The IBM Centennial - IBM Denmark Milestones 1970-2011 (part 2)

(This picture was published in Gyldendal's Encyclopedia in 1971 under the heading: 'Modern Electronic Data Processing'. It was taken a few months after I started in IBM and was deeply engaged with the 360/40 simulating The Maersk Company's container traffic using GPSS. It was a proof-of-concept, that led the Maersk Company to invest heavily in management systems for containers, and was as such the first milestone that I remember.)

From 1970 to 2011: Until the first oil crisis business was booming – the big Data centers really took off, both in the financial sector and in the public sector, where the major part of the cities now joined forces in Kommunedata matching the equally powerful Datacentralen, owned by the State Government.

The first major project IBM had with the Aalborg Kommunedata Center was the so-called 'Project Database' where we spent a year to map all transactions, work flows, and archives in the city of Aalborg and jointly developed a complete catalog of municipal applications as an idea. This was in fact used for Kommunedata's first on-line success, the SIP-system with info on Tax, Income and Personal Data. It was a predecessor for what later became known as Enterprise Architecture and used as teaching material at university level.

After the success of the 'pay-as-you go'-tax and the Central Personal Registration System, the next major application area became the Social Security System (Sygesikring/Dagpenge), probably the most ambitious system of it's kind. Kommunedata worked hard to solve all the inconsistencies in the legislation and by something close to a miracle - and a very firm controlling hand - the system was launched in 1973. Behind the scene it was a mess

– integration consisting of tapes being carried from one sub-system to another, but it worked.

In IBM DK we formed a 'think tank' giving advice to new uses of Government DP and among other initiatives we launched the 'Government Game' – you could say an early version of 'SimCity' which really opened the eyes of many politicians and top managers during the many seminars we arranged. An other new thing was the creation (in APL!) of what we called 'SiSyFos-model' (In Danish this was short for Taxes, Income and Social Benefits seen from a Family perspective). This was the first time all these diverse legislative initiatives, all depending on actual income, family size etc. were brought together. With astonishing results showing the problem areas where marginal taxation exceeded 100%!. This was later taken over by Datacentralen and the Ministry of Finance as a general law-model and has been refined ever since.

At the same time my IBM colleagues in the Health Sector developed the first on line Medical Record System, 'The Red System' – because the proposal was wrapped in red paper. It was based on DB/2 (Well, IMS) and ran on 3270 screens (4 colours!). It was developed by 3 counties and in 76 it became part of Kommunedata's new County/Medical Center in Skejby, Aarhus.

Other milestones of IBM Denmark impact in the 70'ies were undoubtedly the massive investments made by the Danish Banking sector. It was the dawn of the banking terminal era based on the IBM 3600-terminals and major main frame solutions. And in the beginning of the 80'ies an extraordinary thing happened in Denmark as the banks agreed to implement a common debit card system, the DanCard, and created a joint center, the PBS, to handle this and soon all major credit cards business as well. This greatly influenced the way the Danish population became accustomed to 'EDP'.

As the 3rd generation computers - the IBM 360 announced in 1964 - were replaced by the 303X-series, the competitive marketplace changed once again for IBM, and in parallel with the 'high end' 303x customer segment new initiatives for the SMB-market were on their way, so the early 80'ies saw the beginning of the era of SMB and Business Partner way of marketing. Also the personal computer entered the market place and IBM's PC was born. In a garage in Boca Raton, Florida based on standard components and external SW - but the brand name immediately made it a success.

In Denmark we saw the opportunity to go for the educational market – Schools and Universities – and mainly because we focused much more on SW, applications, 'Teachware', plus solutions for handicapped children - and how this new technology could be used by teachers, IBM soon became the absolute leading brand in the Danish Schools – from general schools, to High Schools to Teacher's Seminars.

(The poster illustrated our new style of communication with the young generation - we couldn't use Chaplin, we dis-liked the Pink Panter so this was one our favourites)

In the late 80'ies as the industry turned to distributed data processing, competition turned to Unix and mini computers, and the early 90'ies witnessed the problems of IBM doing the traditional stuff. Lou Gerstner 'Taught the Elephant to dance', but in the process a number of IBM'ers were laid off, something never seen before. Because IBM Denmark always had a reputation for running a tight ship, the impact here was in fact minimal, although felt hard enough by those exposed to it. And the major reorganisation for the first time really put an emphasis on services – from consulting to hosting services to programming. And IBM Denmark struggled for this.

