1. A standardized smart city: the case of Trikala
Greece
Dr. Leonidas Anthopoulos

2. Background - Trikala: a historic and creative city
Trikala: a historic city
Location: Greece, Region of Thessaly
Surface: 69.2 Km2
Population: (official stats)
Trikala: a creative city
Birth place of many Greek musicians
More than 5 museums and more than 10 collections
Extensive number of creative entrepreneurs

3. Background - Trikala: a smart and resilient city
Awarded the first Greek smart city (2004)
Defined the first Greek smart city network (CitiesNet) (2008)
More than 15 projects, more than 11 EU projects, several pilot projects
Indicative: Metro WiFi (2005), MAN (2007), intelligent transportation (2008), tele-care (2008)
Indicative EU: Driverless bus (CityMobil2) (2016), InSmart (2016), ActiveAge (forthcoming)
Indicative pilots: beacons for tourism guidance (2016), intelligent lighting (forthcoming)
Corresponding policy making
Covenant of Mayors (CoM) for Climate & Energy objectives (2010)
Leader of the Greek Union of Municipalities at the Innovation task group (2015)
Active role in Greek smart city standardization
Strategic plan: Trikala A Smart, Sufficient and Resilient City (2015)
Greek representative city at the Open and Agile Smart City (OASC)
Participation in several coalitions (i.e., European Smart City Network and ICLEI)

4. Background - Trikala 2025: a 10-year strategic plan
Top priority: climate change adaptation
Defined strategic targets, relative to today’s UN Agenda 2030
Prioritized axes relative to smart city and implements projects:
People: emphasis on accessibility and inclusiveness (new website, mobile app, social media, e-politis.gr, call-center for citizens (more than 2,000 calls within 6 months), information systems deployment)
Governance: emphasis on standards, innovation, transparency and simplification (service re-engineering and quality management, paperless internal transactions, continuous training on the information systems use, collaboration with local-stakeholders (inSmart))
Economy: emphasis on innovation, new business deployment (10 activities at RIS3 for Thessaly, IoT beacons’ launch, open data policy drafting, Asklipios action plan for health-care business development, annual Christmas village, participation at StartUp events).
Mobility: emphasis on sustainable mobility (corresponding plan drafting, cycle-lane network expansion, pedestrian area development)
Living: emphasis on healthcare services and social cohesion (participation in new R&D projects like ActiveAge), social structures (for poor and houseless), city friendly to immigrants
Environment: emphasis on the physical landscape (air and water quality monitoring, city’s energy demands measurement (InSmart), green open space expansion and connection, public lighting upgrades with LED)

5. Internal Re-organization: top priority
Enhance municipal effectiveness and efficiency
A novel organizational unit entitled “smart city unit”
focuses on smart governance and smart economy dimensions of smart city
Supervised by the mayor
Duties:
defines standards for process quality enhancement, which oblige both the internal organization and other city stakeholders (i.e., for construction projects)
re-engineers government processes with a focus on interoperability and citizen engagement
specifies training programs for human resource development
undertakes duties that support local growth

6. The mission of the smart city unit
The smart city unit defines “smart city” as:
urban innovation -not necessarily but mainly- based on information and communication technologies (ICT)
The smart city unit defines “smart governance” as:
the evolution of digital (or e-) government and open government
aims to succeed in the following two priorities:
establish cross-function service delivery
secure service co-creation with the citizens,
The smart city unit:
studies carefully and re-engineers all public processes with an emphasis on citizen and his gained experience
utilizes ICT for democratizing several processes like deliberation, consultation and crowd-budgeting (
Team-based management: obliges staff mobility to the smart city unit (to be engaged in individual project planning and development; enables staff with skills that exceed the typical duties; they gain a broader picture of the municipal processes)
RESULT: they can more easily adopt cross-border service delivery and the simplification of services (i.e., with the elimination of paper use; with the avoidance of intermediate certificate issuing etc.)

7. The smart city unit’s underlying systems
Citizens’ applications system (
Citizens register and submit any kind of application or complaint
Requests are delivered to the appropriate organization unit
Citizens can trace their applications’ status
The system is supported by a call-center
Document flow management system:
Integrates all organization units
Similar process to the previous one, with the difference that it offers the traditional access channel (face-to-face transactions)
Document are stamped and assigned to the appropriate units
Dashboards and Project Management Systems:
An internal project management system with typical PM tools (duration, milestones, team management etc.) (
Deliberation and consultation system:
Online deliberation, consultation and participatory budgeting system (

8. The smart city unit’s underlying systems
Citizens’ applications system

9. The smart city unit’s underlying systems
Dashboards and Project Management Systems

10. The smart city unit’s underlying systems
Deliberation, Consultation, participatory budgeting

11. Service co-creation Citizens apply directly to their needs
Citizens trace their issue
The Municipality monitors the requested tasks and “aligns” according to citizens’ priorities
The Municipality opens consultation with top-issues and engages citizens even in participatory budgeting

12. Conclusions The Municipality of Trikala aims:
to modernize its organization with:
the adoption of cutting-edge practices, like smart governance, service co-creation (with consultation, deliberation and crowd-budgeting),
standardization and quality management.
to enhance its internal efficiency with:
process re-engineering
performance monitoring,
internal mobility to the smart city unit (on-job train staff with management and project management skills)

13. Future Thoughts New projects are being designed
Certificates’ public printing
Open data launch
Internal GIS and service integration
Smart city platform pilot testing
It remains to see how effective these efforts can be, but the Municipality of Trikala is dedicated on establishing this mission.

14. Thank You Dr. Leonidas Anthopoulos
Mayor’s special Advisor, city of Trikala, Greece
Associate Professor, TEI of Thessaly, Greece