HT Correspondent
DIMAPUR, June 26: Kohima has been ranked 10th out of the 100 smart cities and certified as ‘Enabled’ in the Data Maturity Assessment Framework 2.0.
This was announced by the ministry of housing and urban affairs during the sixth anniversary celebration of Smart City Mission, AMRUT and PMAY (Urban) in New Delhi on Friday.
Kohima is the only smart city in the Northeast region to make it to the top ten and shares the 10th position with two other cities.
The Smart Cities Mission launched the Data Smart Cities Strategy in February 2019 as a roadmap for harnessing the potential of data to address complex urban challenges across 100 cities. To successfully implement this initiative, the Data Maturity Assessment Framework was also launched to encourage cities to strengthen their data infrastructure and facilitate them in assessing their readiness and maturity on data.
The DMAF Cycle 2 was assessed based on the existence of robust policy mechanisms in the city around data governance, empowerment, protection, collaboration and innovation and presence of empowered city officials with the capacity to guide the development of city data policies, manage data governance, drive inter-departmental and inter-agency data exchange and to build city data alliances.
It was also based on effectiveness of the city’s processes around data collection, usage, management, security, privacy, empowerment, collaboration, and innovation, quality and robustness of the city’s information and communications technology infrastructure including digital platforms, sensors, IoT devices, data exchanges, big data and artificial intelligence and quality of outcomes around data driven governance, ease of living, ease of doing business, collaboration and innovation in the city.
Some of the initiatives undertaken by Kohima for this framework are preparation of draft city data policy, dedicated open city data portal, data analysis on critical datasets in sectors such as water, air, mobility and disaster. It also appointed data coordinators in state departments and a few civil society organisations.
One critical and notable aspect for Kohima regarding the process pillar is that most of the data are with the individual departments. The forthcoming and willingness of departments to share data with Kohima Smart City was appreciated. The continued proactive participation of various departments and citizens will be necessary to make Kohima a truly “Connected” (top certification level) data smart city, an official statement said.
Another assessment of cities regarding climate change preparedness was also released during the occasion. In this, Kohima was rated 2 stars out of maximum 5 stars in the Climate Smart Cities Assessment Framework 2.0