On the 19th of March 2016 TAGES CEO Leyla Arsan joined the Open Data Movement Project Event (Açık Veri Hareketi Proje Etkinliği) organized by Gazeteciler Cemiyeti and talked about the importance and necessity of open data usage on the development of smart cities. She also gave an interview on the same topic for the April 2016 issue of the UniBusiness magazine.
Leyla Arsan joined the Open Data Movement Project Event which took place on the 19th of May 2016 via Skype and talked about open data and its place on developing smart cities. By 2050, 70% of the world’s population will be living in the cities and for these cities to become smart, it is prerequisite that especially municipalities must provide open geographical, transportation, and weather data. On this topic Leyla Arsan, also mentioned the CitySDK project in which TAGES organized to hackathons called Hackathonist where Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality opened its transportation data to the contestants to solve the traffic problem of Istanbul with the applications they developed. Even though the events themselves were a success, regrettably the municipality, legally binded by the Turkish law, had to stop sharing its transportation data after the events and that’s why all the applications developed don’t work right now.
April 2016 issue of the UniBusiness magazine covered the topic of open data and included many interviews with the influential people on this topic. Leyla Arsan, TAGES CEO, was one of them. On the interview she pointed out again that cities and its citizens must become smart, and the only way to achieve this is by open data. Leyla Arsan also talked about the problems in Turkish cities regarding this and which steps to take.
The relationship between the topics; smart cities and open data is inevitable. What is important is to see what creates the economy in the cities, and it is the people living in it. If a city is smart, it can make its citizens happy. We see that the more data we have, smarter a city can become. If your data means something, it becomes information, and with information you can make better and faster decisions. Countries should enforce smart city strategies to its cities so that municipalities, universities, telecom companies, and other shareholders can work collectively for their happiness.
TAGES, with the projects it has been partnered with, is trying to help Istanbul and other cities become smart cities.
