd like to match AI. My wife had to laugh when I said this. AI with natural intelligence. So we need both.
And as long as our natural or emotional intelligence or relational intelligence that we have increases with the same speed, there is no problem in applying AI.
But it really needs, it needs dialogue, it needs a context of what is it that I'm doing and what are my values. Well, that's the context in which I am discussing with my city councillors and my organization about the implications of AI, the, the very clear benefits and also the issues that we need to tackle.
[00:23:41] Tamlyn Shimizu: Really interesting. Sorry that went a little bit off script, but I was really interested to hear on what your thoughts were there. I want to talk a little bit more about Apple. Dawn, can you talk a bit more about a central challenge that is facing the city and how you plan to address it and if you feel like there are any tools that are kind of missing within that plan.
[00:24:07] Frans Jorna: When you asked me this question before the interview, I thought of Major Pete.
I never.
[00:24:17] Tamlyn Shimizu: Buddha judge.
[00:24:17] Frans Jorna: Yeah, Buddha judge. Thank you.
Basically, Apeldoorn was created in the course of the past 200 years with infrastructure not so densely populated neighborhoods.
And within the city structure, the city has grown.
Now all of a sudden with climate change in the west, we see that we need to move from the west of the country Netherlands to the east. That urbanization in the course of this century will focus on on east Netherlands, that it means that we need to prepare ourselves for Rio urbanification. Our infrastructure is not designed for that. Already now I see that we are end of life. So basically what we are now in is a complete overhaul of our inner city, of the way the inner city is wired to the national infrastructure of the inner city in terms of shopping streets are now being turned into a park and there will still be shops, but we need to battle the heat in the summer.
And Appeldoorn is located on the edge of called glacier hills, which means that the soil is very, very susceptible to verification.
So taking care of the soil, making sure that we retain the water, we ride in the middle of this overhaul and that's a big challenge. And we did that with ways which were not informed by data, let alone by a.
And by having much more informed decisions, we hope to engage city council, but also we have to engage with our citizens to come up with much better schemes because at the end of the day, what our ponies is about is quality of living, is strong social network and that's what we want to retain in the upcoming 20 years.
[00:26:41] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah. With that, do you feel like you're missing a tool or missing something to make that happen?
What is the bottleneck?
[00:26:48] Frans Jorna: My main tool now is the energy transition. Just a nice report two days ago. Dutch cities will suffer from blackouts from 2027 onwards because our infrastructure, our energy infrastructure is not able to cope.
[00:27:09] Tamlyn Shimizu: That soon.
[00:27:10] Frans Jorna: Yeah, that soon. So it's not. Yeah, it's today. Yeah. Right. We can only manage this process of urbanification where we add some for 30,000 people, new households within the existing city, if we somehow manage the enormous energy demand that the digital transformation brings with it. And we now have central. We had central production, decentral, decentralized consumption, big plants burning coal, then we added windmills, then we added solar. But the net is still balanced in a very centralist way. We're not fit for this decentralized energy grid. We do not have ways to balance energy, we do not have good ways to store energy for a longer period.
For the first time in history, luckily enough, I think last year we produced more space sustainable energy then we produced fossil energy.
But on sunny days or windy days, most of the energy does not flow into the grid because the grid can't sustain it.
This is my missing ingredients. This is where I'd love for companies to step up to the plate. And when I informed within the DMI ecosystem of which party was able to take on this challenge, I found only 1, 2, 3 companies having parted the solution. So we're an ecosystem that has just been born and is in some ways flawed. And I hope that this is one part where new parties will join or we join forces with other ecosystems across Europe. That's why I'm in Spain.
[00:29:14] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah, absolutely. I think we should Have a conversation also with this afterwards. It sparks also some ideas with, you know, our network and what we do as BABLE as well. So. So now I come to the part where I ask you, did we miss anything? It's our open floor. So did we not talk about something that you think, oh my gosh, we need to talk about that. That's very crucial, crucial for our listeners to know about your work, about wider work. Thought that you have that you really want to get out there.
[00:29:43] Frans Jorna: I'm happy that we talked about the energy transition.
[00:29:47] Tamlyn Shimizu: I didn't expect it to go in that way.
[00:29:49] Frans Jorna: No, no, yeah, that's what I saw in your eyes.
What I find fascinating is we are mostly most often talking about technological innovation, but this whole part of social innovation, maybe it's just me, but I still feel badly equipped in that domain. So we need to become much better at our innovation processes, innovation techniques.
We need to become really better, not just in innovating, but also in stopping things that block our progress.
So innovation for a large part is change management.
So it's one thing to have an effective innovation, it's another thing to apply this innovation and bring change.
Most systems, including cities, are sometimes very resistant to change.
The initial response will be, no, I want things to stay the way they are. Well, the bad news, that's impossible. So we need good change management.
