Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] 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, Tamlin Shimizu, and I hope you enjoy this episode and gain knowledge and connections to accelerate the change for a better urban life.
So welcome back, everyone.
Today is another episode of of our series and we're traveling to Venus, Lithuania, a city that has embraced smart regulation and innovation culture under the leadership of our guest, who's going to talk all about it.
So with us today I have Remigijus Šimašius. He's the former mayor of Vilnius, former Minister of justice, and now involved in many different initiatives across the city and country, and I think European wide as well. So he's going to tell you more about that and tell us about. About what all the work that he's done during his mayorship as well.
So welcome so much, Remy.
[00:01:02] Remigijus Šimašius: Hello, everyone. So first of all, congratulations, Tamblyn, on making this challenge. Pronouncing my name. And so I did it. Yeah, you did it. I know it's challenging. So Remy for short is perfect.
So, yes, I was a mayor of this, of this beautiful city for eight years, for two terms. Decided that it's enough. It has to go without me further and I will have to go otherwise.
Yes, I was Minister of Justice before and now I'm. Yes. Different initiatives, starting with helping public institutions how to reduce regulatory burden. Not regulation per se, but regulatory burden. I think it's very important, Tiny distinction. And I'm also advising one startup working in GovTech with IA tools to help again reduce burden and flow. And some other initiatives, also public initiatives, trying to help Ukraine in some aspects.
All these things. So interesting life.
[00:02:00] Tamlyn Shimizu: Very interesting life. We're going to get into that more in a second.
To start us off, I want to warm up a little bit with a question, a teaser question, and that question is for you. If Venus was an animal, which animal would it be and why?
[00:02:17] Remigijus Šimašius: Okay, these were my questions.
Always have to be easy.
Always have to be easy.
I don't know.
So I don't know what animal I am.
[00:02:29] Tamlyn Shimizu: You can also hypothesize on that if you like.
[00:02:31] Remigijus Šimašius: Okay, let's say. Okay, I will say it. I think Venus is a unicorn. You think they do not exist, but in fact they do.
[00:02:39] Tamlyn Shimizu: Like a company is a unicorn.
[00:02:42] Remigijus Šimašius: Both the company and the companies are unicorns because they are unicorns, because people think that they do not exist. But in fact they do exist sometimes.
And actually, actually in Vilnius. In Vilnius we even have a unicorn public transport station called Unicorn because two city unicorns are situated right, right by this public transport station.
[00:03:08] Tamlyn Shimizu: Okay, there you go. All right, good answer. And if you were an animal, now you have to also.
[00:03:14] Remigijus Šimašius: Let's pick up for something. I would be a dog.
[00:03:16] Tamlyn Shimizu: Okay, I, I like that answer. I love dogs. So do you have a dog?
[00:03:22] Remigijus Šimašius: Not now, but yes, I did have and I, I like this dog mentality.
[00:03:27] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yes. Friendly and just. Yeah. Great creature. So wonderful.
Yeah. You've mentioned a little bit about all the things that you, you've gotten into. But can you tell me a bit more about that journey? Where are you from? How did you become mayor? How did you become minister? All of this story that leads you here today.
[00:03:49] Remigijus Šimašius: Yeah, I'm a lawyer by profession, so I decided to study law because I thought it's interesting funny thing because I didn't choose some other professions because I didn't want to be engaged with the government, but.
[00:04:02] Tamlyn Shimizu: And then you became the government.
[00:04:03] Remigijus Šimašius: Yeah, that's. So that's, that's a funny part of the story. But yes, I was a lawyer, but I mainly was doing economic analysis of law. I was working for think tank and then running this think tank called Lithuanian Free Market Institute which was advocating free market reforms. And these reforms were quite successful. And that's partly the answer why Lithuania is successful on European Union level. I mean again we are like medium country in terms of GDP per capita, but back then we were half of average. So that's the fastest growing country in European Union.
Then somehow I was seduced to politics.
