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Discover
Discovery will help you define your place. It helps set the outcomes you want to achieve for the people who will live, work, play and invest there.
Goals of this stage
Use technology and data solutions with purpose. They should respond to problems and opportunities you identify during the discovery stage.
This will help you achieve great outcomes for your community and the place.
During this stage, you will need to:
- identify the boundaries of your precinct or place
- understand the cultural significance and history of the place
- understand the strategic context of the place
- understand the communities' experiences and desires for the place
- agree on the ambitions and future needs of the place
- identify barriers to achieving these ambitions
- understand your authorising environment.
Defining your place
Start by defining your place. Is it a park, town square, high street, economic zone, industrial area, a new community or suburb? Remember, smart solutions can support outcomes of places that are different sizes.
Respecting local character
Local character is a combination of:
- land
- people
- built environment
- history
- culture and tradition, both Indigenous and non-Indigenous.
Smart places should protect and enhance people's experience of a place. It should also improve how it functions.
The use of technology and infrastructure in places should:
- integrate with and complement the surrounding environment
- protect visual amenity
- incorporate elements of a place's local character and function.
Place strategies and plans can help to understand local character. You should also look at how people interact with the place to create the area's distinctive character.
Engage widely to understand people's sense of place. Balance place-based aspects (such as recreation, business and social connection) with the movement of people and freight.
We recommend starting with Country when thinking about your places. We encourage making First Nations history and culture a more visible part of NSW's built and natural environment.
Through this, we can improve visitor understanding. First Nations communities should determine what is appropriate to be shared publicly.
Involving the community
You will need to identify and involve the people who live, work and visit your place, or might in the future.
Set out a plan for engaging your community to understand their experiences and desires for the place.
Involving your community early will help you achieve the first principle of the Smart Places Customer Charter: Co-creating smart places.
Understanding the strategic context of your place
Every place is different. When you are choosing technology and data solutions you need to understand the plans and strategies related to your place.
As a minimum, this will include:
- your area's regional plan. These plans are set by the state government. They set a 20-year framework, vision and direction for strategic planning and land use. This is to ensure regions have the facilities they need to continue to be vibrant places for people to live, work and visit.
- your council's Local Strategic Planning Statement. These set out the strategic planning ambitions for a local government area as a whole and for specific areas.
- your council's 10-year Community Strategic Plan and more detailed Delivery Program and Operational Plans. These are prepared in consultation with the local community. They provide high-level outcomes that smart places should support.
There may be other local and state priorities, strategies and policies that apply. These include precinct masterplans and land-use strategies. You should assess these too before proceeding.
Smart Places Maturity Assessment Tool
A solid understanding of your current smart place maturity level is essential. This will help inform and guide future actions and initiatives.
The Smart Places Maturity Assessment Framework is a practical tool designed to help place managers at this stage.
Great Public Spaces Toolkit
The Great Public Spaces Toolkit helps bring the principles of the draft NSW Public Spaces Charter to life. It is a collection of free resources to support local government, state agencies, industry and the community.
The department is developing tools that anyone can use to support planning, managing and creating better and more vibrant public spaces.
Movement and Place Framework
The Government Architect NSW and Transport for NSW are collaboratively developing the Movement and Place Framework.
This will provide a cohesive approach to balancing the movement of people and goods, with the amenity and quality of places. This will help build the attractiveness, sustainability and success of our cities and towns.
Identifying problem and outcome statements
You should focus on the problems you want to overcome in your place and the outcomes you want to achieve. This will ensure you can seek an appropriate technology solution and deliver the biggest impact.
Your early engagement with communities and stakeholders and review of relevant strategies and plans will help you to define problems and desired outcomes.
Problem and outcome statements should not include a solution. Instead, they should invite a range of solutions.
For example, a good problem statement will read:
People drive around the precinct looking for an available car park. This creates congestion and impacts local air quality and amenity. We need to find a way to help people find a park quickly and easily.
Rather than: 'We need smart parking sensors.'
An example of a good outcome statement might be:
We want to create a thriving night-time economy and need the precinct to be safe for everyone after dark.