In the early 90'ies we looked for new business and one of the milestones during this period was the first projects for TeleMedicine. The first project was implemented with the Viborg County where pictures of tumors scanned by an electronic microscope and via 2 ISDN-lines were transmitted to a specialist hospital where the experts could judge on the nature of the sample shown in the picture. The next pioneering project was sending Magnetic Scanning pictures from Queen Ingrid's Hospital in Nuuk, Greenland, to the National University Hospital, where the pictures of unborn babies could be studied to decide whether the pregnant ladies should be transported to Denmark or give birth locally under advice from the specialists. Also video conferencing systems were pioneered, partly with Danske Bank.

So even at this harsh time there was a focus on new business opportunities. - And then we entered the Internet age – first called 'Multimedia'. Some of the early projects included a plan with Datacentralen to install 1000 information booths in Denmark with access to all public information, but it soon became clear that this idea was overtaken by the rapid development of 'the Net', and 'eBusiness' emerged.

So IBM Denmark played a leading role in this – We helped the City of Copenhagen launch their first major web-site with on line access to a huge database with practical information, we launched a joint county-company website in North Zealand with the first websites of prominent companies like DSV and Coloplast, and we participated in 1999 with the first secure payment systems using internet payment for eBusiness solutions in cooperation with PBS and the Egmont on line book shop.

The new IBM led to acquisition of a number of companies: From the Lotus SW company to Price Waterhouse's consulting group, to CMA hosting services to Maersk Data and through Maersk the Acure Health Services company originally part of LEC, the Danish Agricultural Data Center.

Among the major milestones for the first 10 years of the new millennium was undoubtedly the health portal, Sundhed.Dk, for the first time integrating a remarkable number of back-end systems from medical records to medicine prescriptions, communication systems across the health sector and between patients and doctors, doctors and specialist. This major websphere portal received several international prices and is still one of the top international solutions in the World.

Maybe less visible but equally important was the consulting effort towards the central Governments IT Task Force developing the Danish ICT Public strategy. IBM has contributed to this rather consistently since the very first reports in the 90'ies and until today using IBM methodology to map the relevant domains and activities across the public sector (FORM, STORM).

In the local Government area the most exciting development was happening in the municipalities, partly as a result of the major reorganisation that took place in 2007 but prepared during the period from 2003-2006. During these years IBM consulting developed and tested Enterprise Architecture solutions that helped different authorities to merge their operations. If one city should be mentioned, it must be the City of Odense, where joint efforts between the City IT staff, the business partner and IBM resulted in a quite spectacular solution covering both intranet, citizen services and linkage to a number of back end solutions.

The largest public sector solution in Denmark was undoubtedly the deMARS-project for the Defense. A huge multi-year SAP project designed and implemented by IBM. The system was delivered in 2005, and IBM is now also responsible for operations.

Of course a number of important sales and implementations took place in the industrial sector as well as in the major banks – Nordea, Danske Bank – rapidly becoming the largest IT installations in the Nordics. Maersk Company, Carlsberg, NovoNordisk and many more were equally in the forefront of ICT development, but if one real new activity should be mentioned, it must be the Edison project, were IBM teamed up with DONG energy, BetterPlace electrical Cars, the Technical University of Denmark to produce a pilot project in Bornholm, were windmills would create up to 80% of the anticipated power consumed, using the batteries of the electric cars as a storage and a buffer in periods with more wind than needed. This is part of the 'family' of projects that IBM launched under the heading 'A Smarter Planet'. Around the World these kind of projects will be fundamental for the success of the company during the next hundred years.

The nature of the ICT market has changed over the 100 years of IBM operations in Denmark – the competition has changed from decade to decade. And the company has changed. But what has remained intact is probably the fighting spirit and the teamwork among the members of the company – including the 'new comers', the 'light blue employees', those that did not choose IBM as their first choice but was bought into the family. The milestones I have highlighted of course reflect my personal experience but nevertheless I think covered the major successes and also some of the small, but innovative steps that moved IBM forward.

(See part 1 of the centennial blog)

IT History - Fractions from a Journey

On December 30. I had my last working day with IBM. After 39½ years I received a very nice offer, and yet it was a strange feeling trying to summarize all the changes I have lived through since I joined the IBM Denmark company in 1970. It wasn't really my intention to make a career out of it – I graduated as a Master Economist, but I got interested in Data Processing, and decided that the best place to learn more probably was in the department for Operating Systems in IBM. At that time the Disk Operating System (DOS) was being outdated by OS that came in two brands: OS/MFT (Multiprogramming with a fixed number of tasks) and OS/MVT for the REALLY big machines allowing a variable number of transactions concurrently.