[00:04:45] Tamlyn Shimizu: How were you seduced? I want to hear this story.
[00:04:48] Remigijus Šimašius: Okay. I didn't, I. Okay. I. I was for short a member of city council. But that's okay. That's like part time job. So that's not. Not. It's serious, but not as serious. But then I, I decided to, to. To. To give up on this and, and, and. And concentrated on my think tank.
But then one day like leaders of party who were forming government called me and said okay, please join us and be a Minister of justice. And I of course said no. They said okay, I'll call you tomorrow.
[00:05:19] Tamlyn Shimizu: You slept on it and you changed your mind.
[00:05:21] Remigijus Šimašius: Yeah. And I decided no, that's. You know, it's kind of tricky thing when you're always telling others what to do and when you are offer the chance to make an impact yourself.
It's quite not appropriate decision to not to pick up this opportunity. So I Decided yes, to pick up it. So I was a Minister of justice for four years, did quite important reforms, especially in this reducing regulatory burden. I think. Okay, if you want to, we can talk about it later because it's really very interesting. I think then for short, I was a member of parliament and then I decided to run for mayor selection. It's, it's, it's. It's a direct election, popular election.
Because I thought, okay, that was very, very practical things because, you know, I love this city and I thought that it's not run properly. I thought that also unfortunately had issues with corruption and intransparency. So there are practical things. But then of course, when you start to start the campaigning and all these things, of course I dived very deep into it and all these urban structures and all this running. So yeah, I'm really now in love with cities in general and with my cities.
So I was then reelected and then decided in the middle of my second term that it's okay, we'll not go for the third one.
And here I am. They're doing all different nice things like helping others, how to reduce regulatory burden and how to use smart tools to run the governments. So that's very, very interesting. Again.
[00:07:03] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah, very interesting. I want to dive more into that in a.
[00:07:05] Remigijus Šimašius: And I'm teaching at the university as well.
[00:07:07] Tamlyn Shimizu: So busy doing lots of things and carrying your experiences forward with you as mayor. You mentioned corruption.
What were some of the key strategies you employed to transform the city?
[00:07:23] Remigijus Šimašius: First strategy, which is like lowest hanging apple and very, very important was the radical open data policy. Radical one. So I mean, I was calling it, no excuse open data policies.
So. Because we were opening up everything and of course that helped a lot because. Because suddenly you understand that, you know, when there's light somewhere there's open data. So people may ask questions and that's very important.
So that's number one. Then what I did, I introduced the OECD principles for corporate governance in municipally owned companies.
Actually, it's a funny story about it because I was helping to introduce this principle when I was minister. It was under other administrative Ministry of Economy, but I was helping to do it. But then of course I thought, of course for municipal companies we have to do the same. And I thought that okay, we are catching up with someone because everybody else is doing this and so on and so on. And then I realized that we are not catching up because quite few cities are actually doing it because it's not even required by ucd. They do not focus on municipal Level, they do not focus even on lands level, just on federal or national level.
But we implemented these principles which made it much, much, much better. I mean when we had this metrical debates during my second election, it was very funny when I was able to name kind of these millions which I think were stolen because there was no other RA explanations.
Yeah, yeah. So this, this, this, this, this was very interesting. So there's maybe two main, main, main policies. And then of course it's a kind of a moral conduct. I mean basically you're choosing right people your, your, your, your, your show by example and all this, this things. I think this, these are very important because again you sometimes, you know that some of the people who are working in public sector, unfortunately tiny portion of them, but tiny portion of them are looking for their like personal benefit but not for public benefit and you have to get rid of them. That's as simple as that. It's not the main tool, but it's a very important tool. Yeah, persuasion and big goals and all these things. They do help with 90% of people, but with some percent you just have to get rid of them. So, so that's also part of the story.
[00:09:39] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah, absolutely. When you're talking about regulation, can you share examples of innovative regulatory approaches that you've used?
