Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Tamlyn Shimizu: Welcome to Smart in 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'm your host, Tamlyn Shimizu, and I hope you'll enjoy this episode and gain knowledge and connections to accelerate the change for a better urban life.
And we are back with another episode. In my exploration of Chicago and the surrounding areas of Illinois, I have been really fascinated by different stories of the people in the ecosystem system. So today we dive deeper into this and also into a specific, fascinating topic around healthy levels of skepticism toward the efficacy of smart city tech. So if this sounds interesting for you, I have a very special guest to introduce you to. Joe Gallo is a former city mayor and currently the executive director for the Illinois Smart City and Region association, also known as Isra.
Joe has been part of Isra since 2017 and was involved in local city government as an elected official for just under a decade since. Since leaving office, he's been helping other Illinois communities with their digital transformation and smart city efforts. So, Joe, welcome to the show.
[00:01:41] Joe Gallo: Great to be here, Tamlyn. I appreciate you having me on your team.
[00:01:43] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah, I'm excited to have you and digging deeper into this topic. I've really enjoyed getting to know more about Illinois and everything that's going on, and I think you're one of the best people to talk to also about it. So with that, I'll dive right into our little teaser warm up question that I have for you.
And for that I would like to ask you, if Illinois Smart City and Region association were a superhero, who would it be and why?
[00:02:13] Joe Gallo: Oh boy. If Iskra were a superhero, who would we be and why? Oh, man, I wish I was more familiar with all the superheroes, the genre of superheroes. Yeah, you know, I'm probably going to get the name wrong, but the professor, he's a professor. If anyone has Google and you can, you can quick search engine, look up who Professor. The professor is, I would say ISRA is probably going to be like the professor. And I think it's for the X Men, but again, I don't know comics, but you know, the Professor. And the reason being, you know, our mission is to Educate and guide Illinois communities through their digital transformation efforts and technology investments. And I know that the professor is an individual who helped foster the other superheroes, or mutants toward understanding their powers and using them responsibly. Iskra's mission is similar in that we mentor a lot of municipal leaders, especially those, like I said, who are unfamiliar with smart city technology.
[00:03:15] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah, that's a good choice. I also admittedly am very poor in this genre, so yeah, superheroes might have to Google that one, but good choice.
So now I would love to learn more about you as a person.
What is your background? Jo, can you tell us your journey? What led you into this role? I mentioned a little bit of it, but a little bit more backstory would be great.
[00:03:43] Joe Gallo: Oh yeah. So I guess my background is quite eclectic. I've had an opportunity to touch a lot of industries in various capacities and you know, everybody's life and life journey is different. But a lot of my journey focused on data and data analytics, Beginning first and foremost with one of my first jobs within college and exiting college dealing with high tech medical equipment, linear accelerators for oncology or cancer treatment. Those machines, when you think about what they do to diagnose cancer, which is a very ugly disease and, and complex at that, right? There are so many different ranges of tumors and malignancies that exist in treating cancers. There's not really a one size fits all given individual biological reasons. And then you layer on the malignant reasons behind each tumor. These machines are just marvels of technology. And then when you can couple the actual tool itself with. With databases of known cancers and known cancer treatments, it makes the ability to treat a patient that much more specific and individualized. And so my journey began starting with high tech medical equipment. And then throughout the time it just generally graduated further and further away from medicine and more into a broader spectrum of public service.
I got involved in local city government as a result of an economic development opportunity in my community. It was like most economic development opportunities, rather tumultuous and polarizing.
But I realized at that point that there was an opportunity for me to share my perspectives and insights and lead those insights toward a greater vision for the community. And that's how I found my way into local office and applying my passion for data, for technology innovation, and of course a love for sustainability.
It just naturally seemed to fit in the bucket of smart city initiatives. And so I guess that's kind of a high level overview without boring your audience with my entire 20 plus years of professional trajectory.
