| | AUGUST 20199CIOReviewyield higher profits and increase their costs of goods and services to offset increase in costs. Governments, on the other hand cannot just create new programs to offset cost and are under constant pressure to reduce taxes, yet provide the same or higher level of services. Couple that with community diversity, expectations of governments, and general distrust of government organizations; makes for a seemingly impossible challenge for leaders. Many times, to invent new ways of interacting with constituents, business leaders lean on technology to try and implement new and innovative ways to do deliver services. Many programs are in place to help make cities smarter, yet, many are panicking to put in place solutions without identifying problems to be solved. Adding devices to a network and collecting data, is meaningless, unless the data becomes informational. Two questions an organization needs to answer before starting on a smart cities voyage, first "What will we do with the information" and second, "What will we do with the ignored data". For instance, let's say a deployed sensor at a busy intersection determines there is acidic levels of pollution. Is the organization going to perform costly work to fix the issue, even more dangerous, what happens if the organization has the data and does nothing with it?Governments have to become more innovative, to solve complex financial, social, and regulatory challenges in a sea of massive community change. Technology can help improve and augment business processes, yet cannot solve problems that have not been defined or worked out. Too many times, organizations buy software from a marketing slick, without understanding both the business process and the handoff of processes from one department to another. Technology should be an enabler, it is there to reduce friction and complement and accentuate good business processes; not, be the end all be all. All technology will do to a bad business process is make the problems worse and more expensive.In conclusion, governments need to evaluate their business processes and determine if what once was, will continue to be. Agility and flexibility in organizational dynamics are imperative for both the future operations of the organization and service customers and constituents. Smart technologies are very effective at solving problems, identifying the issues and implementing technologies that fix those issues are essential for successful and cost effective solutions. Technology will continue to be the engine that drives the world and technical leaders will need to focus first on business knowledge, then cultural challenges, then technologies to help make the process more efficient. Governments need to evaluate their business processes and determine if what once was, will continue to be
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