Yeah, tell us more about this regulation approach.
[00:09:53] Remigijus Šimašius: Okay, I'm thinking maybe about those related to the city. Okay, just let's pick one very simple one which relates to everyone. For example, let's take the noise control issue in the city, which is terribly difficult because some people want to go party and some people want to go sleep.
[00:10:10] Tamlyn Shimizu: And that's all always contrast in every city.
[00:10:14] Remigijus Šimašius: I remember one Sunday was invited to talk at some event, some club for young people. It was Sunday morning and it was like 10 o' clock in the morning and something and I was entering the building and it was actually a nightclub nearby and I was seeing people who were still alive and some other people already awoke. So you can imagine what the kind of mismatch of lifestyles in the city and you have to manage it. So noise control. And of course you always have this, this, this issue when somebody's calling like governmental agencies that you are here, the noise, you have to turn it off and so how it works. So for example, a tiny, tiny innovation, but it's extremely tiny. While we introduce the procedure that first you have to go to complainant and to check what's the situation and then to go to typically the pub, which is like issuing this noise.
Then how changed? First, first Conclusion is that, that some of complaints are fake because in some cases there are no neighbors, there are competitors.
There are competitors. Of course they do want clients to their pub, but not the competitor's pub. So one of the tricky tricks is to post a complaint. And of course when you're not able to go to the flat, which is complaining, I mean, then all this like corrupt system fails.
But if there is a real complainant, of course, if a person, kind of public servant goes to a family who wants their child to go sleep and then it goes back to the pub and pub says no, no, it's okay. And the person can say no, just look, five minutes ago I was there, I didn't know the situation. And it is, on the human level, it's much more persuasive. And okay, it doesn't solve all the problems, but it reduce problems by like 90% or something. So that's like very, very typical city life, city life situation. Or we may take a more complicated one. For example, shared mobility, all these bicycles, scooters, cars or whatever. But let's take cars for example. Vilnius is number one city in the world in terms of shared cars per capita.
And how did we achieve that? And again these tiny innovations, how and when you can leave a car if it's residence only, so is it for share cars or not for share cars, can you enter there? So on all this, on this flexible, like payment opportunities, I mean, if you're a customer, how you pay for parking and so on, all kind of several tiny innovations and suddenly from lagging behind, we are number one in the world. So, so that's, that's a good illustration, I think, how this regulatory innovation and how you apply this innovation, this regulation, it has a huge impact. All in all, I'm very happy that for example, fdi, this ranking of the cities, they ranked Vilnius as the most business friendly city among medium sized cities. So this is kind of part of it, it doesn't show all of this, but it's, it's quite a significant part of the story.
[00:13:36] Tamlyn Shimizu: Okay, really interesting when you're talking about regulation. When we think about innovation, oftentimes regulation is seen as kind of an enemy to innovation. How do you strike this balance between allowing innovation to flourish but also drawing the line with regulation?
[00:13:56] Remigijus Šimašius: In fact, it is enemy of innovation. Of course, of course. But then of course you have regulation, which is typ.
It has to achieve some goals. And again, first of all, again one of the tools in this case we created the sandbox environment in Vilnius. Not just creating particular Areas, geographical or topic areas. But in general announcing that Vilnius is a sandbox for innovation. So basically very clearly opening doors for innovation and saying that if you want to try something and this is not exactly what is fitting into regulation, so this is the one stop, show the door, please come say and we will allow you. And we were positioning ourselves as a kind of starting market for many innovation on European level because we were selling this to companies. So if you able to do this in Vilnius, which is in European Union, the same regulation and so on. So probably can do it somewhere else as well. So basically deliberate approach to do this and then deliberate help. So that was the main thing and in general trying to be more flexible. When people were complaining about things that you have to regulate. So being a little bit skeptical on every step, do you really need to regulate it or you need to have some agreement? For example, for the same shared mobility.