The picture here is me in 1970 and the photo was illustrating 'Modern Data Processing' in the Danish encyclopedia. It was a 360/40 – huge machine, 256K memory.

Over the years a lot of rather dramatic changes occurred – both in the way the Company was organized, in technology and in the competitive landscape. I soon got captured by the Government Branch and spent most of my career working with Government in some way, interrupted by assignments in Stockholm organizing and running Sales School and internal Training in mid 70's and handling staff job in the early 1980's and again in the mid 90's.

My first job was with what became one the 4 DP Centers for the Kommunedata organisation, and the first center to work with typewriter terminals to run financial management systems. 5 years before the color screens and the Systems network Architecture was announced. I later become responsible for the entire local Government and Health Care market, which had a fantastic growth in the late 70'es

IBM changed dramatically in the early 80'es – we had been split up in 3 divisions, DP (the Large Customer segment), GB (mid size machine and small and medium customers) and the DCS - the Data center Operations. The split was made to prepare for a split up if a court ruling found IBM guilty in monopolistic behavior, but thanks to the growing competition from Amdahl for the high machines, Memorex and similar for peripheral and Digital for mini computers, IBM avoided to be cut up and instead pooled the resources. Then in 1981 the IBM PC suddenly emerged as a new star – based on standard components bought on the open market it seemed to be the brand name that sold the product. I was asked to organize a group of system engineers and salesmen to conquer the Danish Education and Scientific market for the PC's, and I had the pleasure of interviewing some 300 teachers before hiring 6 of them – with sweaters and hairy faces and everything. Plus a nice lady, a French teacher from a high school. In fact we succeeded in just 4 years, the mantra was that it was not the question of the Hardware but how the software could help the teachers. It worked – and I still recall the first IBM PC we sold with 2 diskette stations, 256K for 7.000 US Dollars (35.000 Danish Kroner). At the end of the 80'es and early 90'es I was responsible for Market Development for the Public Sector (including Post, Defense, Central Government, Tele). At that time it was dawning on IBM's management that the business model had to change and that we had to charge for our skilled Systems Engineers and Networking CE's. The Business Consulting area began to be the hot topic, but my position - together with some of the former Government Branch Managers - was that it was important to marry the consulting skills with deep industrial knowledge. We lost the argument, and the General Business Consultant emerged, later to be split into practices and boosted by the subsequent purchase of Price Waterhouse. (See: Seven Keys to Success )

In the 90'es a new thing emerged – the Internet. Although I already got acquainted with it during my job with the University Sector, it wasn't until around 1994 that it became clear that a new market was emerging; I started a fantastic group of quite young people, creative designer-types and long haired programming freaks plus a couple of deeply engaged old time Systems Engineers. Within just a few years we managed to create first-of-a-kind of websites for Copenhagen City, a number of Danish Companies, plus launched the first secure payment systems on the Internet. And then suddenly – it all became 'pervasive' – which in practice meant that the profit margin for doing websites and similar solutions were coming down, and that the new business model would call for a value chain of Business Partners and IBM withdrawing to delivering the SW platforms and intermediate layers.

So the turn-around of the Company mid to late 90's architected by Lou Gerstner, once again laid to a dramatic change in organization, and started the period of active acquisitions, that Sam Palmisano carried on. As of today, the organization is split in divisions reporting to global or regional managers, and the coordination that is necessary in every major customer engagement handled by a an all-encompassing CRP and accounting system and strict procedures for bidding.

Since the end of the 90'es I have worked internationally as an eGovernment Advisor in a job working with the public sector and the Software group – plus of course a number of dedicated business partners and our GBS people that on and off have supported Public Sector.

This has been an enormousinspiration, has brought me to the Middle East working with the forward thinking Governments in Dubai and Quatar, I have witnessed and supported the Baltic Countries in their quest to outgrow the older parts of Europe, with Iceland, with the Nordic Countries and during the last few years with Greenland and the new Greenland parliament, which I hope to continue as a ppensioner.The dramatic changes in the IT world since 2001 and the rise of the Open Source Community is a trend, that I expect we have only seen the tip off. When Cloud Computing really takes off, the business model for selling Software Licenses will change once again and the new competitive landscape will be different from anything we have seen so far. Google probably aiming to become the next top competitor and Microsoft standing to loose.

