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United for Smart Sustainable Cities
                              Connecting cities and communities with the Sustainable Development Goals

            operations support for a period of five years, whereas the open loop card system was developed on a public-
            private partnership (PPP) model with no upfront capital investment from the city administration.

            The execution is orchestrated by the SPV which is supported by project management consultants (PMC). The
            PMC is tasked with developing the technology solution, defining integration touchpoints, and ensuring the
            overall financial sustainability of the project. The implementation vendors, technology providers, in the case
            of optic fibre connectivity, ITMS and AFCS, and banks in the case of CCPS, work with the SPV and PMC in
            order to deliver the unified solution for citizens.

            The overall programme, which has many firsts from an Indian perspective, started in September 2015, and
            the first three months were spent on citizen consultations and eliciting the appetite of the private sector in
            taking up urban transformation projects. The projects were then phased out so that interdependencies of
            various components (developed by different vendors) were mapped, and infrastructure-heavy initiatives
            were commenced first, followed by the deployment of ICT street infrastructure and software development.
            The implementation is currently underway and the systems are expected to go live in April 2017.

            The project selected  effective technology suitable to Indian conditions. The  provision  of  some services
            through a PPP results in reduced financial dependence in an already constrained urban funding scenario.
            Furthermore, financial support from the central government enhanced the project’s attractiveness for the
            components of projects which did not have a viable PPP alternative.


            3       Conclusions

            Ahmedabad’s pioneering PPP model for the CCPS system has helped in reducing upfront investments and
            increasing alternative revenues in capital-intensive ICT projects. The model is worth emulating across other
            transit systems in the developing world.

            The key lessons learnt from this initiative are:
            ▪       Ensuring financial sustainability and proper risk segregation are critical and are an essential feature
                    of ICT based capital-intensive projects.
            ▪       The dissemination of information and citizen consultation builds the legitimacy required for such
                    large scale projects.


            A       References

            United Nations  Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA), Population Division, (2014),  World
            Urbanization Prospects: 2014 Revision, Highlights. 2014, ST/ESA/SER.A/352.

            World Economic Forum, (2016), Reforms to Accelerate the Development of India’s Smart Cities, Shaping the
            Future of Urban Development & Services.
            PricewaterhouseCoopers and Save the Children, (2015), Forgotten Voices: The world of urban children in
            India.

            High Powered Expert  Committee (HPEC) for Estimating the Investment Requirements for Urban
            Infrastructure Services, (2011), Report on Indian Urban Infrastructure and Services.

            http://icrier.org/pdf/FinalReport-hpec.pdf
            Ministry of Urban Development, Government of India, (2015), Smart Cities: Mission Statement & Guidelines.












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