[00:06:03] Tamlyn Shimizu: That's super interesting. I love Hearing people's stories. What do you think? How did your experience within the kind of high tech medical field shape how you think about cities?
[00:06:17] Joe Gallo: Oh boy. Now you're asking me to dig deep. This is, this is a great cathartic session.
You know, the thing about medical devices and the healthcare industry is disease and maligned health doesn't recognize time.
[00:06:36] Tamlyn Shimizu: Right.
[00:06:37] Joe Gallo: It doesn't recognize superficial dates on a calendar. It doesn't matter whether it's Independence Day or Thanksgiving Day. Um, if you're, you're ill, you need treatment. And so working in the medical device industry was basically putting your life on hold to pursue helping somebody else's mother or brother or friend or family member in some capacity. And so it brought out a sense of urgency. And that sense of urgency, working toward an objective at a fast pace, was something I wanted to then take into the municipal arena. And of course I know there's another side to the coin where municipal staff are going to recognize that we don't operate the same as the private sector. But I do believe it's very important to try and incorporate a lot of good habits from the private sector into public service. And so working in that medical arena helped me really focus on having a sense of urgency and really sharpening what my objectives and outcomes.
[00:07:36] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah, that's a really interesting perspective. I've also found the same that when I'm speaking to public sector servants or whoever that might be working in the public sector, those that have had this experience within private sector do tend to have more of a sense of urgency. That's not obviously the case across the board, but I think those lessons that they've learned from private sector do carry quite well into public sector. Just a little bit of my experience, of course, broad generalization that isn't always true, but.
Yeah. Can you share a little bit more now about your day to day work at Iskra?
What do you do? What is your main goal? Who are you working with?
[00:08:21] Joe Gallo: Yeah, and I will, and I think I'll start with the caveat that to the point you raised a lot of what I'm going to share, of course I'm painting with broad brush strokes, so it won't always be applicable in every case. And whatever I mention in that broad general sense, I am, I have no intention of offending anyone or disappointing others if it doesn't ring true in their narrative. Right. Again, this is all from my lens. And so to that point, a lot of my day to day work is connecting the dots. Right.
I have various municipal employees, whether at the executive level or even lower on the ladder, who are actual operators conducting tasks, trying to meet objectives, working with them to understand what their specific challenges are in their domain, and then connecting them with the available solution providers who have some sort of innovative approach, whether it's hardware or software or a system or a sensor of some kind that they can understand and see if there's a practical application within their challenge. So again, I connect the dots on a daily basis.
[00:09:34] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah. So can you give me maybe an example of when you connected the dots?
[00:09:43] Joe Gallo: Of course, there's numerous examples. I think a simple example that most people can relate to is communities looking to reduce congestion on the corridors within their communities. And in that case, we helped a number of municipal staff and again, it ranges the spectrum of their role, but they were looking to improve the traffic flows in their communities in the first place. Best place to start with that was with traffic management systems. And in, in that regard, they're aware that there are traffic management systems available.
But where the secret answer or magic answer to the question is which system is right for my circumstance.
This is, this is where we connect those dots. Because for every one solution that exists out there, you know, there's at least 15 or 20 solution providers who provide the same or similar technologies. But not all those technologies are created equal in a particular municipal environment. And there's a variety of reasons why. Right. Existing technical infrastructure and architecture, idealized evolution of where that architecture and infrastructure is going to go from a technological perspective. And helping the decision maker understand their arena and how it's respective to the solutions available is where the true challenge lies. And that's how Iskra opens up the platform for a comprehensive dialogue with many vendors simultaneously with the decision maker. And that's done in a very phased approach. And it's taken very slowly at a point by point cadence to not overwhelm municipal decision makers. And Tamlin, I'm sure you've, you've already seen this and you know this. The smart city subject is very ubiquitous. There's a lot to consume in the arena, and if you don't know how to control the flow, it's overwhelming. Very easily.