Of course, all these questions about, especially about scooters, all these are difficult questions. So I initiated memorandum between providers of these services in the city. How we exchange data, how we exchange problems, how we deal with this. And again all these innovations that were coming up in Vilnius first, for example, like okay, if you provide electric scooters in the city, of course there are some areas which is okay for scooters, but not Friday night or Saturday night. The same like social drinking like areas.
And we were like taking this from the areas which, which, which were, which were. Which are possible to. To. To. To rent the scooter and suddenly it benefits everyone, it benefits municipality because like less complaints that somebody is rushing into somebody for like service providers is better because okay, less incidents. That's also good for those people who are maybe not in the most sober condition in there also more safe. So basically this is about talking and agreement.
So I mean talking is a very powerful tool for humanity.
[00:16:35] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah, absolutely. But how do you not just talk and then move to implementation is also the challenge. Right?
So from your perspective, how do you move that from talking to action?
[00:16:50] Remigijus Šimašius: I think it's an illusion that we may avoid action.
We always act. You know, that's my perception. That comes also from my economic analysis and legal analysis. Because you know, if you avoid decision making, it's also your decision to avoid decision making. So basically it's also an act of its own. It's also act of its own. So basically the problem is not about non acting, it's about problem is about acting improperly or not taking all the serious issues into account and the measure how to take serious issues into account of Course, it's big data, data analysis, but also listening to stakeholders.
And actually this is about talking. When you talk, I mean, I mean very often you get surprised about other people opinions, what's actually the problem and what the potential solutions. And when you talk, of course you, you get creative and then you act more wisely. So that's it. Because not to act is impossible. Because I mean, okay, do we allow scooters in the street or not allow? I mean, allowing is not acting. Forbidding is acting or not, or vice versa.
[00:17:59] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah.
[00:18:00] Remigijus Šimašius: So city cannot escape action. It's just. What kind of action?
[00:18:06] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah, that's true.
[00:18:08] Remigijus Šimašius: That's maybe too philosophical, but I think it's very practical at the same time.
[00:18:13] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah, no, I like it. It makes me think a little bit more about some of, some of how we're thinking about these things. Right. So what do you think is one thing that you did as mayor that now in hindsight you're like, oh gosh, I shouldn't have done it that way. I would do it differently now.
[00:18:35] Remigijus Šimašius: Okay, there's a very, very specific thing.
I mean, when I became a. But this is very villainous sentence.
When I became a mayor, we had a very awful kind of lighting system and villain. So, so basically it was old, so it was in very bad shape. It was like turning off, I mean, out of this light bulbs and many were not working. All this kind of ugly stuff. I mean, that was quite difficult for European cities like 10 years ago. So we were like rushing into renovation into like economy saving into this lead and all these things.
And we did it successfully according to our plan. That was very good. But then I realized that, you know my kind of criteria for this coziness. I had this criteria. I was not making this Brugger mistake when it's called the city, but I thought that it was still too low. We had to do it a little bit better. So basically when we changed this like lighting stoves into the same style but new ones, then I understood that no, we had to change it more radically into more human friendly, I mean, simple technical things. They're too high, they are too centered for car drivers and less centered for pedestrians and all this kind of stuff, which would have turned the city into much more cozy than it was. So actually I realized it in the middle of the process when two thirds of the things were done already, then it would change radically. Like starting with the color of lighting stoves. I mean, now they're painted in black instead of this kind of this metal 50 shades of gray thing. So it's much nicer now, but, okay, we missed some opportunities, so. Missed opportunities. The thing, this one is success, which was not successful in a way.
[00:20:32] Tamlyn Shimizu: If there's a mayor starting their term tomorrow, say, what piece of advice would you give them?
[00:20:42] Remigijus Šimašius: Okay, so the cities are. Cities are so different.
[00:20:46] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah. It has to be, I guess a bit more general advice rather than.
