Digital Jersey has appointed Smart Cities expert, Joe Dignan as a Special Adviser.
One of his first jobs was flying the flag for the island at the Smart Island World Congress in Mallorca where he promoted Jersey as the ideal whole-island country testbed.
So what’s Smart City?
Joe told us: “The first smart city solution was a well, the second was a stockade, and so on. We have been working to make the lives of citizens in our cities the best they can be for centuries. More recently it has become synonymous with technology, but it is the advent of the Internet of Things which has really changed the concept. The enormous mass of data we now have allows us to have insight and therefore far better impact, plus the price of technology has gone down, so it’s really starting to work for us.”
Joe will be advising Digital Jersey in the year it launches SandBox Jersey, its whole-island testbed proposition. Joe is the founder of Kintechi Ltd, an independent consultancy focusing on delivering digital transformation at a local, regional and national level. He is also an expert on global Smart City Boards, including the World Bank Smart City Expert Framework.
He said: “Jersey has the potential to be a world class leader in this area. There are large sums of money around the world looking for places to test tech products and services that can then be scaled up globally. Jersey isn’t too big or too small, it has excellent infrastructure and connectivity, a democratic government and is one of those rare places you could get everyone into one room, from ports and water to telecoms and education, to discuss a project. Jersey can be an exemplar for what technology can achieve, and this will benefit its citizens as well as its economy.”
Tony Moretta, CEO, Digital Jersey said: “Joe is without a doubt a world leader in this field and has the contacts and experience to be able to help us further our Smart Island ambitions He has got stuck in straight away by promoting us at the Smart Island World Congress, and had a great reception at our Annual Review in January when he was one of our keynote speakers. We’re looking forward to working with him.”