[00:11:46] Tamlyn Shimizu: Absolutely. Very good points you raise. I have one more question that really kind of sets the backdrop for our deeper discussion as well, just more generally about Illinois. What do you think are kind of the biggest challenges facing communities in Illinois and how are you helping to solve that?
[00:12:10] Joe Gallo: That's a good question because again, broad brush strokes here, not trying to offend anybody, but I think honestly the biggest challenge isn't with execution of any one system, software, or sensor. It's honestly being bold enough to engage in the conversations from a leadership side. And what I mean by that is being bold enough or prepared before needing the solution is a necessity. Quick backstory on that. Right. During the COVID pandemic, I was on the board for the Illinois Smart City and Region association. So I was a little bit more removed than I am today. But during that time, toward the end of 2019 and definitely through the heart of 2020, there were a number of commun coming to Iskra to understand what platforms they could use for virtual environments or hybrid environments. And of course, that was brought on by the pandemic. Right. That. That pandemic was a catalyst for the city managers or village administrators to start exploring what solutions they can use. And unfortunately, not that it was too late, but it's. It's almost inopportune because this is a conversation they should have been having prior to so that they were pre and had a plan and could easily execute when needed.
And so again, it's about the problem for or the challenge. I should say, not a problem, but it's about having the confidence and competence to apply this smart city technology and realizing that the technology as a whole are not just topics for it only. Right. They're topics for leadership. And we have to make sure that more municipal leaders are comfortable having these conversations today. Not necessarily saying, okay, once I've addressed the issue, I have to go out to procurement and invest in these tomorrow, but I have to have a plan in place for the eventuality of my need. And so that's the biggest challenge that I find right now. I guess the reason I got involved with Iskra was because of that realization that we need to be having more of these conversations about what technology is available for our local challenges so that we can put them into our comprehensive plan and make sure that we do have a strategic approach. Not that we have to invest tomorrow, but that should the time arise, we are prepared and we know what step to take next.
[00:14:39] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah, very good point. Let's dive into that a bit deeper now on really the future of what we call smart cities.
You mentioned to me also that of course, it's not just about technology. I'm really glad that I feel like we're starting to get away from this. Hey, smart cities is just about tech kind of focus, but really around a holistic approach to rethinking the structure of government itself as well. So can you explain a little bit more what that means to you? What does that look like in practice? And where should cities start?
[00:15:15] Joe Gallo: Absolutely. The only question I have for you is how much time do you have?
[00:15:19] Tamlyn Shimizu: All day. All day.
[00:15:21] Joe Gallo: Yeah.
That's great. No, listen, so I guess I can. Right. And if we want to talk about rethinking government structure.
Excuse me. I want to take a step back and I want to tap into what I think is a very real and nuanced issue.
And it's in my opinion, again, one that sits at the heart of both the promise and the challenge of smart city initiatives. And that is how most communities, and again, broad brush jokes, but Most communities allocate 70% of their budget just to covering staff year over year. Right. And so what I mean by that is most local governments, between personnel costs, their salaries, pensions, health benefits and other ancillary expenses associated to employment, eat up 70% or more of the general fund. And as a result of that, it leaves little room for discretionary spending and discretionary spending on innovation or even infrastructure maintenance and capital projects. And so this I do recognize as an institutional constraint and it's very hard to break away from. And so on the series of our conversations, let's just remember, it's always easier said than done. But this is where that healthy skepticism comes into play. From my perspective, if you were to think about most private sector industries with a labor cost ratio at levels similar to municipal government, where 70% of my budget is just going to cover staff, it would be seen as insufficient or unsustainable. And naturally, that's excluding certain industries that are service based or high skilled consulting firms where salaries are the product. But I want to make sure that these smart city investments, so to say, are actually being able to drive costs away from the employment allocation and being directed more so to improving the quality of life, improving operations and enhancing the services to create a better environment for those who inhabit the community.
