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Auckland, New Zealand Recognised for Smart City Innovations

Auckland Smart City Innovations

Auckland, New Zealand has secured national recognition at the 2019 Economic Development New Zealand (EDNZ) awards for creating innovations that help solve complex city-scale problems.

As reported, Mayor Phil Goff says Auckland Council and its economic development agency are leading the charge on how a city can be smarter about tackling urban challenges.

GridAKL Innovation Labs

  • It won the EDNZ Best Practice Award for Innovation. It is a joint initiative between GridAKL and Innovate Auckland, the respective innovation teams from Auckland Tourism, Events and Economic Development (ATEED) and Auckland Council.
  • It is an extraordinary example of an economic development agency fulfilling its role as an instigator of long-term systemic change where there is market failure, in this case in the innovation ecosystem.
  • The labs are made up of two physical spaces, Hatchbox and the Pop-Up Incubator. The adaptable and flexible spaces are designed to encourage creativity and collaboration.
  • The initiative has created significant results.
  • Auckland Council’s Innovate Auckland teams bring their expertise, skills and technological know-how to run cross-agency workshops.
  • The Innovate Auckland partnership is delivering impressive public benefits, in addition to the private benefit of the companies who are engaged in GridAKL programmes.
  • Together they provide neutral ground and collaborative opportunities for government, businesses, academia and communities.
  • They use this to develop ideas that address some of Auckland’s complex urban, economic, and sustainability challenges.
  • Some of the projects that the labs have tackled include the following:
  1. Auckland’s real-time swimming conditions and water quality SafeSwim website
  2. How to use city-wide data better in decision-making and safeguard Aucklanders’ data and privacy in the Smarter Cities project
  3. Technological and sustainability improvements to farming and food production practices
  4. Climate action planning
  • Some of these solutions, such as Go with Tourism and SafeSwim, are now being adopted beyond Auckland and New Zealand borders.

Auckland Go with Tourism

Go with Tourism earned a commendation in the Best Practice Award for Innovation. It is a game-changing job matching platform that is now being rolled out nationally.

It was developed in partnership with Tourism Industry Aotearoa (TIA) in response to a sector experiencing significant skills shortages.

There is an estimated 40,000 new tourism workers needed by 2025.

Go with Tourism was a key project to emerge from Auckland’s Destination AKL 2025 visitor economy strategy, which launched in 2018.

The initiative has since secured NZ$ 5.2 million from the Government’s new International Visitor Conservation and Tourism Levy (IVL) to expand the platform into a wider national programme of activity in order to build the nationwide tourism workforce.

It has created significant outcomes for both jobseekers and tourism employers.

The New Zealand visitor sector should be thankful for the leadership ATEED has demonstrated to address New Zealand’s growing skills shortages and the opportunities created for young people wanting to find a sustainable career pathway, and therefore improve the quality of their lives.

SafeSwim

OpenGov Asia recently reported on SafeSwim, which manages public health and safety by delivering real-time beach information and water quality forecasts to help beach-goers decide which locations to swim at based on current conditions.

The digital signs will clearly indicate the status of the beach for people without access to a phone or internet and help Aucklanders decide where to swim.

PARTNER

Qlik’s vision is a data-literate world, where everyone can use data and analytics to improve decision-making and solve their most challenging problems. A private company, Qlik offers real-time data integration and analytics solutions, powered by Qlik Cloud, to close the gaps between data, insights and action. By transforming data into Active Intelligence, businesses can drive better decisions, improve revenue and profitability, and optimize customer relationships. Qlik serves more than 38,000 active customers in over 100 countries.

PARTNER

CTC Global Singapore, a premier end-to-end IT solutions provider, is a fully owned subsidiary of ITOCHU Techno-Solutions Corporation (CTC) and ITOCHU Corporation.

Since 1972, CTC has established itself as one of the country’s top IT solutions providers. With 50 years of experience, headed by an experienced management team and staffed by over 200 qualified IT professionals, we support organizations with integrated IT solutions expertise in Autonomous IT, Cyber Security, Digital Transformation, Enterprise Cloud Infrastructure, Workplace Modernization and Professional Services.

Well-known for our strengths in system integration and consultation, CTC Global proves to be the preferred IT outsourcing destination for organizations all over Singapore today.

PARTNER

Planview has one mission: to build the future of connected work. Our solutions enable organizations to connect the business from ideas to impact, empowering companies to accelerate the achievement of what matters most. Planview’s full spectrum of Portfolio Management and Work Management solutions creates an organizational focus on the strategic outcomes that matter and empowers teams to deliver their best work, no matter how they work. The comprehensive Planview platform and enterprise success model enables customers to deliver innovative, competitive products, services, and customer experiences. Headquartered in Austin, Texas, with locations around the world, Planview has more than 1,300 employees supporting 4,500 customers and 2.6 million users worldwide. For more information, visit www.planview.com.

SUPPORTING ORGANISATION

SIRIM is a premier industrial research and technology organisation in Malaysia, wholly-owned by the Minister​ of Finance Incorporated. With over forty years of experience and expertise, SIRIM is mandated as the machinery for research and technology development, and the national champion of quality. SIRIM has always played a major role in the development of the country’s private sector. By tapping into our expertise and knowledge base, we focus on developing new technologies and improvements in the manufacturing, technology and services sectors. We nurture Small Medium Enterprises (SME) growth with solutions for technology penetration and upgrading, making it an ideal technology partner for SMEs.

PARTNER

HashiCorp provides infrastructure automation software for multi-cloud environments, enabling enterprises to unlock a common cloud operating model to provision, secure, connect, and run any application on any infrastructure. HashiCorp tools allow organizations to deliver applications faster by helping enterprises transition from manual processes and ITIL practices to self-service automation and DevOps practices. 

PARTNER

IBM is a leading global hybrid cloud and AI, and business services provider. We help clients in more than 175 countries capitalize on insights from their data, streamline business processes, reduce costs and gain the competitive edge in their industries. Nearly 3,000 government and corporate entities in critical infrastructure areas such as financial services, telecommunications and healthcare rely on IBM’s hybrid cloud platform and Red Hat OpenShift to affect their digital transformations quickly, efficiently and securely. IBM’s breakthrough innovations in AI, quantum computing, industry-specific cloud solutions and business services deliver open and flexible options to our clients. All of this is backed by IBM’s legendary commitment to trust, transparency, responsibility, inclusivity and service.

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