[00:20:50] Remigijus Šimašius: Yeah, I think. Okay. To be very genuine about what you want to achieve and how to align your vision with the vision of your clients, with which means citizens or investors and everyone.
I think, again, we're being very open and very creative and very precise. For example, for me, what worked very well, again, speaking about the same business, friendliness. I remember when, like during the first week I initiated already the meeting with the main companies, international companies, business, of course, like, like second or third week we had a meeting with the main question from my side, okay, now elections are over, what can I do as a mayor for Williams to be more investable or more friendly for you?
And the answers I got surprised me so much and it was such a good focus for me for the next few years because basically I've got three answers. One is like, better quality public spaces, the second one, better quality public transportation. And the third was better kindergartens.
And it was so related to actually what I was planning to do, but with a little different shape that was so easy to focus and to sell it also to other businesses and to know what is actually important. Because when somebody else was coming to me, to my office, when, for example, Lithuania was already shortlisted for the investment, but then we're looking for this cultural proximity, so is it the right place to land or not? So I knew what to speak about and I knew what we were still lagging or lacking and saying that now we are working on it and we did work on it and we solved these problems and that was part of the success story. So that's aligning and being very open about this. I think this is the most important part.
[00:22:39] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah, really good advice. I like that. And I guess I know you accomplished a lot during your time terms, but I'm guessing that there's still a lot of work to be done in Viln. What is the. What would you say are the biggest challenges that Vilnius is still facing?
And what do you think? What tools would you take today to accelerate the change in the city?
[00:23:01] Remigijus Šimašius: Again, there's one very specific like, problem and issue related to urban structure of cities like Vilnius. So it's. It's especially typical for central and Eastern European cities, but also for Western European cities which were developed during the modernistic era, when we, we have a cozy city, we invented or we realized that the typical quarter of the city is no more than 2 hectares. I mean that's a magical thing. It took some time for us to realize it and I'm quite surprised that many urbanists did not, didn't like quantified it. So it's no more than 2 hectares. Typical modernistic quarter is 7 to 9 hectares.
And that explains a lot.
That explains how this like block houses built during Soviet era in our city and it's half of the city basically. And in other cities, most of the cities, again even in Western European cities, does the same. Why they do look so unfriendly, so inhumane. And I mean, because you don't have proper streets, you don't have the human kind of scale. And basically you have to cut these quarters into smaller ones. And instead of having this, as people call it yards in the city, which are not yards because they don't have like entrance into the yard, they quasi yards, quasi street, quasi parking cloths in between buildings. So I, I think reconstructing this city is a big challenge for, for, for these cities, including Vilnius, because when you, you'll go in central part and so on. So, so nice and so on. But, but again, for this like modernistic city and then post Soviet city, I think it's still some challenging and still some regulation actually this, this doesn't allow to, to, to have a very, very, very, very, very smooth transformation. And then this transformation related to, to habits of people and how people perceive things, to lack of imagination because people think that the city should look like the city of their childhood looks. So basically that's all the issues.
Very interesting and very challenging actually.
[00:25:19] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah.
What tools do you think you would need to accelerate the change that you're looking at? You would want in burners.
[00:25:28] Remigijus Šimašius: Now that's a very difficult question. Of course, again, talking, explaining and explaining, not so much about recipes, but explaining the issues and problems. I think it's like all good advertising. I didn't know that at the beginning of my political career. But in order to sell solution, you have to sell a problem first.
Because very often, I mean, I was doing the same mistake and I'm still doing the same mistake sometimes because I mean, you think that you know what's the problem and you rush to solve this problem, but it doesn't mean that your clients, your citizens think that this is the problem.
So you have to persuade, you have to persuade that this is actually the Problem because it's not so easy and it's not so obvious.
And if you're successful, people think, okay, that's true. I mean, this place is not as cozy as it can be and not as functional as it can be and not as economical or whatever. So now we've got a problem, let's look for solutions. And then you are aligned and you may look for solutions. So I was. Sometimes I was rushing too fast to solve the problems instead of like selling the problems first.