And this may be some of the reasons IBM has survived all the turmoil – at least during my 39½ years: We have always been careful to select the battlefield. The competitors we had in the late 70'es were all gone 10 years after; the competitors we had in the 80'es have almost all disappeared, with HP as an exception. And with IBM now launching the Smart Planet approach and going for Software as a service and supporting Open Source, the competitors in 10 years again will be a different crowd. An old IBM'er told me 25 years ago that IBM meant: I'll Be Moved – because the mantra of the company is change.

So I will. And I have promised to start to document IBM Denmark's History. It started January 1. 1950 as a local Danish Operation. It shouldn't be too difficult – after all I have lived through 2/3 of the history myself!

Hospitals of the Futurè

An important part of the Danish Prime Ministers future plans deal with the construction of a number of bright, new so-called Super Hospitals. When he addressed the Danish Parliament on his opening speech first Tuesday in October, the amount of 40-50 Billion Dkr (9 – 10 B US $) was mentioned.

In Denmark the Regions are responsible for hospitals, but they have no tax income of their own, so they are completely depending on the Government allocation of funds. So the 5 regions are looking to negotiations with the Government, and as it looks they are treated rather differently; the regions that have been most eager to close down small and inefficient hospitals stand to gain the most.

In any case the question any Dane should put to his regional politicians, now up for re-election in November, is how they see the future of the hospitals. If this is not discussed, I fear the entire discussion will be around the brick-and-mortar investment, and not about the rethinking of the entire health structure as I feel is highly needed – not least in light of the demographic changes we can foresee, including the lack of doctors, nurses, more elderly, more chronic diseases etc.

So where can we find the inspiration needed before these new super tankers are cast in iron?
Normally you would look to US: http://health.usnews.com/articles/health/best-hospitals/2009/07/15/the-high-tech-hospital-of-the-future.html
But US has its own problems and has a highly different tradition than Northern European health systems, where this is an integral part of our welfare system, hence mainly paid for by the tax budgets. (Try to see the notices from the US Commission on the Future of Health Care from 2008:
http://www.fiercehealthcare.com/story/adaptibility-important-future-hospitals/2008-11-21?utm_medium=rss&utm_source=rss&cmp-id=OTC-RSS-FH0 )

There are sources and best-of-breed examples out there that can easily by reached; the web page for DesignIT has a very interesting article of hospitals of the future.
One of the cases that DesignIT describes is the Il Camino Hospital (Silicon Valley, Ca):

”Il Camino Hospital is a completely wireless hospital that is well on its way to becoming paper and film free. The hospital estimates that the new system has saved them 120,000 dollars a year in medical costs and 300,000 dollars a year in avoidable errors.
The hospital’s wireless technology includes:
· Voice-activated communicators: Nurses and doctors use a small voice-controlled, hands-free device that they wear around the neck to communicate with each other. The device is made by Silicon Valley start-up Vocera Communications Inc.
· Biometric supply cabinets: A device that enables authorised personnel to open doors or cupboards for medicine and other medical items by reading a thumbprint.
· Automated laboratory system: Laboratory tests go through various ‘stations’ that together make up an automated production line. Staff calls it ‘race track’. Automisation is made by · Beckman Coulter Inc.
· Tablet PCs and handhelds: Doctors test small, tablet computers and handhelds devices. In time, these will replace the clipboard. These devices are manufactured by Hewlett-Packard Corp.
But this system would appear to be particularly exposed to terror attack or technical failure – unfortunately key considerations in the future. How will medical staff cope if the system goes down? Will they be able to treat patients? While innovative, this hospital must also be fool proof. Otherwise technology will control people rather than vice versa.”

But we don't need to go to US to find fine examples of forward oriented hospitals: In Glasgow, for instance the Homeopathic Hospital has an interesting, holistic approach that could very well be part of the design principles for Hospitals for next several decades.

In Taiwan, the Chiang Gung memorial hospital with 8.800 beds has a very advanced deployment of RFID for controlling logistics, likewise an important part of the future High Tech Hospital, where the focus is on accountability, quality, saving human resources for the health and care oriented tasks.
Asia seems to be really pushing the uptake of new technology when they plan for future hospitals;
See for instance these award winners Asian hospitals: http://www.hospitalmanagementasia.com/awards/winners.htm . Not so surprisingly, there is a number of Singapore, Taiwan, Philippine references, but China and India is beginning to appear on this list as well.
Construction of hospitals is indeed a hot topic in these mega-countries.