[00:31:18] Tamlyn Shimizu: There's multiple things that are forcing our hand in that direction and we can either decide to now change and adapt and innovate, or we can decide to do things the same way and then drown like in our own issues. So, yeah, absolutely.
[00:31:33] Frans Jorna: Then a third issue we haven't talked security. And it's interesting, it's not been on our lips, on the forefront of our lips in the past two days here, but security is a true issue. So when I started as a cio, yes, security was an issue. But if I look at the number of threats that my municipal organization gets staggering, how quickly the threats and the threat level has grown interstateal, I would never have imagined 10 years ago that I, in a conversation on digital transformation, would mention interstate or terrorism as something to prepare ourselves for. If we are also reliant on data flowing in nopro forever ways, how do we prepare for blackouts? How do we secure? So security resilience.
Sometimes people say I need zero trust. I want to be absolutely sure. I don't know if the way forward is not trusting each other.
So security is something that many of you are going to take up A couple of these challenges is something that I would really like to dive in security in a federated world.
[00:33:06] Tamlyn Shimizu: Very interesting topics to bring.
Yeah, we could talk about that for a long time. Unfortunately, we're almost out of time, but fortunately that means that we're moving to our segment.
The segment that I chose for you today is my favorite segment. People are probably tired of me saying this, but it's roll with the punches.
[00:33:25] Frans Jorna: Roll with the punches.
Answer this or that questions quickly and with your first instincts.
[00:33:36] Tamlyn Shimizu: So you just answer as quick as possible. We go through all the questions and at the end, if you want to explain any of your answers, you can do so because they're meant to be very tricky for you to choose which one you like.
But don't worry, it's fun. Bring it on. Bring it on. I like the attitude. Okay. Some less tricky than others, I'm sure. So, ready?
[00:33:58] Frans Jorna: Yeah.
[00:33:59] Tamlyn Shimizu: Tea or coffee?
[00:34:00] Frans Jorna: Tea.
[00:34:01] Tamlyn Shimizu: Shared E bikes or autonomous shuttles?
[00:34:04] Frans Jorna: Shared E bikes.
[00:34:05] Tamlyn Shimizu: Predictive analytics or real time dashboards?
[00:34:09] Frans Jorna: Real time dashboards.
[00:34:12] Tamlyn Shimizu: AI driven decision making or human centric approaches?
[00:34:16] Frans Jorna: Human centric. That's easy.
[00:34:19] Tamlyn Shimizu: Stricter data regulations are self regulated innovations.
[00:34:24] Frans Jorna: Self regulated innovations.
[00:34:26] Tamlyn Shimizu: Struckwaffe or Bitterballen Stroh. Very good. Working with startups or working with established corporations?
[00:34:36] Frans Jorna: Startups.
[00:34:37] Tamlyn Shimizu: Digital twins or integrated GIS systems.
[00:34:41] Frans Jorna: I would go for digital twinning.
[00:34:43] Tamlyn Shimizu: Apple dawn or Madrid.
[00:34:47] Frans Jorna: I love Apple Door. Yeah, but that's the reason why I'm here. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:34:53] Tamlyn Shimizu: Absolutely. Good. That's all. Do you want to explain any of your answers?
Were there some tough ones?
[00:35:01] Frans Jorna: I was triggered by the integrated GIS systems.
[00:35:05] Tamlyn Shimizu: Why did that trigger you?
[00:35:06] Frans Jorna: There's a couple of layers in there. I like technology must be. Must be transparent. But you mustn't bother a user by the way that things are structured. So integration within the design is something that I love.
It also often sort of takes away what happens, how technology is structured.
And that's where my hesitation conversation came from.
[00:35:40] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah, absolutely. Makes a lot of sense now. It's the question that we ask every single guest. It's the last question and it's to you, what is a smart city?
[00:35:52] Frans Jorna: To me, a smart city is where citizens get to profit from their own data, where they are sovereign in their own data, where it is transparent how their data is being handled.
So a smart city starts with natural intelligence of people.
[00:36:15] Tamlyn Shimizu: I really like that. I don't think I've ever had anyone say that, you know, now we're coming up to 100 episodes of our normal series, but we've now interviewed so many more people than that with the same question. And I don't think I've ever heard heard it said before that the people get to profit from their own data. Yeah, I really, really like that point. So thank you very much. Welcome and yeah thank you so much for for coming on. I really enjoyed getting to know more about your approach and the way you think and all the interesting initiatives that you're a part of. So thank you so much. I really appreciate it and looking forward and joining forces.
[00:36:53] Frans Jorna: Thank you.
[00:36:54] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah absolutely. Absolutely. I'm excited to talk more so and to all of our listeners I also have to thank you of course for listening and don't forget you can always create a free account on BABLE Smart Cities EU. You can find out more about smart city projects, solutions and other implementations. So thank you very much.
[00:37:12] Tamlyn Shimizu: Thank you all for listening. I'll see you at the next stop on the journey to a better urban life.
