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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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