In Sweden, Karolinska Sjukhuset, already a leading Nordic hospital in many specialties, is constructing a new site where the use of microelectronics and Gene technology is being deployed at a World record level. See for instance this description on their use of ICT.
Hospital trends in Europe can be found here: http://www.reportlinker.com/p07613/Hospital-Trends-Europe-2004-2009.html .
Since 2006 IBM has been running a Health Competency/Innovation center for the Latin speaking countries out of Barcelona. The center benefits from cooperation with the Hospital of Barcelona, one of Spain's most modern hospitals.

Each of the hospitals awarded in US, in Asia, being recognized as World leaders, contribute to the picture of the Hospitals of the Future, yet no hospital alone seems to have it all.
Given the pressure from the Climate debate and the mentioned adverse demographics plus not least the current financial crisis, new aspects has to come into the design principles.
And of course IT is going to play a major role. (See this New Scientist Article)

But in line with IBM's recent announcement of the Smart Planet initiative, I recommend that we look at the entire value chain of 'Health' – and not only look at the Hospital and the IT infrastructure: It has to be regarded as it is: A system of systems.
A Hospital is but one (important) station en route from disease to cure, but it doesn’t solve the long range development in human habits: from eating and drinking to travelling and social interaction.

The brick-and-mortar thinking should be replaced by thinking intelligent buildings:
imbedded control of material, light, control of electricity, water, sewage..

Around the hospitals we have a huge logistic task: transporting patients in and out, particularly in light of many more ambulant treatments, but also emergency systems, evacuation plans, logistics for delivery of goods, linen, visitors etc.

And we have the internal communication and collaboration between all the different stakeholders, doctors and nurses,, including admin, records management, knowledge management – and, not to forget: Electronic Patient Records that can be exchanged, distributed and disseminated with full compliance for data protection.

Another subsystem is the flow in and out of highly advanced diagnostic systems, surgery, remote collaboration, robotics. The advanced RFID plus asset management can take care of hospital beds, instruments, (patients), all sorts of critical material.

The final major sub-system is of course the entire process of a patient's engagement, not least how the out-patient services are provided, how collaboration can be obtained between hospitak satff and primary care, between patient and local government social services, including telemedicine and a holistic treatment of cronic patients in their own home, something we have been engaged in in far too many 'pilot projects' – now it is the time to deliver.

Or as Obama has put it: It's time to Change. This is understandable if you look at the status reports from 2008. So we Northern European spoiled citizens must cross our fingers that his medical plan for US comes true, because that would create yet a stronger, global drive to real forward thinking hospitals in the future.

Green Cities - Blue Skies Ahead?

This year we are witnessing an increasing level of activity in all institutions and organisations that in some way expect to benefit or to be involved in the upcoming climate summit in Copenhagen in December: COP 15 – Copenhagen December 2009

The objectives for the meeting are very high and the effort put into the preparations have been substantial:

• To get all the world's countries to agree on a global target for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.
• To get the world's industrialized countries to take the lead and reduce their CO2 emissions significantly, while the world's newly industrialized countries and developing countries contribute to a collective solution
• To agree on a global climate regime which does not restrain economic growth and that does not distort competition on the world market.
  
  

The Climate conference is supported by the UN International Panel on Climate Control.

The panel does not in itself represent the latest research, and some critics of their predictions claim that they base the recommendations on scientific work that is by now 2 years old. Others, including the notorious climate commentator Bjorn Lomborg, claims that all the effort and money going into carbon dioxide reduction are more or less wasted. But these days the critics seem to become fewer an fewer as the Copenhagen Fever intensifies;

This month the Copenhagen Climate Council will meet and discuss industries’ role in supporting the sustainability agenda.

And also the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and its subcommittees are, what the call ‘in full negotiating mode’:

“The Ad Hoc Working Group on Further Commitments for Annex I Parties under the Kyoto Protocol (AWG-KP) and the Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-term Cooperative Action under the Convention (AWG-LCA) will operate in full negotiating mode in 2009 to advance work towards meeting their respective mandates. Important ongoing work under the Convention will also be taken forward in 2009 by SBI and SBSTA.”

But Carbon-Dioxyde submission, pollution and energy waste is first and foremost something that takes place in cities all over the World; so no wonder that this has become a burning platform and has created a lot of both political interest but also a number of real and promising initiatives forward. One of the first of this kind of initiatives in Europe is the so-called Covenant of the Mayors.

This project is strongly supporting the EU plan ’20-20-20’ – EU’s initiative to reduce CO2 emissions by 20% in 2020 as a result of a 20% increase in energy efficiency and a 20% share of renewable energy sources in 2020.

