Belfast City Council is making plans to create a Citizen Office of Digital Innovation (CODI), aimed at strengthening public engagement in its digital and data initiatives.
The authority has published a prior information notice for private sector support in a pilot capacity building programme, which it says will be aimed at identifying and testing a ‘digital citizen skillset’.
This should help residents and others to take part in “shaping the technologically enabled city to support quality of life outcomes” within CODI.
The notice says the seven-month programme will involve the use of creative and interactive methods to explore areas such as co-design, citizen science, the internet of things (IoT), artificial intelligence, data science, privacy and smart cities.
It will feed into the longer term CODI initiative as part of the broader Smart Belfast programme. This was established in 2017 to support innovation and help build smart places in the city, and has included initiatives such as the development of a ‘homes for healthy ageing’ testbed, a pilot using machine vision to manage active travel routes, and the use of IoT and data analytics in waste management.
The pilot will reportedly begin in spring of next year.
