Cities are eager to be open and agile, but the city departments often lack knowledge about open standards for data exchange, especially when they procure isolated services. There is already a sheer number of standards available to support cities and communities and this makes standards an interesting, yet complicated field to research and navigate.

The Open & Agile Smart Cities network (OASC), is founded by the Centre for the Digital and Green Transformation in Cities and Communities, together with Connected Places Catapult, Business Tampere and imec. OASC is chaired by Martin Brynskov and it is a very good example of building a city network based on common and open standards. OASC is a neutral partner that supports cities by means of a minimal approach that facilitates and structures data exchange within and between cities as well as third parties. The approach is called OASC Minimal Interoperability Mechanisms (MIMs). MIMs will enable a smart city market for data and services that benefits both cities and suppliers. The former by avoiding vendor lock-in when purchasing digital services; the latter by enabling a market for their solutions which can be deployed by a develop once, deploy many times principle.

Because of our extensive knowledge in the field of standards we are also invited to assemblies developing new standards both on a national and international level. Martin Brynskov is taking part in the International Standardisation Organisation’s (ITU) Focus Group on Data Processing and Management to support IoT in smart cities and communities (FG-DPM) and he is also chairing the Danish Standards Committee of Smart and Sustainable Cities.