And that's one of the big challenges of reformers, I think, of all reforms. I'm a former type politician because some are like happy just running things as they are. For me, it's a little bit boring, but I do respect those people who run things as they are because it's also very, very important part of perform for. Not for me, but. But selling the problem is the issue.
[00:27:04] Tamlyn Shimizu: I like that a lot. Because that's kind of the tool that you're saying is this communication tool and this sales tool almost being able to sell the problem and looking at that from a citizen engagement aspect. So.
Exactly.
[00:27:18] Remigijus Šimašius: It's. It's sales thing.
[00:27:20] Tamlyn Shimizu: It's like a sales. Yeah, a sales tool. You have to be a good salesman. Yeah.
[00:27:24] Remigijus Šimašius: And you know, for politicians, you know, during election campaign, of course you're selling that.
[00:27:28] Tamlyn Shimizu: You're selling yourself.
[00:27:29] Remigijus Šimašius: Yeah. But basically, yeah, you're selling yourself. You are selling identity, you are selling affiliation with yourself. And you're the program. And I had it in many cases, you know, I was implementing things with what I had in my program and I expected that people, of course, voted for me. It means that they voted for my program.
But of course, nobody.
[00:27:50] Tamlyn Shimizu: They didn't memorize the program, of course.
[00:27:54] Remigijus Šimašius: About all this tiny deal we had this debate about, okay, this mayor is like making narrowing the streets, I mean, making more pedestrian friendly, more green and so on. So half, more than half of the city adores it and halfway less than half, I think, hate it because they think, okay, I think they're not right because I was not able to sell the problem for them.
[00:28:17] Tamlyn Shimizu: They didn't see that.
[00:28:18] Remigijus Šimašius: Yeah, yeah. Because for some people, they still don't see that as a problem. And then of course, afterwards, it's even more difficult to sell. I mean, we have like, like metrics again. We calculated the number like kilometers of the sheets which, like humanized.
And we calculated the number of car accidents in the streets and the car accidents where people were injured and so on. And we have like extremely.
Before we had like three times more injuries than now and it's more cozy and people choose to live there and everything shows that it's to the better. But still for some drivers, if you're passing this cheat, even if it's not reduced the time of your trip, it still somehow annoys some people.
Even if it's better looking, safer, it's still. I mean, I have to be more cautious when driving. Yes, exactly. That was the point, more cautious. But for some people it's still the issue.
[00:29:21] Tamlyn Shimizu: You can't please everyone. Right. But I really do like that around selling the problem. So with that I would like to ask you, because, you know, we talked about some, some interesting aspects, of course, but I'm sure you have a wealth of knowledge and a wealth of experiences and is there anything that we didn't yet get the chance to talk about? This is the open floor.
Many things.
Maybe one.
One specific item that you think would be especially important for our listeners to know.
[00:29:54] Remigijus Šimašius: Yeah, okay. That relates to all public governance, I think, but also also to the city, I think. Again, getting back to this regulation topic, typically we tend to think that regulation is either good or bad. So it means we either have to have more regulation or less regulation. So it's like black and white yes or no dichotomic approach. And I think this is the wrong approach because basically we have not to speak about how much regulation do we have, but how to apply it wisely because it's impossible to apply all regulation 100%.
And in Anglo Saxon legal tradition they have it like more in their blood because it's more based on case by case principle. Which means if you have more general principles on top and you have case by case decision, it's deteriorating in the Anglo Saxon tradition, unfortunately. But I think it's a good approach when you have a goal and then you have certain rules. But then still when applying, you have to have to take all the context in mind and to apply it wisely. Because I think there are too many people working in public service who think that they don't have to think that they have to apply rules and then we have a problem because if you don't think, you actually think in the wrong way.
[00:31:26] Tamlyn Shimizu: This is like the acting and not acting thing, right? If you do not think that you actually cheeky thing.
