Citizen Tech Pioneers

Citizen Tech Pioneers  places citizens at the heart of identifying the problems of their neighbourhood and how they can use new technologies to help them tackle these problems together.

The population of Cardiff is estimated to grow by 26% between 2014 and 2034; the fastest growing city in the UK. This will bring with it increasing demand for services and more pressure on infrastructure. This is at a time when Cardiff Council has to save £115m over the next 3 years. This is a very similar story across the UK. Services will need to be delivered differently.

The Internet of Things (IoT) – where everyday objects are connected to a network in order to share their data – is one transformative technology that could help address some of these issues by offering environmental improvements, economic opportunities, and more efficient and effective delivery of services such as transport, healthcare and energy. However, key to realising the benefits of this, and overcoming challenges such as privacy and security concerns, is ensuring citizens and communities are involved in the design and implementation of new IoT-based services.

Citizen Tech Pioneers aims to bridge this gap by running workshops to understand what local issues people want to address, then working with them to pilot new technologies and develop new apps.

How Fellows can help

This is a new project supported by seed funding from the RSA Welsh Fellows Award. 

In the initial phases, we particularly welcome support from people with relevant skills and experience that could contribute to the project, such as:

• User centred design
• Community engagement
• Technologists (in smart cities, data, sensors, internet of things etc.)
• App developers
• Economic and behavioural analysis

If this project is of interest to you, please contact Luke Loveridge FRSA: luke.loveridge@gmail.com