FAQ ISO37120 certification

Question:  How does your offering differ from that of the World Council on City Data?


Answer: Our approach to the certification has the following principal differences compared to the one by WCCD. 

WCCD solution (based on available web descriptions and relevant publications): 

  1. Providing the customer municipality/community willing to be certified with instructions and guidance regarding ISO 37120 requirements and documents presenting a set of indicators and description of data that is necessary for its calculations. 
  2. Customer collects the data for some period, e.g. last year calculates indicators and presents the results in the relevant documents to WCCD experts.
  3. WCCD experts audit the data and indicators.
  4. WCCD issues their certificate is based on the results and add the city its registry of ISO 37120 certified cities. 
  5. As a matter of fact, such certificate fixes the audit results for the given moment of time. It is a static data representation. After each past year, the value of the certificate as a statement of compliance decreases and become less relevant due to the natural question “Well, it was then. What is going on now?” 
  6. The results of the certification are: (1) the Certificate by WCCD sent to the relevant municipality and (2) the line in the WCCD registry of certified cities. There is no transparency of results and its automatic real time updating. 

ASIDEES solution: Continuing Auditing and Transparency 

  1. Same as by WCCD #1.
  2. We set the digital transformation engine Smart City Monitor in cloud for the municipality to run the urban model presenting a city as cyber-physical system in full compliance with requirements of ISO 37120 (see online demo at https://smartcity.pharosnavigator.com).
  3. We provide the customer municipality with data samples in MS Excel spreadsheets prepared in compliance with ISO 37120 that can be used as templates for preparing relevant local content and instruct how to prepare the data and introduce actual city planning targets for the ISO 37120 KPIs.
  4. The municipality (or its local agencies/partners) prepare relevant data in the spreadsheets and uploads it into some local storage or Dropbox or Google docs shared directories owned by the municipality (or its agency/partner). The spreadsheets are updated monthly.
  5. Smart City Monitor begins automatically importing all updated data from all these data sources in real time, calculates all ISO 37120 indicators and in relation to city targets and identifies the status of each theme-object (Energy, Economics, Environment, Education, Transportation, Safety/Security, etc) as well as the current Sustainability Status of the whole city.
  6. These results are presented online at the city dashboards and interactive reports by Smart City Monitor engine in real time providing the municipality with full transparency of local governance performance accordingly to the international standard. Accordingly to local policies of the given municipality the access to these dashboards and reports could be made public by its specialists (or ASIDEES by request).
  7. ASIDEES asks the municipality to issue an official document stating the data quality and trustfulness.
  8. Our experts check the data quality and indicator time series based on third-party statistics. If there are discrepancies, we present it to the municipality and ask to check and correct the source data.  
  9. When all is clarified and fixed, ASIDEES issues its official public certificate of compliance based on the following:
    •   Availability of online real-time results of the city performance that is available for all its stakeholders including municipality itself, the general public, various auditors as well as ASIDEES.
    •   Municipality statement about its data quality and trustfulness and monthly updating procedure. The copy of the document made public as well. 

As a result, this certification procedure assists customer municipalities in the effective public presentation of their achievements based on innvation digital technology Smart City Monitor. It makes the city performance and sustainability

  • transparent for the community as a web servce online,
  • presented in unbiased data on standard city KPIs and their dynamics over time,
  • fully compliant with the requirements of ISO 37120 standard,
  • are available for ongoing audit of compliance with ISO 37120 and other additional standards set by local authorities.  

The ISO 37120 online panel provides a continuous real-time representation the activities of the municipality, including the measurable history of the city's development. It serves as a mirror reflecting real life, and paper certificates only represent one moment of life in the past just like photographs.

Question: Can we change the ISO 37120 model and add our indicators and data sources?