This is one of the things I tried to do when I was involved in local city government. And as doing that or while doing that, I was thinking that in theory, smart city technology should reduce these costs in specific ways. And some of those ways are automated, repetitive work. Right. If we think about the inspections process or reading meters, whether it's water, gas or parking meters, these are very repetitive workflows. And using technology to accomplish those should also be able to redirect the human individual who was fulfilling the operation. Right. And I know, I guess I'm pause here and say, I know that there can be the other side of the argument where they might, somebody might say that even though 70% of the budget is going to cover employment. Those employees are directly contributing to the improvement of the community, which I agree, but again, I, I think we can use human beings more powerfully than for routine repetitive work. And if we do deploy those systems, software and sensors to capture data, we can improve decision making and allow those employees to be more analytical and more focused on systems and less on actions. Think about, for example, if we were to connect our underground utilities with a series of IoT sensors that monitor the degradation of the infrastructure. They monitor the environment, the ambient environment around them. And so it's calculating all of this information and can push a notification in advance to say, hey, you know, we might want to check on this section of underground water main because of these conditions and because of the age and degradation of, of this equipment, rather than having a water Main burst at 2 o'clock in the morning and have to push a reactive labor heavy response. Right. And so, so it's very important that as we're looking at these technological investments, we continuously evaluate whether or not it's shifting costs and at the very least keeping costs and expense to the residents steady.
So that's, that's kind of where I wanted to focus today in terms of how to change the government structure in order to integrate technology to reallocate employees to higher level capacities.
And so to sum all of that up, and I know I've taken quite a bit of time on my end of the mic, but you know, in theory, over time these technologies should reduce the need to hire more staff as cities grow or as operations expand. It should allow the cities to restructure their departments so that they can run leaner. And restructure is the operative word in that statement because as we shift the staffing model from labor intensive to more skilled oversight and maintenance of these systems, then it becomes a pivot from task oriented to systematic.
[00:20:43] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah, I'm sold on this approach. I really like this approach on looking at cities and really looking at the cost staffing as a cost driver, for example, and seeing how we can use technology, etc. To make these processes more efficient. I'm sold. If, if a city practitioner is also sold on this, they say, ah, yes, I should look at this more. Where should they start?
[00:21:11] Joe Gallo: So again, this is a long winded one and I apologize in advance.
[00:21:14] Tamlyn Shimizu: Right, that's the point of the podcast. It's your time to talk.
[00:21:17] Joe Gallo: So yeah, absolutely, but I'm more of a listener, I guess. That's again, part of my day to day operations is to listen, but to actually see a reduction in spending for personnel as a direct result of these smart city investments. A community has to do a number of things, and I guess I'll dip in and out of them from high to low levels. But first and foremost, they need to shift from silos to systems thinking. And what I mean by that is, you know, cities are organized into departments, right? We have our planning or community development department, our police departments, fire departments, economic development departments, each of them with their own budgets, each of them with their own data, and of course, each of them with their own priorities, right? These silos, again, broad brush strokes, but rarely share resources or data efficiently. And this is, this is where the restructuring of how the operations and the departments are, are at the nucleus of genuine change, right? So a municipal leader, whether it's a village administrator or even the director of the department, needs to promote creating cross departmental task forces for bigger issues, whether that's in, you know, the planning department for mobility or it's in some other department to focus on infrastructure and resilience, or it deals in social services with equity. Creating those cross departmental task forces creates this integrated communication style where perspectives from each agency or each department can be shared to illustrate the bigger picture of the issue. And it makes the vision of where you want to go a little bit more clear. And I think about puzzles, right? When I talk about this, if I put down a piece of a puzzle and there's only a portion of the picture on that puzzle piece, I can assume 10 different ways that the finished puzzle will look if, of course, I don't have the box that shows the end result. But as more pieces of those puzzles, right, more perspective gets laid down, a clearer picture emerges. And this is then the ability to use that shared data and using that in the smart city context on data platforms where multiple departments can connect, contribute simultaneously, they can draw and they can use insights that are shared there. And so if there were budget opportunities, appointing chief innovation or chief data officers who have authority to work across departments and optimize these operations holistically would be a great place to start again, shifting from silos to more systems.