(The big question is if this is enough to reverse the trend towards global warming!)

The Council of European Municipalities and Regions (CEMR), in Malmö, 22-24 April 2009, and discussed the covenant, adding to examples and recommendations and the number of cities and regions that have signed the Covenant is still adding.

Among other pan-European initiatives the Green shift Europe founded in 2008 pointed at a number of possibilities for city administrations, companies and citizens to contribute to achieving the EU targets – and maybe even to go beyond them:

Examples from the Green Shift proposals:

• Energy generation and distribution uses one third of all primary energy. Electricity generation could be made more efficient by 40% and its transport and distribution by 10%. ICT could make not only the management of power grids more efficient but also facilitate the integration of renewable energy sources. Denmark generates half its electricity through decentralised grids, with wind power accounting for 20% of all electricity. As a result, its C0₂ emissions fell from 937 to 517 g/kWh from 1990-2005.
• The heating, cooling and lighting of buildings account for more than 40% of European energy consumption. ICT can continuously monitor data to optimise lighting, ventilation and equipment performance and provide consumers real-time updates on their energy consumption to stimulate behavioural changes. In Finland, this smart metering encouraged consumers to increase energy efficiency by 7%.
• 20% of world electricity is used for lighting. Changing to energy efficient light bulbs could halve today's energy consumption for lighting by 2025. Intelligent light bulbs, which automatically adjust to natural light and people's presence will have an even greater effect.
  
  

The European organisation for cities, Eurocities: Focus on the importance of smarter cities to demonstrate the role that ICT can play in improving the energy efficiency of cities, the consequent reduction in emissions and working towards achieving a more sustainable low-carbon economy and society. Also to coordinate work on the development of a “Green Digital Charter” which would propose an action orientated and measurable framework and to support cities in using ICT to facilitate emissions reductions through improved energy efficiency and innovation.

In working towards a ‘Green Digital Charter’ for cities the main points are:

1. Getting local partnerships of key leaders and stakeholders together in each city to promote the new green agenda
2. Establishing a series of digital applications for improving the measurement, transparency and visibility of energy use and then involving local citizens, service providers and organisations to test-bed projects to deploy these
3. Ensuring the city’s own ICT infrastructure and digital services have the minimal possible carbon footprint.
4. Facilitating innovation to develop new digital infrastructures to enable low carbon activities and to achieve systemic carbon effectiveness
5. Encouraging and promoting low carbon activities through innovative research and development activities and deployment projects

IBM, one of the private companies supporting the Eurocities organisation, is supporting the climate agenda on a global basis, most markedly in the Smarter Planet approach.. Smarter cities are one of the key areas under this heading. IBM’s work in this area can be described in the following 4 different visions:

1. The connected city – making full use of telecommunications and mobile services to facilitate as well personal social networks as well as collaborative working reducing travel and increasing innovative capabilities
2. The sustainable city – instrumentation to monitor and control all sorts of submissions, energy consumption, waste and recycling. This is based on intelligent systems that will help monitor and also to utilise incentive based market systems or personal-incented methods to support saving and managing constrained resources.
3. The integrated City – Most cities are still today operated in silo’s and departments, and parts of the traditional city operations may have been outsourced. The integrated city approach offers capabilities again to have an enterprise view of what is happening encouraging optimization of city services and assist in incident management as well as crime prevention.
4. The entrepreneurial city – deploying ICT solutions that will enable cities’ eco-system integration also taking commuting and collaboration between citizens, work places and consumers’ sites into consideration.

Example: The EDISON Project in Denmark was announced in February 2009. The objective of this project is to make a proof-of-concept that wind-based energy systems are able to offer a major part of the needed energy resources by allowing surplus energy to be stored in batteries of electric cars in peak periods, by operating windmills much closer to predicted storms and to have an intelligent electricity network connected to neighbouring countries to level off production and consumption.

Another example is the Stockholm congestion/Intelligent traffic regulation system; Not only did the variable pricing scheme – combined with an increased frequency of busses and tramway – lead to a reduction of inner city traffic by more than 20%, the level of pollution also dropped sharply. This model, supported by IBM solutions, is now being replicated in a number of cities around the World – from London, to Dublin, to Brisbane.

