Using Free Software to Democratise Smart Cities
Free Software has become a core element of Barcelona’s smart city and digitalisation agenda. In this interview, Francesca Bria, Chief Technology and Digital Innovation Officer (CTIO) for the Barcelona City Council, explains how Free Software is supporting innovation.
In your work, you often refer to digital sovereignty and ethical digital standards. Could you briefly explain what digital sovereignty is, and what role Free Software has in relation to it?
I have been appointed as CTIO of Barcelona to rethink the digital and technology agenda of the city, in particular the smart city agenda. My mission is to democratise data and technology, and to rethink their governance in a way that serves the people.
Does it make a difference if a platform like Decidim is Free Software or not?[1]
Free Software makes all the difference. First of all, government is investing public money and that’s why citizens should control the software and the platform should remain in the public domain. As one of the city’s biggest Free Software projects, we are learning a lot from Decidim Barcelona. We even had to change procurement standards to make sure that government legislation allows a platform that is managed and governed by a community.
“… there is a lot of collaboration going on, without Free Software this would not be possible.”
For us, privacy awareness, data sovereignty, distributed technology, and Free Software are key components of a city’s digital infrastructure. Due to another Free Software project, called Decode, we are adding a module to Decidim, which gives citizens control over their data. We ensure that the data is secure and anonymous, and that people can decide what data they want to keep private, and what data they want to donate to the city and on what terms.
What is the key advantage of Free Software in this respect?
The greatest possibility lies in the ability to see and inspect the code, learn from it, and reuse it. This is very important, because you can minimise the costs and concentrate on investing in human resources and capabilities instead of licensing.
Another key reason is technological sovereignty, which means getting away from vendor lock-in and dependency on big corporate players, being able to change providers, work with local entrepreneurs who respect users’ rights and freedoms, and retain control of our data. With proprietary software, everything was out sourced to external providers and experts, who work with specific technologies. We don’t want to keep losing this kind of inside knowledge.
Free Software allows us to work with communities, use the talent of Free Software developers and collaborate with other cities on joint projects. In the long run, you can be more autonomous, you can be more independent, and you can be more transparent. Moreover,
- ↑ Decidim is a participatory democracy framework software that allows citizens to debate, attend meetings and create proposals with the goal of improving life in the city. The platform’s source code is publicly available, enabling other cities to use and adapt it to their own requirements. It is based on a similar Free Software project by the Madrid City Council, called Consul.