[00:24:02] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah, great point. Actually, fun fact. I met someone in Chicago who does. Does puzzles like that where they don't look at the end result and they just go with no picture on the box. And I thought that was quite impressive because my brain does not work that way. So.
Yeah, so do you think that that's a, a size, at a certain size, a community can start doing that, or do you think small communities can also implement These cross departmental task forces, innovation departments. What do you think?
[00:24:37] Joe Gallo: Yeah, there's a, there is a yes and no to that question. And I think if you allow me to geek out on some statistics real quick and I share these at almost every opportunity I, I get to speak in front of people. I almost want people to be nauseous of me hearing them because I, I want them to see the perspective and have it resonate so they can apply those statistics in their daily pursuits. But if you look at the United States as a whole, right, 329 million people about the country's population, they call home to some 19,500 cities, towns and villages across the country.
Of course, we hear a lot about the larger cities, Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Denver, San Jose, who are doing remarkable things with integrations of technology for obviously optimizing their operations or enhancing sustainability within the environment.
But those communities that we see heavily in the headlines all around the world, they're communities that have populations of 100,000 or greater. And in the US communities with a hundred thousand populace or Greater make up only 317 about of those 19,500. Right. And so that's less than 2%. The reality is that about 77% of all cities, towns and villages across the U.S. have populations of 50,000 or fewer. So that's 5, 0, with three more zeros after that and less. If you were to take a dart and throw it at the map of the US Chances are you're going to land on a community whose population ranges between 1500 and 50,000. Right? That's your any city USA. And so the city that I was a mayor of and involved in local city government was essentially any city USA. We had 25,000 residents about. And then our daytime influx with our workforce was about 40,000.
And so your Auroras or Evanstons, Joliets of Illinois, with a hundred thousand, two hundred thousand residents or more, they will have staffing capacities in local government to address a lot of the issues and the agility to a certain degree to restructure their organization to adapt. But many communities don't, right? Because 78% of them have 50,000 or fewer residents. Most of those communities are lucky to have a dedicated IT employee, whether it's an IT manager or a cio. Most of them use service provider to manage their technological infrastructure, right? And oftentimes it's the assistant village administrator who's also doubling as the IT manager. And so it's a challenge for a lot of your any city USAs to really rethink Their, their approach, especially when you're building the plane while you're flying it. Every day my hat goes off to, to municipal employees because it's another day of reacting. Every day we want to set a plan for our day, our week, or our short term goals. And every day we get knocked back a peg because we're reacting to some issue and that's detracting from our main priorities. So again, easier said than done. And it's very easy to be a critic. There is the possibility, it's just a matter of deciding when is the time to start and then giving careful thought on how you're going to take that next step.
[00:27:59] Tamlyn Shimizu: Really, really good points and great statistics. I'm not nauseous yet about your statistics. Let's see how much more we talk and how many more times. But I think really good statistics to name as well. Joe.
So when we're looking at staffing as a major cost driver and smart city tech realistically helping to bend that cost curve, why has this not happened at scale yet? Why have cities not implemented this at scale yet?
[00:28:29] Joe Gallo: You know, there's a number of reasons I can think of that why, why it hasn't happened much yet. For starters, one of, one of the largest things is the cultural or political inertia. Governments aren't necessarily built to reduce headcounts. There's union considerations, there's expectations of the general public, and of course there are political consequences that create some serious resistance.
