they regularly issue data relating to water consumption, electricity consumption or transportation. So the profusion of information may inhibit users to access on time to the information they need.
For example, public transport schedules may be available throughout the day, but they have less interest if they are not updated in real time to provide information on current incidents and delays to come. Similarly, electricity meters or water meters can provide information, but they are not smart if they do it, one or twice a year as it is mostly currently done. That is why smart meters collect data several times in one hour. Smart meters rely, however, not only on the dissemination of data, but also on the capacity to analyze them in real time and to send feedback to the consumer in order to explain him how to reduce his/her electric or water consumption. If meters are not able to do so, the wealth of information loses, therefore, its usefulness. We should note that in the French case of Linky39, the feedback will come not only from the analysis of the data collected by the electric meter, but also by analyzing the tweets and comments sent by the consumers.
Thus, a community, even hyper-connected, which is unable to ensure a good flow of information, cannot be regarded as a smart one. Whereas a connected city aims to decompartmentalize data by putting an end to information silos, an informational city aims to ensure relevant real-time dissemination of public information to stakeholders. The informational city is therefore a further step in the process of enhancing data by ensuring greater fluidity of the flow of public information, both internally and externally.
For this reason, one of the features of smart green communities is their ability to include their citizens in the process. This inclusion relies on the association of citizens to community environmental policies. In this regard, the City of Oslo has adopted an interesting methodology by opening its environmental strategy to its citizens and more widely to every person interested. The Norwegian capital considers that “reaching the target of becoming a Zero-Emission City will require new ideas and efforts from everyone”40.
This inclusion is also achieved by reinforcing transparency and making the information available for citizens in order to give them more choices and help them to take the smartest and greenest decisions. Since they are based on the exploitation of data, smart green communities raise some questions as regards both the right to participation and the right to information. In this last case, communities have to answer at least to the following legal issues: to what type of information does a citizen have the right to access? Can the community invoke the right to secrecy in some circumstances? What are legal blockages to a smoothly flow of information and to its use and reuse by stakeholders or by third parties? What kind of data should be opened by the smart green community? What are the rights of consumers, of public administration or of third parties in the use and reuse of data collected within the implementation of green public services?
The aim is at the end to make the most people and companies benefit from the revolution of smart green communities. The signatories’ will of the 2009 Green digital charter to collaborate “with industry to support greener production and logistics and using green procurement”41 follows this logic. The same applies to the statement made in 2011 by the OECD Secretary-General. According to Angel Gurría, “governments in both developed and emerging economies must empower companies and individuals as actors in the quest for green growth. This will mean removing obstacles to the introduction and commercialization of new technologies and the development of new modes of production. It will mean encouraging people to work and live differently. Energy and transport will be among the first sectors to target greener growth.”42
B. By Protecting the Right to Privacy in a Greener Environment
As the improvement of living conditions in a smart green community is linked to the data collection and analysis, it is important to closely monitor this process in order to be sure that it respects our right to privacy.
With the open data and above all the big data, the risk to infringe on a person’s privacy is not fictitious but really exists. For instance, in France, the electric smart meter of EDF called “Linky” collect the load curve every 10 minutes on the request of the consumer43. If Linky has started to collect some data in 300,000 homes, the process is, however, at the beginning. First, the aim is to cover all the territory by 2020. The challenge is real because this objective means the installation of 35 million smart electric meters in 15 years. Second, EDF is studying how to improve the data analysis of as the current process seems not effective enough. Indeed, the aim is to analyse by this date 120 terabytes a year, that is to say 35 million data collections every 10 minutes. Moreover, EDF intends to analyse also consumer’s tweets and comments44.
With such a quantity of data, information collected is more difficult to analyse for EDF, that is not a company specialized in data analysis. So EDF has decided to work with companies from the digital sector, such as Teradata45, whose business is based on data collection and analysis46.
And that is the point: the development of smart green policies has changed the ecosystem: in the informational society, local government does not work only with traditional companies from the environmental sector, as they used to do in the past. As ICTs facilitate the environmental effectiveness and efficiency, local governments also have to collaborate with new companies from the digital sector, such as IBM or Oracle, whose business is to analyze data. This evolution does not only change the ecosystem from the economic point of view. It also affects the relationship with customers as well as the one with local governments.
The more information a company will have, the more the enterprise has the possibility to know each detail of the customers’ private life. So, in smart green communities, customers have to face a fundamental choice. They have to know if they prefer to give up some personal privacy safeguards in order to benefit from better services or if they prefer to renounce to it in order to keep their whole right to privacy. About local government, the issue is to choose the right company when a public procurement is initiated because the winner of the tender will not anymore provide only electricity or water, it will also collect and manage personal data. It is therefore for the local government to choose a company that is respectful of the citizen’s fundamental rights. Being a smart green community is not only to ensure the efficiency of the environmental policy, it is also to guarantee its inhabitants’ right to privacy.
Notas
* Associate Professor (HDR) at the Sorbonne Law School (University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne). President of the Institut du Monde et du Développement pour la Bonne Gouvernance Publique (IMODEV).
1 A. Gurría, OECD Secretary-General, “New sources of growth in the 21st century. Fostering innovation and green growth” in OECD, Better policies for better lives. The OECD at 50 and beyond, 2011.
2 European Commission, Smart Sustainable Cities: http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/activities/sustainable_growth/cities/index_en.htm
See also European Commission, DG INFSO, Impacts of Information and Communication Technologies on Energy Efficiency, Final report, September 2008: http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/activities/sustainable_growth/docs/studies/2008/2008_impact-of-ict_on_ee.pdf
3 European Commission, Meeting of Advisory group ICT Infrastructure for energy-efficient buildings and neighbourhoods for carbon-neutral cities, Strategic priorities for the new framework programme for research and innovation covering the period 2014-2020, September 16, 2011: http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/activities/sustainable_growth/docs/smart-cities/smart-cities-adv-group_report.pdf
