Digital inclusion policy reflecting the value of ‘accompanying the weak’ draws global attention

[Security News Reporter Park Mi-young] On the 16th, Seoul City was invited to the ‘2022 Smart City Expo World Congress (SCEWC)’ in Barcelona, ​​the world’s largest smart city international event, and received the Best City Award in the ‘City’ category, the highest award for ‘Seoul City’s Accompanying the Digitally Underprivileged.’

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[Photo = Seoul Metropolitan Government]

The ‘Smart City Expo World Congress (SCEWC)’ held in Barcelona, ​​Spain every November is the world’s largest smart city international event hosted by Fira Barcelona (the Barcelona Trade Fair Organization in Spain). SCEWC 2022 was held for three days from the 15th to the 17th at Gran Via Venue, with 140 countries, 700 cities, 800 companies, and over 20,000 people participating.

The ‘World Smart City Awards’, one of the main programs of SCEWC, is an annual event that selects and awards excellent cities leading smart cities and their leadership, innovative ideas, and projects. This year, 337 cities from about 60 countries participated. The SCEWC ‘World Smart City Awards’ is a prestigious award that awards cities around the world, and is known as the smart city field award with the largest number of participating organizations.

In the ‘City’ category, the highest category of the SCEWC Awards, six cities that presented leading global strategies that combined projects for citizens, plans for achieving goals, and policy implementation were confirmed to receive the main award, and among them, Seoul City won the Best City Award. As the digital divide deepened due to the experience of the 4th Industrial Revolution and the COVID-19 pandemic, Seoul City proposed a digital inclusion policy that is actively being implemented based on the world’s best smart city infrastructure to the SCEWC Awards, and was recognized as the world’s best smart city.

Seoul City has been actively promoting its excellent smart city policies with the world since the first half of this year at the SCEWC Awards. It opened a website to promote Seoul City’s smart city and added English content on ‘Smart City’ to its main English website and Smart Seoul Portal to introduce Seoul City’s policies to the public. Through the planning for the SCEWC Awards (March) and data collection (April-July), we prepared a proposal (July-September) that could effectively introduce Seoul’s smart city policy and applied for the award, produced a promotional video and submitted it additionally (October), and ultimately won the Best City Award in the ‘City’ category. The ‘World Smart City Awards 2022’ has become a place to promote Seoul’s ‘Partnering with the Digitally Vulnerable’ policy, which reflects the core values ​​of Seoul, a ‘Special City of Companionship and Attraction’, to the world, and has recognized the excellence and superiority of Seoul’s policy in implementing customized digital services for the socially disadvantaged as an important solution to modern cities and social problems.

Seoul is promoting a digital inclusion policy so that all citizens can enjoy the convenience of digital technology, and to this end, it guarantees the five basic digital rights (communication, mobility, education, safety, and utilization) and provides customized digital services for the socially disadvantaged based on communication between people and ICT technology. Furthermore, it was highly evaluated as an innovative city strategy to build ‘Metaverse Seoul’ so that digital services can be enjoyed without physical and social discrimination.

Meanwhile, ‘Metaverse Seoul’ was selected as one of the ‘200 Best Inventions of 2022’ by the world’s largest weekly magazine TIME, and was recognized as the first innovative case in the field of ‘Metaverse’, the best invention, as the world’s first city government-owned platform. Starting with winning the grand prize in the ‘Project’ category for its M-Voting service in 2015, Seoul City won the grand prize in the ‘City’ category in 2016 and 2019, and this year, it won the Best City Award, solidifying its status as a leading smart city.

Barcelona Deputy Mayor Laia Bonet said, “Seoul’s digital inclusion policy has once again awakened us to inequality at a time when the world is engrossed in digital transformation, and has shown that cities should be centered on people. Seoul’s achievements truly respect the motto of this SCEWC: ‘Cities Inspired by People’, and those people will no longer be left out,” introducing the background of the award.

Seoul Digital Foundation Chairman Kang Yo-sik, who attended the event, said, “I am glad that the ‘Metaverse Seoul’ platform continues to deliver good news to Seoul citizens, following its selection as one of the best inventions of 2022 by the American current affairs weekly Time magazine on the 11th.”

In addition, Seoul City and Seoul Digital Foundation re-established the Seoul Pavilion three years after first operating it at ‘SCEWC 2019’, introducing Seoul’s leading smart city policies and projects to participants from around the world. By participating in the exhibition with nine innovative companies, we supported their overseas expansion by providing a venue where they could promote their excellent products and solutions to the world. The Seoul Pavilion was expanded to 210㎡ (approximately 64 pyeong) and composed of a policy zone, corporate zone, and side event zone. Nine innovative companies located in Seoul participated and promoted their products and solutions, and actively promoted their companies and entered overseas expansion through pitching days and holding their own business meetings.

The Seoul Pavilion began operation with an opening ceremony hosted by Seoul City Digital Human at 10:00 AM (Barcelona local time) on the 15th, and in addition to the exhibition operation, various side events were held, such as the Smart City Seoul Policy Forum and business agreement ceremonies with overseas organizations. In particular, the Smart City Seoul Policy Forum, which was held for three days during the exhibition, consisted of three themes: artificial intelligence (AI), big data, digital inclusion, and crossover, and various prominent overseas speakers from smart cities, such as Barcelona CIOs and Metropolis officials, gave presentations. The Seoul Digital Foundation began by discovering cooperative organizations (August) for the establishment and operation of this Seoul Pavilion, selecting nine participating companies and university student supporters (October), and operating a pre-support program (November~). This year, Kyunghee University Link Business Group 3.0 student supporters understood the companies’ solutions through 1:1 matching activities and pre-training with companies, and supported exhibition interpretation activities. Through the activities of various stakeholders, there was an achievement in publicizing the Seoul Vision, major projects, and the excellent technological prowess of Seoul’s innovative companies to the world. Lee Hye-kyung, the Digital Policy Officer of Seoul City, said, “The pandemic has accelerated the non-face-to-face lifestyle and the transition to a non-face-to-face society has awakened us to the importance of the value of connection and communication between people,” and added, “Seoul’s international status as a smart city was possible because there are smart citizens who actively participate in solving urban problems using digital technology based on the world’s best Smart Seoul platform. We will continue to discover customized technologies and services for the socially disadvantaged and spread the value of ‘accompanying the digitally disadvantaged’ to the world to leap forward as a leading global smart city.”

[Reporter Park Mi-young (mypark@boannews.com)]

Source: Seoul City Wins Best City Award at Barcelona ‘Smart City Awards’ (boannews.com)