[00:31:31] Remigijus Šimašius: But, but that's I think very important because you know when, when you meet a person, you know all the misbehaviors are equally important. You have to deal with all cases because all of them are important.
And you know when, for example, when I teach to, to, to legal profession, to, to lawyers, you know, say, you know, I mean, if you are a policeman and if you're driving over the city, of course, if you see that there's a problem in the street, typically you have to stop and to interfere. But if you're rushing to a bigger like accident, of course you don't have to stop. You have to think and on a radical thing, when people don't even think that they have to stop.
You have a piece of trash, for example, on the pavement and you are like an officer, theoretically you have to start a procedure to find out who left this trash on the pavement. But you do understand that it's nonsense. It's impossible to do this. You don't even start it because culturally you are wise enough and you think rightly in this case. But in some cases we don't think in the right way. We think that we have to do everything in a precise thing as described by law and we don't have to take it from the context into consideration. And that is very wrong. We have to think when applying regulations. So that's very important. So I help people to realize it and they see how easy and how difficult it is.
But that's a very important part of how flexible and stable still, and still caring city is functioning.
[00:33:10] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah, really interesting take on regulation and I think a really important topic for us to have more thoughts on and more perspectives on as we move forward.
Now we get to our segment that we have and I think you've already inspired us, but I like to have this segment as well to give you space to inspire us a little bit more.
A little bit with a story maybe or a quote is really interesting. Maybe a favorite quote of yours or anything that has really inspired you recently.
[00:33:48] Remigijus Šimašius: I was doing quite many reforms and of course I got both, both admirers and then non supporters, let's say mildly so. Actually, this quote from Winston Churchill quite inspires me that you know, you have enemies. Good. It means you stood up for something sometime in your life.
So I think it's important just to pay attention to your clients, but not to be distracted by everyone because we have to focus. I think it's very important. So I don't know, is it inspiration or not?
[00:34:20] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah, I like it. It is, I think for leaders, definitely.
[00:34:25] Remigijus Šimašius: Because go do something, you will have enemies. Okay, good inspiration.
[00:34:29] Tamlyn Shimizu: If you do, if you act well, if you wait, act or not act, you will get enemies. Right. If you are in a position, basically.
[00:34:38] Remigijus Šimašius: You will get enemies always. I mean, sometimes if you, if you, you pretend that you will do nothing, actually doing nothing is also doing. And you. Some people will hate you because you did nothing. Yes. So that's, I mean it's inescapable.
[00:34:52] Tamlyn Shimizu: But it means that you were in a position that you had influence and you had the ability to impact.
And I think that's so important to, to recognize that you have this ability to impact and to not, to, to not let the negatives get in your.
[00:35:10] Remigijus Šimašius: Let's. Let's be fair, you know, let's. Running the city or even working for the city. I can mean the biggest inspiration and the biggest kind of rewards is actually to make an impact.
[00:35:22] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah.
[00:35:23] Remigijus Šimašius: To change it. But the biggest, the biggest reward because some other aspects of being politicians not.
[00:35:31] Tamlyn Shimizu: So rewarding, like the hate from the people.
[00:35:35] Remigijus Šimašius: Okay. Like, like being recognizable on the street. Okay, that's nice. I mean during all these eight years and more, that was always good, you know, with like a couple of like not even instance. But just very, very, very, very few unfriendly remarks. All just friendly and so nice. But still, I mean, I mean it's.
Doesn't make you less free, but it, it makes, makes you think all the time how you behave.
[00:36:01] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah. So for better or for worse.
[00:36:03] Remigijus Šimašius: Yeah, for better or for worse. I mean not crossing this G on the, on the red light, even if there are no cars, you are from Germany, so you're not crossing it.
[00:36:14] Tamlyn Shimizu: The important thing in Germany is to not do it if there's any children around. That's like kind of the societal norm in Germany. So. Yeah.
