Data to improve cities : Boston

Jascha Franklin-Hodge, CIO of the City of Boston and David Block-Schachter, CTO at the MBTA, discuss the opportunities offered by Big Data through pioneering experiments implemented by the city of Boston. Predictive analysis, policy-making based on citizen demands, and flexibility of the transport network are all areas in which Boston was able to create pioneering applications such as CityScore or Bos311. But data is most importantly an opportunity for public actors to test innovative policies over short time scales. However, data collection also presents new security and privacy challenges.