Making smart cities kinder with social services solutions

As the concurrent forces of rapid technology expansion and the spread of COVID-19 coincide, cities, governments and urban managers are looking for ways to harness technology not only to make cities smarter and safer, but also kinder and more socially responsible.

With the increasing number of unemployed, underemployed and homeless people, cities must rally to respond and provide services to this rising tide. The question is, how can cities become smarter, kinder and simultaneously more efficient and more cost-effective in these challenging times?

That’s where My Incident Desk by Solution House Software comes in. My Incident Desk, arguably the largest South African supplier of urban management and public safety software, has expanded its solution to include a social services module and smartphone app.

What are the current challenges?

“We have been involved with urban management and smart cities for a number of years and witnessed the growing need for a social services component,” says Tiaan Janse van Rensburg, Managing Director of Solution House Software. “In many instances, security or maintenance are seen as separate vertical functions while they are actually in constant interaction with each other. We also noticed a gradual and then massive increase in demand for social services, which adds a further dimension to security and maintenance.” Janse van Rensburg explains that the old way of dealing with social issues such as vagrancy, loitering and homelessness was to apply the blunt hammer of by-laws and security to the problem and force the “problem” over the boundary into another area. But locally and internationally, the legal and social frameworks have changed dramatically, and by-laws which could be applied to social issues have changed and became more humane and human rights focused.

Usually an urban area or improvement district lack data on what is actually happening in their area. How many homeless people are in the area, how many are residents, how many received some kind of service or support, and are these services being duplicated by neighbouring areas and service providers? The lack of readily available data not only hampers the progression of an urban area to a smart city, but also their discussions with local government for additional assistance and support. “A smart city is just a process of transforming noise into data, data into information and information into efficient actions in real-time” explains Janse van Rensburg.

How does the solution work?

Janse van Rensburg explains that the first challenge to solve was the registration of individuals who required services such as assistance with repatriation, clothing, work or identity documents. “We developed a mobile solution which addresses the issue in a Protection of Personal Information (POPI) compliant manner.”

The second and related challenge was how to uniquely identify the person. Many people do not have SA identity documents or do not want to share their ID numbers. One of the methods employed is a POPI compliant facial recognition process. The person is registered using their facial attributes and their personal file and all services provided to them can be retrieved on mobile devices in real-time.

“The third challenge was the sharing of information between areas, different management entities and service providers.” Janse van Rensburg elaborates that Incident Desk is designed and built as a massive multi-tenant, multi-service management framework and is uniquely suited to smart city information management and sharing. The field worker that registers the individuals and performs the POPI compliance has an approved list of service providers with whom they can share the individual’s data. The fieldworker can then choose a subset of these service providers depending on the individual and their personal situation. This allows for both overall and individual control of data sharing.

How does it assist smart cities?

“Cities must work smarter and the social service component can no longer be wished away or pushed over boundaries, but must be addressed,” says Janse van Rensburg. Incident Desk assists smart cities, urban areas and improvement districts in becoming more efficient by centralising information in real-time, improving visibility of what is occurring and assists with the measurability of employees and services providers. Social service has a direct and real impact on other services, such as security and maintenance, and must be accommodated in the same solution. And that is where Incident Desk excels.

For more information, pricing or to view a smartphone app screen recording, please visit https://www.myincidentdesk.com/ or e-mail info@myincidentdesk.com.