[PRESS RELEASE] Smart city stakeholders gather to kick-off 2022 activities focused on creating resilient citizen-centered cities and fostering youth leaders of the future
To launch its activities in 2022, WeGO organized a hybrid event on February 23. Key activities launched include a youth program, index for benchmark of smart cities, and platform communication between members. Diverse stakeholders including representatives from local governments, smart tech corporations, embassies, international institutions, academic and youth, along with the Mayor of Seoul and President of WeGO joined the event to kickoff the year with WeGO.
February 23, 2021
SEOUL – Today WeGO held a hybrid event to introduce its activities for 2022 to its members, partners, and stakeholders around the world. To address the challenges arising from the accelerating digitalization of societies, WeGO presented a range of new activities that target broader more inclusive audience and aim to empower youth as the leaders of the future.
The Mayor of Seoul and President of WeGO Se-hoon Oh opened the event welcoming WeGO’s new initiatives for 2022 as they clearly align with and complement Seoul—president city of WeGO—’s efforts in the footsteps of the pandemic.
“In light of the accelerated non-face-to-face contact and digital transformation due to COVID-19 pandemic, building an inclusive smart city where all generations can enjoy the universal rights of a digital society without discrimination has become more important than ever. The Seoul Metropolitan Government (SMG) believes that WeGO’s capacity-building programs and knowledge-sharing activities will make this possible. As the President City of WeGO, the Seoul Metropolitan Government will do its best to bridge the digital divide and improve the quality of life of citizens.”
The Secretary General of WeGO, Jung Sook Park, also elaborated on WeGO’s new role in the post-pandemic times and focused on the organization’s activities for 2022. “WeGO’s role in this new changing environment is to prepare the cities for the next, enable the exchange of best practices and innovative ideas to address these new threats before they happen. […] New technologies like Big Data or Artificial Intelligence certainly can help cities overcome numerous challenges, but they might also jeopardize some of citizens’ basic rights,” said Jung Sook Park, Secretary General of WeGO.
“As the leading platform on smart city development, WeGO’s highlighted focus will be to raise awareness on digital ethics among its members and partners, ensuring that citizens’ rights remain always protected. […] To prepare cities for these challenges, WeGO is [also] expanding its existing programs and developing new ones, with an important goal in mind: developing people-centered smart cities.”
Furthermore, Mexico’s Ambassador to Seoul was also invited as a representative of Mexico City, WeGO’s Vice President City and the host of WeGO’s 6th General Assembly (2023), to show support for the organization’s new activities. The Chief of Mission & Chargé d’Affaires of the Embassy of Ecuador gave special remarks following close cooperation with WeGO, notably through the official visit of Ecuador’s Vice-minister of Foreign Affairs last year. The Ambassador of Peru was also given a certificate of appreciation in recognition for having secured three Peruvian cities as members of WeGO in 2021.
The highlight of the event was WeGO’s flagship program for 2022, the ‘WeGO Smart City Champions’, which was officially launched at the kick-off event. This program, open to anyone under 35, aims to build the capacity of young people in South Korea and overseas in the fields of urban development, sustainability and smart cities, to equip them with the skills to live and work in this era of the 4th Industrial Revolution. The 15-week program is divided into two phases, a lecture series on key smart city topics and capacity-building workshops.
To celebrate this launch, key partners and youth participant of the program who will take part in the program were invited to say a few words, including Seoul National University and Kookmin University. A signing ceremony between Seoul National University (SNU; Graduate School of Public Administration) and WeGO was also held offline regarding the program, as the school became the latest university to partner with WeGO on this program, following other major Korean and overseas universities such as Catholic University of Milan, Chengdu University of Technology, Dongguk University, Harvard Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society, Kookmin University, Korea University, and Yonsei University.
“I believe that during the course of 15-weeks the WeGO Smart City Champions program will support, mentor, guide and train us in developing our conceptual knowledge of smart cities, […] which will help us achieve both personal and professional goals,” said Siriwan Chaichana, PhD-student at the Seoul National University Graduate School of Public Administration.
Other new activities for 2022 included the ‘WeGO Smart Cities Index’, which will enable cities to assess their development stages, benchmark, and gain inspiration from other cities of the world, and the ‘WeGO Nexus’, a community platform for WeGO members to communicate with each other and conduct matchmaking activities. All of these activities focused on promoting public-private partnerships, bridging the digital divide, and promoting the ethical development of digitalization needed to create citizen-centric smart cities in these post-pandemic times, in contrast with the previously dominating technology-centric vision of smart cities.
WeGO also introduced its new plan to establish an Advisory Board composed of leading experts from across ministries, academia, corporations, and other international organizations in the field of smart city development and international cooperation, to further refine WeGO’s effort to promote smart cities through public-private-people partnerships (PPPP).
In addition, WeGO presented its recurring activities related to knowledge-sharing and networking, matchmaking and project implementation and capacity-building, and regional activities—the key pillars of WeGO’s activities.
The event came to a close with the showcase of WeGO’s different partners and their activities, including a presentation of the Korea Overseas Infrastructure & Urban Development Bank (KIND)’s brownfield project. To conclude the event, WeGO signed an MOU with Edgelands Institute–a multi-disciplinary organization based in Switzerland that uses academic research, data, and art to explore how the digitalization of urban security is changing the urban social contract.
While most participants joined online due to the COVID-19 circumstances, certain representatives from WeGO’s domestic members and partners, embassy officials, and professors and students attended the event in-person. In particular, ambassadors—from Algeria, Azerbaijan, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Iran, Mexico, Oman, Peru, United Arab Emirates, and Vietnam— and delegations from other countries were present, showing WeGO’s wide network with international stakeholders.
For the full list of WeGO’s 2022 activities and more details on how to take part, please visit this page.
Download the 2022 Activities presentation material and the 2022 Activities brochure HERE.
About WeGO
The World Smart Sustainable Cities Organization (WeGO), established by 50 founding members in 2010, is an international association of city and other local governments, smart tech solution providers, and national and regional institutions committed to the transformation of cities into smart sustainable cities
WeGO’s Secretariat is based in Seoul and supported by regional offices in Africa (Abuja, Nigeria), East Asia (Chengdu, China), Eurasia (Ulyanovsk Region, Russia), the Mediterranean (Beyoğlu, Turkey), and Latin America (Mexico City, Mexico).
WeGO has more than 200 members around the world and serves as their international platform to improve the quality of life, innovate in the delivery of public services, and strengthen regional competitiveness.
Press Contact
Alizée Rousset
alizee@we-gov.org
02-720-2931