Smart Places resource: Data for Places – A practitioner's guide
Refer to the Data for Places: A practitioner's guide to applying place-based data for effective place management (PDF 967.81KB), particularly chapter 2 for more examples on outcome statements.
Digital.NSW research toolkit
Digital.NSW provides the building blocks for creating user-centred digital services, as well as policy tools and guidance. While their suite of resources presumes a set product or service, many of the tools provided can help define outcomes and problems with customers.
AS ISO 37122:2020: Sustainable cities and communities – Indicators for smart cities
The international standard ISO 37122:2020 Sustainable cities and communities – Indicators for smart cities has been adopted as an Australian standard. It provides a range of outcome-based indicators that may be useful.
OPENAIR: Best Practice Guide
The OPENAIR Best Practice Guide for smart air quality monitoring has been developed to help local governments implement air quality monitoring projects. It has some helpful resources that could assist in the discovery stage.
Advancing digital inclusivity
All smart places should be inclusive, making sure no one is left behind. This is a key principle of the Smart Places Customer Charter.
Three key factors impact digital inclusion:
Access
Do people have access to reliable internet connection and devices?
Affordability
Can people afford to pay for quality services and up-to-date devices?
Ability
To what extent do people have the skills and confidence to use digital services?
Digital inequity
Digital inequity is the gap between people who have good access to affordable internet, and have the skills needed to participate – and those who don't.
It causes social and economic disadvantage. This is because people who can't get online readily can miss out on:
- educational opportunities
- government services
- connections to their communities and families
- job opportunities.
The Australian Digital Inclusion Index shows that some groups in our community are more at risk of being digitally excluded. This includes:
- multicultural communities
- people with disability
- First Nations peoples
- people who are 65 and over
- people with lower social and economic opportunity.
When you engage with your community during the discovery phase you should try to understand digital inequities that exist. This will help you form good problem and outcome statements to achieve digital inclusion.
Australian Digital Inclusion Index
The Australian Digital Inclusion Index tracks and reports on digital inclusion in Australia. The index will help you benchmark your local government area in comparison to others.
Closing the Gap
Find out more about the National Agreement on Closing the Gap and Target 17: By 2026, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have equal levels of digital inclusion.
NSW Connectivity Strategy
The NSW Telco Authority has developed the NSW Connectivity Strategy. The strategy will align and optimise statewide programs and opportunities to ensure modern, high-speed digital networks are available to all.
Digital.NSW: Beyond Digital
Read about NSW Government's long-term goals for digital capabilities.
The Parks: Digital Equity and Inclusion Insights Program
Find out more about the work underway in The Parks, through the Digital Equity and Inclusion Office.
Developing a smart strategy
To support the use of smart technologies in your place, you should consider:
- developing a smart place strategy, vision, and/or action plan
- including the role of smart technologies in your place strategies and plans
- conducting an assessment of the current state using the Smart Places Maturity Assessment Framework.
This can help you to document problem and outcome statements, and consider the role of smart solutions in addressing them.
Consider referring to the relevant standard ISO 37101:2016 Sustainable development in communities to help you at this stage. This standard provides an overall framework for defining sustainable development. Read more about standards and smart places.
Understanding your authorising environment
Before you start designing your smart place, you need to understand any approvals that might be needed. These will depend on:
- where you work, or the organisation you are representing
- who owns the land and/or assets on the land
- the scale and type of smart technologies you might explore
- funding you may need and its likely sources.
You may need planning approvals, there may be legal requirements to consider, and regulations may also apply.
If you are working at a council, you may need council approvals and may need some funding identified in annual budgets.
In the NSW Government, you may need Cabinet approval, and assurance processes may apply.
While you won't know the level of investment needed yet, you should find out delegations that apply and the thresholds for approvals.
You will also need to know what information is needed to support future approvals. This may include:
- technical specifications
- evidence of community support
- project plans
- funding sources
- risk management plans.
Early engagement with project approvers will help you to identify their information needs and may help build early support for initiatives.