A trillion Internet of Things (IoT) sensors by 2022? $13 Trillion dollars in returns from $5 Trillion investment in the next 5 years? $2.1 Billion in government investments from 2015 to 2020?
These recent predictions indicate that IoT is moving beyond hype to reality. There are some important considerations for “smart governments” and “smart cities”:
- 2017 will be a year of IoT experimentation and pilot projects, not the year of comprehensive multiple domain smart city implementations
- scaling of IoT will require investments in big data analytics and the use of cloud computing
- cybersecurity and privacy concerns remains the biggest inhibitors to smart government initiatives – governments need to have robust information security technology and processes before rolling out IoT
- smart public security, facilities management, energy and fleet management are the leading smart domains for government IoT
- smart heath is emerging as the leading post-2020 government opportunity given rising healthcare costs