For the upcoming Eurocities summer event taking place in Reykjavik, Iceland from June 10 to 12, focus will move from the overall political declarations to practical and solid best practices that can be copied between the member cities. The preliminary program can be found here:

http://www.reykjavik.is/desktopdefault.aspx/tabid-3567/5628_view-835/

Intelligent Energy Systems

On February 24.th it was announced that IBM would join the so-called Edison-consortium.
The EDISON consortium (Electric Vehicles in a Distributed and Integrated Market using Sustainable Energy and Open Networks) consists of IBM Denmark, IBM Zurich Research Lab, Denmark's largest (National-wide) energy company DONG Energy, the regional energy company of Oestkraft, Technical University of Denmark, Siemens, Eurisco (Plant Genetic Resources) and the Danish Energy Association. Due to the environmental benefits of the electric vehicle technologies, the research will be partly funded by the Danish government.
At the Technical University north of Copenhagen a large scale computing system will be established based on websphere, SOA-technology and IBM Blades. The idea is to use this to build advanced simulation and calculation models to determine the optimum time to charge electric car batteries given the surplus from electrical windmill generators. Denmark is one of the foremost countries in the World when it comes to deployment, production and development of windmills. (See Vestas homepage)

This is perfectly in line with the Danish Government’s drive towards a consensus at the upcoming climate summit in Copenhagen later this year, and it also matches perfectly with IBM’s declared strategy to support green technologies on a World Wide basis. The Green Agenda at IBM was in fact one of the most solid outcomes of a World-Wide so-called Jam, that IBm conducted with it’s 350.000 employees and more than 400 private and public business partners and customers in October 2008. The results are now being launched as recommendations, programs and new investment areas under the Smarter Planet initiative – including the Green agenda. Read about IBM Smart Planet drive

Sam Palmisano already met with Obama and his staff (click link to see video) during the transition period to advice on how technology could help save energy and how this could be matched with Obama’s vision of a turn around scheme for the US economy creating new jobs.

IBM currently is running more than 20 energy-related major innovative projects around the World, and the first one that was announced was the Island-state of Malta, home of the Templar Knights.
Here IBM won a contract to supply the small country’s energy system with more than 250.000 intelligent meters with the intention to optimize usage of electricity, balance pricing with consumption and help consumers to time heavy use of energy.

Many more projects are bound to come up – also aiming at the consumption of energy within the IT business in itself. With a projection of energy consumption going up 10-30% pr. Year, even the current IT consumption at 2% of all the World’s energy resources will soon be very visible.
The Green Datacenter is bound to be a focus item for any large organisation.

Eurocities Annual General Meeting - Den Hague

Last week I had the pleasure to participate in Eurocities annual general meeting, this year in den Hague. Eurocities is an EU-partnership between 130+ major cities in Europe, and I have for some years had the honour to represent IBM as a coordinator, as IBM is one of 6 sponsors for a sub-orgasation, formerly Telecities now Knowledge Society Forum. Eurocities as an organization has the objective to support cities’ role in EU as one of the most important focus areas for developing high standards of living, dwelling, working.

To this end the Eurocities a year ago adopted the ‘Leipzig Charter’. This charter states that cities should be seen as cornerstones for development of well-being and a sustainable Europe. It calls for integrated approaches to development (breaking down silos between different parts of the public sector and between the public and private organizations and enterprises). It also calls for new governance principles, democratic participation in policy making and supporting citizen entrepreneurship.

To support these objectives the Eurocities conference started by an award ceremony where 3 cities where awarded for their innovative ways to solve some of these challenges:

The Finnish city Espoo won the award for their practice to bring senior citizens in contact with the cities many cultural organizations: music schools performing for elderly, sports facilities with instructors for elderly etc. a very inclusive and heart warming initiative.

The Belgian city of Gent was awarded for a very comprehensive and all-inclusive solution called ‘Gentinfo’ covering all aspects of services and information for citizens from booking books in the library, reserving day care for children, parking spaces, handling complaints and proposals etc.

Newcastle, UK won the third award for a project called ‘Udecide’ – an interesting project to involve citizens in prioritizing the budget and selecting, actually voting, between alternative ways to spend the cities money. There is a detailed study of this project available her: (Case study Udecide)

The ceremony took place in the Haag City Hall, a completely white and beautiful building created in 1995 by the US architect Richard Meier.