[00:36:22] Remigijus Šimašius: Yeah, okay. That's what my experience is. Germans do not cross if it's not.
[00:36:28] Tamlyn Shimizu: In Berlin, but they don't. They don't give you a, A mean eye unless there's children around. So that's France.
[00:36:33] Remigijus Šimašius: You can do it, whatever. I mean that's different. But, but okay, if you are mayor.
[00:36:37] Tamlyn Shimizu: Never.
[00:36:38] Remigijus Šimašius: Never.
That's a problematic.
And again. But, but I think that's part of this, of this regulatory implementation thing because okay, red light is a red light that, you know, you have to like obey it all the time. But again, is it really the case?
I mean, of course there are certain situations. I mean, I mean it's not very polite to talk about this. I'm not a politician anymore, so I can talk about.
[00:37:06] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah, you're free now, so you have.
[00:37:08] Remigijus Šimašius: To focus on it. But okay, being more serious about this again. For example, when we made in the city some innovation concern about abusing the bus lanes because you have dedicated bus lanes. Of course and of course there are some drivers who want to drive this empty lane because you know why? To keep it empty you have a traffic jam in other lanes, so why not use it? I'm in rush. So instead of placing all these policemen and cameras just on this lane, we installed cameras in front of the bus and in the backwards of the bus. And backwards of the bus is especially important. And the front lines of course is even more important because if the bus stops and the camera films a car in front of it and the car shouldn't be there, so it means that actually it, it not just abuses the rule, but it actually, it makes an impact, it's creating consequences. So then we have to focus on it. If it's in the middle of the night, I mean if you have some, some obstacle on the road, for example, and so on all this like question, I am entitled now to use this 20 meters of bus lane or not. I mean, these are crazy questions. I mean, I mean, and it's nonsensical to be to over focus on this.
[00:38:22] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah. So that's a good metaphor for the regulation and finding that line, you know, is when it has an impact, negative impact to the operations or to, to the wider, you know, citizen level or city level initiatives, et cetera. Then that's.
[00:38:38] Remigijus Šimašius: If we were, if we were talking about regulation more, I would tell you.
[00:38:44] Tamlyn Shimizu: You like that topic, don't you?
[00:38:46] Remigijus Šimašius: I would say that a simple risk, risk management metrics is very important because there are two criterias. Basically, okay, shit happens.
So what's the probability of it to happen and what's the consequences if it happens? And again, you have like four like fields and you may place everything in this four field. And when you have limited, of limited resources and I mean, I mean who hasn't limited resources? I mean it's always limited. So where to focus?
That's the question. And how to focus. Of course there are two easy fields and two more complicated fields.
[00:39:23] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah.
[00:39:24] Remigijus Šimašius: So, but again that's the art on how to manage your resources and how to achieve better results with limited resources.
[00:39:31] Tamlyn Shimizu: Good point.
With that I would love actually to dig in deeper to this regulation topic and everything, but unfortunately we're nearing the end of our time.
So with that I have the last question for you. It's a question that we ask every single guest and that question is to you, what is a smart city?
[00:39:52] Remigijus Šimašius: Okay, this simple answer. The city that doesn't make stupid decisions.
[00:39:57] Tamlyn Shimizu: There you go. I like it. Simple, straight to the point. Yeah, that's good. Okay, perfect. That was easy.
Well with that. Thank you so much for your time. Remy. It's really been a pleasure learning more about your experiences and everything with regulation, everything. All of your experiences really have been really enlightening. So thank you so much.
[00:40:19] Remigijus Šimašius: Thank you.
[00:40:20] Tamlyn Shimizu: Thank you for this conversation anytime. And also thank you to our listeners. Of course it wouldn't happen without you. And don't forget, you can always create a free Account on BABLE SmartCities, EU and you can find out more about Smart City projects, implementations and more. Thank you very much.
[00:40:40] Remigijus Šimašius: Yeah, this was quite fun.
