Smart cities offer many potential benefits for residents - but only when data generated within cities can be shared and used to inform decision making. The purpose of this Primer is to explain as simply as possible how a civic digital trust could democratically and responsibly share smart city data and algorithms.
Civic digital trusts are a relatively new idea, and our understanding of how they work is evolving rapidly.
That means this Primer needs to evolve too. The first draft of the Primer was published online in December, 2018, following a workshop that convened a diverse group of stakeholders in Toronto in November, 2018.
We are publishing the Primer as a Gitbook because of its integration with Github, the platform that powers the Open Source movement. As an Open Source ebook, anyone can add to it, or use it to build other Open Source resources. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
To suggest changes to the Primer, click the [Edit on GitHub] button on the top right of the screen and propose changes and additions to the handbook for our stewards to approve. For those of you who haven't used GitHub before, here's a handy guide Enspiral created for people to contribute to their GitBook. If you've got something to add to the Primer but this process doesn't work for you, email your suggestions to [email protected].
This Gitbook is not a Wiki. However, the five pillars and 10 simple rules of Wikipedia provide a useful guide for the editorial standards we are aiming for to provide a reliable, neutral and accessible reference.