How to make a city SMART?

One of the great things of ETH’s MAS MTEC program is that you can build a great network of high-profile professionals from many different industries. The ETH Alumni Association helps us to also maintain this valuable network over time.

Nicolas Lemaitre finished the MAS MTEC program in 2015 and was back then working for ABB. Meanwhile, almost 10 years later, he has become Project Manager Smart City at the town of Zug, half an hour south of Zurich. How convenient, that he is also member of the ETH MAS MTEC Alumni chapter and we could convince him to organize an event together.

The Park Tower is Zug’s tallest building and offers amazing views to those who are lucky enough to reach the higher floors. We were privileged enough to gain access to an impressive meeting room, belonging to the town of Zug on the 24^th floor.

After having admired the iconic mountain silhouette of central Switzerland under ideal weather conditions, the evening started with an introduction by Zug’s Stadtschreiber Martin Würmli.

As many of the non-Swiss native participants, such as myself, learned this literally translates to the "town’s writer" (technically the town’s Clerk), and is actually the highest public servant of a given municipality. So, we had the honor to be welcomed by the “CEO” of the town, who gave us a fascinating background to the history and the philosophy of Zug’s Smart City program.

We learned that the town’s leadership values a doer mentality and the courage to simply try out things, over a too theoretical "paralysis by analysis" approach. This reminded me of concepts of rapid prototyping and fail-fast-and-cheap approaches which we learned in our innovation management and entrepreneurship courses. In addition, I thought this attitude might have something to do with Zug becoming successful as it is today.

The main part evening was dedicated to Nicolas Lemaitre’s presentation, introducing us to his five-year journey of striving to make Zug an ever-smarter city. We were reminded of Professor Pius Baschera and his famous Hilti case studies, as introducing new digital solutions to an old administration is inherently a large change management project.

As we learned in various MAS MTEC lectures, the first important step was to create a sense of urgency - or risk to soon see the project suffocate in the organization’s idiosyncratic inertia.

How good then that Nicolas remembered this gem of management wisdom, and was able to get the project off the ground - also thanks to the mentioned doer mindset and support of Zug’s administerial top management.

What followed was an intense sequence of integrations of functionalities and of other neighboring municipalities into the externe Seite eZug mobile app solution, which is the core of Zug’s innovative eGovernment concept.

The underlying thought is to create value and convenience for all citizens by offering efficient, safe and easy to use administrative services.

Today in Zug you do not have to go to the townhall during office hours anymore if you need a certificate of residence, or an excerpt from the debt-enforcement registry. You simply open your eZug app and order it with a simple click at any time and from anywhere.

The "killer application" which changed the growth of usage numbers of the eZug app, from slow and steady to fast and steep, was the introduction of Klapp which is a digital communication platform for schools. Today, parents to kids of school age have to use eZug to conveniently be informed about what is happening in their kid’s schools, or to communicate to their teachers when the kids are sick and cannot attend. The substantial advantage of connecting the Klapp app with eZug app is that a digital identity is also provided, because it is connected with a verified civil identity, and thus there will be no fake accounts, be it from cheeky kids or from adults with bad intentions. This is creating a trusted environment in the digital space, and peace of mind for parents, teachers and Zug’s children.

Many questions and comments after the presentations made it difficult to close the official part, however it showed that the audience was engaged and curious until the very end. A little bit later than scheduled, we started with the Apéro where Nicolas and Martin were available for individual questions and discussions over a drink.

While enjoying the sunset over the lake of Zug, old contacts where renewed and some new ones were made, before taking the elevator back down all 24 stories, enriched by great insights and joyful memories.