Page 146 - Reference framework for integrated management of an SSC - A U4SSC deliverable on city platforms

7 Business and application components

Cities that are taking a “whole-of-government” approach to invest in digital infrastructure
are best able to achieve economies of scale for building shared infrastructure that is
available to the whole of the city and avoids duplication of investments.

This strategy, discussed in previous chapters, is also valid for the development of innovative
and cost-efficient services and solutions to citizens, businesses, and the public sector. The
proliferation of isolated solutions (silos) and the complex coordination between municipal
departments cause inefficiencies, high costs, non-scalable solutions and difficulties in the
re-use of code.

This chapter tries to answer the following questions:

• What are the principles of digital development?

• What are Building Blocks, and how can their technology help the agility and start-up
of the components?
• What technologies offer a guide or model to build an integrated city or government
platform, taking advantage of implementing the Digital Public Goods (DPGs) model?

• Why and How GovStack framework is relevant to Smart Sustainable City Reference
Framework?

GovStack provides core digital components, i.e., Building Blocks, re-usable for cross-sector
digital services. For example, let us consider the “Identity & verification” Building Block. The
Identity & Verification Building Block creates, manages and uses a digital (foundational)
identity. The Identity & Verification Building Block comprises a set of interoperable sub-
components/modules dedicated to managing the legal/foundational national identity and
its representation, offering different services for ensuring a trusted foundational identity
and identification to the other GovStack Building Blocks.

As a use case, the reference to India's government enterprise architecture (IndEA) and
National Urban Innovation Stack (NUIS) is shown.

7.1 Introduction

The IT ecosystem described in the previous chapter offers a pragmatic response to municipal
operational needs. However, the development of new digital services for citizens represents a
high cost, together with a definition of requirements that do not always cover all the objectives
pursued, are complex to integrate into the municipal systems themselves, and do not adequately
support possible future growth.

132 Reference framework for integrated management of an SSC | June 2023