There is another cultural aspect and it kind of toggles between two buckets. The first is that there is natural risk aversion type culture in local government and for good reason. To a degree, these municipal employees are stewards of the public and stewards of the public's financing. Right? And so when they want to make decisions, they also want to make absolutely certain that the decision they make and execute will be successful and will be beneficial. If not, they have to answer to the public who is often the most critical of audiences. Right? And so beyond having that cultural and political inertia, there's also this ideology where it's tech as an add on and not necessarily as a replacement. Too often cities, they, they layer technology on top of those existing systems without rethinking the approach to the original operation. And what I mean by this is, is it means they digitize a process, but they don't alter the structure of who's doing what.
And so I think that there's a need to look at both short term versus long term in two aspects. The first is looking at Technology and investing in technology and noticing that the return on the investment for these technologies often takes years to fully realize. And so going back to the main theme about healthy skepticism, I completely understand that it is going to take time to recognize whether or not these technological integrations are successfully altering the cost ratios.
But the other side is recognizing that staffing is a short term operational necessity. So nothing can be changed overnight. But change does have to start somewhere. And the best place to, to tie all this together is today. We know digital transformation should have been occurring very heavily about 10 years ago, but we can't go back in time. And so it's important that these managers and high level leaders in local government start today with being confident and competent in these conversations, in understanding the technologies and genuinely wanting to apply them into their environment.
[00:31:14] Tamlyn Shimizu: Really, really good points. I also want to ask you, over the last years we've seen a lot of promises of what a smart city can deliver.
You know, many, many different promises from a wider community, I guess, of smart city tech people, whoever it might be. And I want to ask you, what do you think of what do you think is the biggest disconnect you've seen between these smart city promises and what operationally really happens on the ground?
[00:31:50] Joe Gallo: Yeah, I mean, this is again, great therapy.
[00:31:53] Tamlyn Shimizu: Smart city therapy with tam.
[00:31:57] Joe Gallo: How about it? Yeah, let's change that. This is great. So I guess reflectively thinking back when I was involved in local government as an alderman and then later as a mayor, I received a number of solicitations from smart city solution providers who promised those efficiencies cost savings and citizen satisfaction, to say the least. Right.
But the representative, whether it's the business development rep or sales rep, they didn't always account for how my city staff actually worked on a day to day basis. And it's for no other reason than that rep was not familiar with the dynamics within my specific city.
And so I guess I would mention it's a great time to do homework prior to soliciting a community to genuinely understand the dynamics, how staff actually work on a day to day basis, or the realities of a lot of our antiquated infrastructure and the way our departments were to a degree siloed, and that we have very tight financial constraints within our budgets, not to mention, and again, not trying to be reductive to anyone, but low digital literacy levels within certain areas of the community, both in staff and on the dais with other elected officials. And so the sales pitch itself didn't always match the bandwidth with or the internal processes needed to support that technology they were peddling for the long term. And so now as I observe this across dozens of communities, as the executive director for Iskra, I see it all the time, right? Vendors over promising communities being underprepared and they buy hardware or platforms without a clear integration path and they lack a sustainability plan for that. One of my biggest side note here, one of my biggest banes of contention is hearing the word pilot. I'm not a fan of pilots because it, it almost focuses on now, only it doesn't necessarily take into consideration once the pilot has completed, if it's successful, what next? Or are we ready for a pilot and what do we have to consider in order to successfully deploy a pilot in the short term?
And so to, to the point, right?
It becomes shelfware, this solution that they buy into if they haven't answered those fundamental or prerequisite components that would ensure the technology will deliver as promised. And even worse, these technologies are viewed by staff as a burden. It's a hardship to manage this new technology with the way I conventionally ran my day to day workflow. And so I think in it all, a smarter community wouldn't necessarily be the ones with the most sensors or dashboards. They'd be the community who slows down and asks the right questions. And I think some of those questions would be do we have the clean usable data to feed these systems? Does our team know how to act on the insights that we're gleaning from the data? And does this technology, first and foremost, does it solve a problem that residents are genuinely concerned about? And then what happens after the tech has been deployed, when the dust settles? Metaphorically. Right. What do we do? So I think in short, the biggest disconnect is, is believing that the technology is the transformation. But it's not. And I could go on a tangent with, with AI in that regard because it's having a moment, the real transformation. It's internal, it's cultural, it's procedural, and of course it's operational. Technology is just the tool.
