The Seoul Metropolitan Government (SMG), the President of WeGO and a recognized advocate for sustainable development, organized the International Forum on Urban Policy for the Sustainable Development Goals from June 8-10, 2016 in Seoul, Korea. The three-day Forum featured, among other things, knowledge-sharing sessions on good policies and practices for managing key urban challenges, field visits to Seoul’s state-of-the-art facilities, as well as individual sessions organized by leading international organizations, including WeGO.
At the Forum, WeGO organized a session on “ICT-enabled Smart Sustainable City” where WeGO members Seoul, San Fernando La Union, and Addis Ababa shared its best practices and know-hows for an overview of how ICT has paved the way for cities to become smarter and sustainable. The session was attended by more than 100 participants from local governments, international organizations, and the private sector, and featured pioneering solutions such as Seoul’s Big Data Projects with a highlight on how Big Data was used for the establishment of Late Night Bus Routes, Addis Ababa’s e-Office project as a foundation of a digitized smart city, San Fernando’s “Civic Participation-based e-Government System (CPS)” for incorporating citizens’ feedback in forming an inclusive city, and the combination of people-centered “Appropriate Technology” with emerging technologies like the Internet of Things (IoT) to provide low-cost bus information services. Aside from the presentations made by WeGO and WeGO members, high-level discussants from the World Bank and the Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA) brought further depth to the discussion by explaining what their respective organizations are doing for ICT-enabled city growth, as well as introducing development opportunities and best practices for building smart sustainable cities.