The official opening of the AGM took place on Thursday in the old and beautiful Steigenberger Kurhaus in Scheveningen. Mr. Jozias van Aartsen, the mayor of Hague and the next president for Eurocities welcomed the several hundred delegates, followed by Mr. Gerard Collomb, mayor of Lyon, current president and a person that has succeeded in placing the Eurocities agenda very high on the priority list in the EU Parliament and Commission. Also the Dutch Prime Minister, Jan Peter Balkenende, addressed the audience and surprised by describing his first political experiences from a small town close to Amsterdam. Finally, the newly appointed Secretary General, Paul Bevan introduced himself to the audience. He has an exciting career both in EU organizations and in setting up a successful planning cooperation organization in South East England, which he ran for 8 years.

Among other interesting speakers, The EU Commissioner for Competition, Ms. Neelie Kroes, made an interesting speech in the midst of the Financial Crisis, which of course has put a lot of pressure on her and her staff. She stressed that the wise fathers of EU and Jean Monnet in particular already from the outset put into the declaration that State Aid of private companies were forbidden, and could only be tolerated temporarily in case of an identified fault in the market. This has also been a guiding principle in the current support for the European Banks, and it is mandatory, that the EU aid and support MUST be followed by a restructuring. At the end of her speech, the representative from Newcastle rose and praised her flexibility and personal assistance to save the Northern Rock Bank, which would otherwise have put thousand of citizens in Newcastle on the street.

As the conference unfold, the 4 key areas were handled separately in a very intelligent way, as each of the working areas: Living in cities, Well-being, Environment and Health, and Working in cities were treated in break-out sessions, where each group was taken to a part of Den Hague that illustrated the problems in question, showed how this was being addressed by Den Hague, and then finishing off in meeting halls around the city.

The ‘Living’ working group was sent on a sightseeing to see the program ‘New Approach to priority Neighborhood the Hague Zuidwest’, and together with the speakers from Belfast and Rotterdam they discussed the problems of creating balanced residential areas.

The workshop on ‘Well Being’ discussed how diverse ethnical and cultural background could be seen as cohesive rather than a diverting factor in creating global cities with multi ethnical inhabitants. Den Hague has a large number of immigrants representing more than 52 countries, and together with Bristol UK and Barcelona Spain, this topic was discussed intensely.

The ‘Environment and Health’ workgroup, where I participated, drove through an area that was at a point becoming a ghetto – the Transvaal district – but where a lot of initiatives to tear down debris and build new sustainable houses with far less heat consumption and with a nice and attractive design had helped to bring up the standard. The meeting ended in a former church founded by the late queen Juliane. As the inhabitants were now mostly muslims or hindus, this was now a city service center, and the chapels have been transformed into special offices and information desks for citizens. Also the president for Knowledge Society Forum, Dr. Giuseppe Paolo presented – a case of how to avoid problems when allocation mobile sending stations, and the city of Sheffield’s representative presented a very interesting case showing the key influential factors in people’s health, unemployment being one of the major sources of diseases and health care related costs.

The strategic plan for Sheffield seems interesting for many other cities.

The working group on ‘Work’ also passed Transvaal, and the topics of the discussion were how to leverage public-private partnership to create enough jobs also for the unskilled workers and immigrants. This also included having a number of jobs to secure clean and nice local and dwelling areas, even if the jobs were subsidized, this could be shown to pay off in less crime, better quality of living. From Budapest a description on how an Office for Equal Opportunities were created , and how the cooperation between local officials, high quality social services, NGO’s and private participant could help the underprivileged to get jobs, education and housing.

From Poznan a presentation of the Barka-Kofoed Social Integration Centre (Based partly on funding from the Danish Velux Foundation) showed how this benefited unemployed and socially excluded people in the city.

Finally a Working Group on Innovations in Local Government stayed at the centre and discussed the 3 key topics of developing local community participation, how to develop integrated approaches (breaking down silos between departments and institutions) and how to develop multilevel governance. Among the speakers was the representative from Berlin that described the Quartiersmanagement project. Also Istanbul presented My Project Istanbul, a runner-up for the award on cooperation initiatives.

The last day of the conference was among topics devoted to work on an updated version of the Leipzig Declaration, and the next – Den Hague Declaration – will be published shortly, so I will come back to this in a later blog.

The Conference finished by the mayor of Den Hague, now the President of Eurocities, who thanked the participants and the chairs for the various committees/For a that had developed a status of the results from the last year.

I will look forward to the next meetings in Telecities/Knowledge Society Forum, where the more politically oriented topics will be left out and the focus will be on the practical adaptation of IT technology in the key areas of urban life. This is very much in line with IBM’s initiative called ‘A Smarter Planet’, where cities are in focus for a lot of the development during the next decade.

This is a practical way of transforming the IBM vision from ‘Government 2020’.