[00:35:32] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah, really good points, Joe.
I love your way of thinking about this and really your approach to these topics. You've talked about skepticism now and you're really saying that it's healthy, but not just healthy, it's really essential when we're looking at these technologies. So how do we balance. Next question in Tamlin Therapy, how do you balance that skepticism with the optimism needed to push innovation forward?
[00:36:07] Joe Gallo: Well, like you said, I think skepticism or healthy skepticism is valid.
If smart city investments don't bend Those cost curves, especially in staffing, then they become tech for tech's sake. And I think the future of successful smart cities depends not just on adopting the right tech, but again, being brave enough to rethink the structure of how government itself functions.
And so in that point, I think I may have missed maybe a second part of your question. So if you wanted to ask that again, I'd be very happy.
[00:36:39] Tamlyn Shimizu: No, it's just very much about this balance of skepticism versus you also need this optimism to push innovation forward at a good pace. So how do you balance those two?
[00:36:54] Joe Gallo: I think it's by being an advocate and an ally helping these municipal decision makers build digital first mindsets in their operation.
And I guess what I mean by that is, you know, government processes are very paper heavy or form heavy, right? They're slow, they're designed for in person transactions, again, for the most part, and they rely on people doing the tasks manually. So I think it's important to help foster this, the sense of influence. And it's almost organic in the same sense as having local elections. It builds on peers recognizing the same theme and coming together and more than being wrapped into that same ideology. So what I mean by that again is if I were to stand outside and look up at the sky on the corner of my community, I doubt anybody would pay me any attention. But if I were to do that with four other individuals and we all look up at the sky collectively, the next person to walk by is probably bound to look up wondering what we're doing. Right? And so in order to balance this, I think it's important to just create that organic groundswell of motivation and giving these decision makers a safe environment to first admit that they can't know all things. And a lot of these technologies just didn't exist when they were pursuing their municipal planning degrees and their higher educations. And as a result, it's important that they stay in touch with these conversations and be aware of these solutions. And it's about having an environment to enable them to do that. And then of course, making sure that the subject matter experts who share the education and guidance are doing it without an agenda. They're genuinely there to help solve the problems. When there's an agenda behind the education component about maybe making sure that they use my solution, then it's rather disingenuous and it sets a community up for failure. If they haven't been able to establish the appropriate infrastructure for those systems to deliver as promised. And as, as soon as we have a bad experience, that's Going to perpetuate a reluctance to try anything new going forward because we resemble or we, excuse me, we remember the bad experiences from the past. And so we are not inclined to go through that again. Right. And so the only way to balance that is by giving a healthy platform for conversation, dialogue, and, of course, ultimately execution.
[00:39:50] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yes, I like that point as well on the execution piece. Can we now open the floor also a little bit for any comments that you might have that are particularly.
Yeah, maybe we didn't get to talk about it yet. Maybe we. You really want the listeners to know. Maybe you want to dive deeper into a specific topic. Do you have anything that you want to bring to the table today?
[00:40:22] Joe Gallo: Oh, I mean, you've. You've definitely opened the floodgates on a lot of reflection. And I think I mentioned quite a few of the points I wanted to. Trying to think of extra points that maybe weren't. Weren't mentioned.
I think, again, it goes back to government and restructuring the government. If we can make a paradigm shift in the way we view staff and view them more as analysts and not necessarily as operators. Right. We have plenty of staff. And again, this goes back to the budget and the allocation of funding for staffing. And that staff carry out many tasks. They operate machinery, they process paperwork, or they respond to calls if we can afford them. The opportunities to explore the use of sensors and cameras or AI Again, altogether, when a community is ready, of course. And train those staff to analyze and then act on the data instead of manually collecting information and trying to forecast based on prior experience. Right. Create those new roles where staff can act more like data scientists. They can be civic tech analysts. They can design the systems that work best for their departmental environment, and they can be more about a community technologist. And in that regard, we need a culture where we promote data literacy across all departments so that employees are comfortable using these insights to improve their servicing.
