Paris

Promoting Paris’ Open-Source Platform Around the World

CitiesParisPromoting Paris’ Open-Source Platform Around the World

Bloomberg Associates worked with the City of Paris to internationally promote and expand awareness and use of Lutece, its open-source platform.

About

My hope is that Lutece is adopted by many cities around the world. As other cities build and share plugins, these will serve to improve the lives of many people around the globe.

Nejia Lanouar, Paris Chief Information Officer

Relevant Expertise

Promote Digital Solutions and Approaches

Digitization of Municipal Services
Key Performance Indicator Dashboards
Organization and Coordination of Digital Resources
Technology and Capability Mapping

Challenge

In 2001, the City of Paris created a state-of-the-art open-source platform to provide free digital services, allowing the City to respond to real-life demands of residents while reducing costs and accelerating digital project delivery for the city government. Lutece benefits Parisians by bringing public services online, including participatory budgeting, non-emergency reporting platforms for pothole and streetlight repairs, social housing inventory, sports facilities bookings, and many more. Thousands of residents utilize the 400+ websites and applications powered by Lutece each day, allowing the City to track and quickly address each request and issue.

The City of Paris recognized Lutece could be a powerful tool for cities all over the world since cities share many of the same challenges and needs. The City also realized it could further enhance the platform to address more issues, like homeless shelter inventory and building code enforcement, through web-based applications if it had access to the needed building blocks to power those services. The city of Paris asked Bloomberg Associates to grow Lutece’s community by marketing the platform to cities and creating a collaborative network to share ideas and tools. By sharing Lutece with other cities and creating an inter-city exchange of information, Paris and its partner cities could learn from each others’ unique application of the platform.

Approach

Bloomberg Associates began by helping internally assess Lutece’s impact and value, namely cost savings, speed of delivery for city services, and independence from external vendors. Externally, Bloomberg Associates focused on the rebranding of Lutece’s identity to market the platform to other cities and a global audience. This included the design of a new logo, branding materials, and a new website with easily accessible information for visitors from around the globe. The team also secured the pro bono assistance of several Bloomberg LP engineers who provided coding support to enhance and prepare the platform for worldwide use. After the creation of the new brand and programming enhancements, Bloomberg Associates and the City promoted Lutece at international conferences including the Paris convening of the Council of Global City Chief Information Officers, Smart City Expo Barcelona, Smart City Expo Atlanta, and the Johns Hopkins annual hackathon “HopHacks”.

Impact

The rebranding and marketing of Lutece to international audiences and cities led to new worldwide opportunities for Paris. Through this effort, Lutece gained membership to a number of global networks and formed no-cost partnerships with Johns Hopkins University and several international cities that have begun using the platform. Discussions with other cities to create pilot programs to take advantage of Lutece are also underway. These partnerships will allow cities to save money by utilizing and customizing free software already developed by other cities, rather than procuring expensive solutions. Additionally, as more cities and users benefit from Lutece’s free software and contribute their own software and web components, the City of Paris will gain access to new content that can be shared across city partners.