Answer:  The urban model by ISO 37120 set for the municipality by ASIDEES and runing at its engine is open to the local customisation. The city engine administrators can change the model adapting it to the city management practices and governance policies, add various KPIs and infrastructural objects such as districts, buildings, streets, water and energy objects, schools, etc as well as planning targets and requirements by other standards and regulations (e.g. ISO37122, etc). All these allow gradually increasing practical assistance to municipalities and urban service providers in their Smart Governance and Smart Management.

Question: Does ASIDEES run the data verification?


Answer: ASIDEES does not verify the data but asks for the official statement of evidence data quality and trustfulness by the municipality as a responsible public entity. The online results make such verification available and open for anyone (like in the open source software) and thus significantly increase the responsibility of local governance body. It decreases the costs of the whole procedure as well. During the annual audits the ongoing compliance is verified and confirmed by both the relevant paper certificates to be hanged at the City Hall and the online ISO 37120 monitoring dashboards for all stakeholders that the local city administration is authorised for the data access.

Question: Where is this certificate is recognized?


Answer: There two types of certificates: (1) Certificate of the trainer, consultant and auditor for Smart City Monitor platform and its application for ISO 37120 compliance, and (2) The Certificate of Compliance in implementation of ISO 37120 requirements for Smart Sustainable and Transparent Management and Governance.

The first certificate is related to the training and understanding of ISO 37120 and its practical applications and it is issued based on final evaluation test run by ASIDEES.

The second, the City Certificate, is the result of the practical implementation procedures for actual city evidence data and city performance that are made available in real time and can assist administrations, utility providers in the city management as well as overall transparency of urban processes for the citizens.

It means that anyone can see the city results online accordingly to ISO 37120 standard and compare it to other cities and city history.

ASIDEES and our national partners can join forces with relevant national metrology and standardisation organisations in countries offering novel certification procedure effectively supported by the latest digital transformation technology.

Question:  Have you been accredited to certify this standard?


Answer: As we are aware of, there are no accredited auditors for ISO 37xxx standard series. 
It is easy to check by reviewing relevant links such as http://www.ilac.org, http://www.iaf.nu, http://search.ukas.com, www.isobench.org/legitimacy-check2.php#,  etc.
We hope that ISO 37120 and others in the ISO 37xxx series will get relevant attention in the future. 

However, the main benefits for the municipality for implementing the solution are the increased transparency and potential of its audit for citizens as voters. It also attracts potential long-term investors and contributes to the sustainable development of the entire community.

 

Question: Can I be the Auditor for implementation of this ISO 37120 and other relevant standards if I already have ISO 9000 auditing certificates and experience?

Answer: Yes, we believe you can be an auditor for the ISO 37120 as well as providing practical consulting and guidance to the communities after learning the methodology and new ICT instruments supporting the audit procedure as described at https://asidees.org/index.php?id=iso37120_certification

Our aim is to spread the word about ISO 37120 and apply the Smart City Monitor as a cutting-edge yet practical IoT technology to effectively support the quality audit and certification processes related to the standard. Basically you can run your own business having our support and references after the training.

Note that there are no official audit organisations that are accredited to certify the cities accordingly to the standard (e.g. look to https://ilac.org, etc). It opens various business opportunities for consultants interested in advanced modalities of certification and audit, i.e. based on novel digital transformation tools for city administrations and utility providers.    

And you always can take part in the training courses for standardizing general audit processes run by the national organisations to expand your knowledge and obtain additional certificates.   

 

Question: I want to become national partner supporting certification in my country what kind of certificate I obtain?

Answer: You receive the official Training Certificate by ASIDEES on paper and reference at our site. Then you can start with your auditing-certification services to different cities. Contact us to discuss how we can help you and what might be joint business opportunities in the area.  

Question: Where the newly offered certification procedure was applied in practice?


Answer: The new approach was initially tested in the Smart Urbana project financed by the EC Horizon Europe in 2017 in 5 European cities of 5 countries. Another project for 6 municpalities is WELLBASED. We have several other ongoing international implementations as well. 

Question: Where is some presentation providing the details of the certification programnme?

 

 

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