It kind of goes back to what I think Smart City is altogether, and I don't know that I've touched on it.
[00:42:07] Tamlyn Shimizu: And I feel like we're getting to that.
[00:42:08] Joe Gallo: We're getting to that philosophical.
[00:42:10] Tamlyn Shimizu: That's the final question. So save it for the final question, if that's okay.
Okay, okay, I will.
Yeah, that's. That's the recurring question we ask every guest. So I don't want to spoil it with. With that. I would move on to our segment that we have today, and that will be shout out, where you mention a person, an organization, or a city you think deserves more recognition in the field. Do you have anyone or anything, any place that you would like to mention.
[00:42:53] Joe Gallo: You know, there are so, so many. And I think I just shout out in general to, to those that know who they are, those who are currently in Those, any city USAs asking the right questions, looking at their environment and how they can restructure it and then trying to create a path forward that they can articulate and illustrate to their deciding body, whether it's the, you know, the board of trustees or the city council or their superiors. The need to begin exploring technological integrations, but making sure that we have our ducks in a row, right? Those are the folks that I like to give a shout out to because they're doing it.
[00:43:34] Tamlyn Shimizu: And with that, we come to our final question. I already told you, it is a recurring question we ask every guest. It is to you. What is a smart city?
[00:43:45] Joe Gallo: Okay, so I guess, you know, there, yeah, and there, I guess two sides to this coin. There's, like I said, my, my philosophical view. And I would think of a smart city as, as a problem solving city, right? A smart city is any community that sets out to intentionally solve its problems, right? They want to operate more efficiently, they want to enhance their services, and they want to do that through using data. It's a community that recognized the value of their data because it's the data that tells the story, right? So a smart city is one of those communities that's a crawl, walk, run community and back to the shout out of those who I mentioned are doing it. Right. And there's a number of them, and I'm very happy to see that. But when they crawl, it means they're, they've gone through the process to ensure that their existing data is clean. It's in a single, or at least as many, as few as possible platforms. So it can be structured and accessible and of course, above all, secure. But that prevents them from making these early mistakes and ensures that the initial smart city technology that they will invest in are built on firm foundations. Those are the folks who then take that city from a crawl to a walk and they deploy more smart city components. Right?
They bought into the idea that they do need a municipal area network. It's not just good enough to have city hall, public works, police and fire on a network, but to have my street lights, to have my traffic signals and deploy IoT sensors which begin to collect additional data. And that data is now real time. It's high quality and it fills the gaps to further improve on their decision making. And then ultimately, because they've crawled before, they walked. And now they walk before they run. By using this newly generated data to optimize and expand their smart city ecosystem, they can now make more informed, data driven policy and operational decisions. And so that's what I think a smart city is. It's a city that sets out to intentionally solve its problems using the story that they.
[00:45:42] Tamlyn Shimizu: I love that. It's so interesting how people describe this term.
It's really fascinating. So with that, Joe, I have to bring us to the end, unfortunately. But thank you so much for your time, your insights, your knowledge, everything that you've brought to this conversation. I really, really appreciate it.
[00:46:04] Joe Gallo: Well, thank you. It's been my pleasure. Tamlin, I don't know if you can hear, but it's the first Tuesday of the month on my side and so the sirens are coming, I hear a little bit.
[00:46:13] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah, but that's okay. It brings the city atmosphere also to the podcast. Right?
Yeah. Thank you so much, Joe. And of course, I have to thank our listeners as well. Don't forget, you can always create a free account on Baba Dash smartcities. You find out more about projects, solutions, implementations and more. Thank you very much.
