As the Ministry of Home Affairs currently prepares regulations to provide a legal basis for smart city development, what technical, financial, and institutional building blocks need to be in place to ensure Indonesian cities will indeed apply smart city approaches to make them more livable?

The technology to support smart city transformation is already available and used by many cities. However, the key stumbling blocks to achieving smartness are often financial (how to finance the massive investments required?), and more importantly, institutional (how to adjust the city organization in such a way to truly use data for improved decision-making and service delivery?).

Based on experiences from cities in Indonesia and the ASEAN, this webinar discussed smart ways to develop capacities among government officials to make their cities smarter. The webinar highlighted the importance of upgrading government officials’ understanding of what a smart city is and how to achieve this. The webinar also informs Task Force 2 of Think 20 on policies for the development of smart cities.