Ipswich taps Accenture for smart city plan

Ipswich City Council has contracted professional services company Accenture to help progress its ‘smart city’ transformation initiative.

The initiative aims to develop a blueprint involving the use of smart city technologies to optimise city operations, enhance community engagement, cultivate digital technology capabilities and foster economic innovation.

Mayor of Ipswich Paul Pisasale said the project is about connecting city services to digital technologies, forming innovation clusters to create jobs and economic growth and using data to predict, mitigate and prevent problems faced by the city.

“We are a city which leads by example, embracing the positive impact of technology and digital trends for the benefit of our local businesses and community,” Pisasale said.

“We really believe that digital cities are better enabled by digital governments who are not afraid to adopt a more human-centred approach in order to better serve their citizens.”

Accenture’s health and public service lead for Australia and NZ, Catherine Garner, said the company will focus on developing strategies to maintain and improve Ipswich’s status as a safe, connected, productive and liveable city.

“Rather than proposing a product-driven, technology-centric solution, we have embedded our consulting and strategic approach around the vision and needs of the Ipswich community,” she said.

“Innovation is at the heart of a strong economy. When done well, it keeps a city competitive [and] cutting-edge, creates jobs and maintains a high standard of living.”

As part of Ipswich’s smart city ambitions, the city last month launched Fire Station 101, an old fire station in the heart of the CBD that has been converted into a digital innovation and start-up hub.

Image courtesy of Paul Downey under CC