General details
EDIHs involved
Challenges
Somme Numérique (SN) is a Public Service Organisation (PSO) that is regrouping all the municipalities and communities of the french administrative department (province) Somme, part of the Region Hauts-de-France: Its aim is the mutualisation of skills and pooling common services supporting the digital transformation of all the municipalities and communities, especially the rural ones. It is managed by a public governance through a committee made up of elected representatives from the members (municipalities, communities and department).
SN offers its members shared services for the purchase and exploitation of digital services and for the use of information and communication technologies in administration and education, such as administrative dematerialisation (legality control, public procurement, electronic archiving), digital workspaces for e-education, web sites management, social networks,...
In 2023, SN received the mission to extend its services towards "smart and sustainable territories" domain with a focus on supporting the rural areas for environmental protection, energy consumption optimisation, and get prepared for circular economy.
In order to initialise and realise this mission, SN launched an experimental phase based on Internet of Thing technology deployments concretised with a first public successful procurement process attributed at the begin of 2024.
As the challenges of sovereignty, replicability and scalability of the digital solutions to be implemented for the "smart and sustainable territories" services are totally new for SN , they decided to rely on the principles of Living-in.eu declaration that had been recently signed by the Region Hauts-de-France, in the framework of the regional REV3 policy towards a Sustainable and Digital Economy.
In order to get efficient, independant and local support for their innovative digital project, SN has been introduced to the EDIH GreenPowerIT by the Digital Transformation Mission team of the Region.
Solutions
To support PSO Somme Numérique (SN), EDIH GreenPowerIT leveraged its connexions and collaborations with global ecosystems related to Smart Cities and Communities, especially Living-in.eu and Open & Agile Smart Cities and Communities and related to open source communities, namely FIWARE. The first concrete deliverables from "Test Before Invest" services concern the operational interoperable platform based on the Minimum Interoperability Mechanisms (MIMs) to structure the architecture and the open source components from the FIWARE community specifically packaged following the European Data Space for Smart Communities blueprint. Thanks to this practical knowledge and mutualised resources from the EDIH, SN deployed a first operational interoperable digital platform in march 2024 and 10 pilot local communities got engaged to prioritise and precise the use cases. These pilot communities identified 4 priority related to sustainability and efficiency:
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Energy optimisation in the public buildings, starting with heating systems contol
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Natural water courses monitoring , starting with natural area protection and flood prevention
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Decentralised recyclable waste container park monitoring, starting with usage control and waste collection optimisation
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Street lighting monitoring
With the support of the EDIH GreenPowerIT and of a local SME, SN has prototyped the expected services and made them available for the pilot communities in june 2024.
In addition to this technical support, EDIH GreenPowerIT also delivered "support to find investments" services by helping SN to successfully apply to the H2020 project dRural Open Call and received "cascade funding" to accelerate the development and delivery of the new services to the rural communities.
To consolidate the quality of the technical open source deliverables and share experience and knowledge with other PSOs, EDIH ("networking" services) also connected SN with French cities and Communities having similar needs and approach
Results and Benefits
As a PSO mutualising digital services for rural communities, Somme Numérique (SN) got concrete support from the regional EDIH for addressing their immediate and long term challenges related to the sovereignty, the replicability and the scalability of the innovative digital solutions demanded to leverage technology for impactful green transformation in all covered territories.
Concretely, SN has reduced its "time to market" by at least 6 months to serve its first users in the 10 pilot rural communities. Thanks to the knowledge transfer and hands-on support of the EDIH related to the implementation and exploitation of interoperable digital platform and mutualised digital services targeting rural territories based on open standard and open source components, SN is well armed to ensure its digital sovereignty under a 100% public governance.
Through the reference to the Minimum Interoperability Mechanisms, especially for the design of the harmonised data models (MIM2 / Smart Data Models) and Context Information Management (MIM1 / NGSI-LD + dRural Metaplatform) and strong access control and contracts policies, and digital services offers publication (MIM3 / DS4SSCC Trust Framework + dRural Marketplace) is quite aligned with the Community of Cities and Territories willing to share and collaborate together at regional, national, european levels in order to deploy and exploit replicable and scalable digital solutions.
Perceived social/economic impact
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Time to Market Reduction:
The project reduced the time to market by 6 months for delivering services to the 10 pilot rural communities. -
Energy Savings in Public Buildings:
Achieved a 40% reduction in energy consumption, particularly in heating systems for public buildings. -
Cost Reduction for Recyclable Waste Collection:
Recyclable waste collection costs were reduced by 25%, contributing to more efficient waste management. -
Availability of Recyclable Waste Containers:
The system ensured 100% availability of recyclable waste containers through optimised monitoring. -
Cost Savings for Street Lighting:
Street lighting costs were reduced by 25%, improving overall efficiency in public infrastructure. -
Improvement of Natural Water Courses Monitoring:
The impact on monitoring water courses for agriculture, tourism, and flood prevention is still to be evaluated. -
Funding and Resources:
Secured 120,000€ of cascade funding from H2020 projet dRural Open Call, along with free access to an interoperable digital platform.
Measurable data
Beyond the operational services delivered through TCD to the local communities, the platform will include monitoring and audit features in order to have a systematic analysis of the usage and impact of the services based on measurable / reliable / significant indicators. In this perspective, Somme Numérique has drafted a list of indicators that will be systematically collected, agregated and analysed on a quartely (every 3 months) basis; here are the main measurable data that have been identified to initiate the monitoring/audit process:
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Average frequentation (in nb of persons per hour) of the rooms in public buildings
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Energy consumption (in kWh) of heating systems of the rooms in public buildings
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Number of removals of the recyclabe waste in the dedicated containers
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Average filling level of the containers when recyclabe waste removal is performed
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Average duration (in hours) of lighting per light points
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Energy consumption (in kWh) of street lighting systems
A set of "soft" data related to the end users feedback still have to be discussed and defined.
DMA score and results - Stage 0
With a T0 DMA score of 65 percents, Somme Numérique (SN) was at a moderately advanced stage of its digital transformation process: the organisation was already reaping benefits from the use of digital technologies - both mainstream and some advanced (to a lesser extent). Even though SN was already on the path towards digital transformation, it could further improve internal/external operations, resilience, and sustainability through more targeted investments in digital technologies and skills. The previous investments in digital technologies was covering a wide range of operations but there was still space to increase the level of preparedness (in terms of plans and resources) in order to accommodate more sophisticated solutions.
More specifically, the lowest score of the T0 DMA was in the INTEROPERABILITY dimension: the score of 34 percents showed that SN tended to be in an early stage with regard to interoperability. Then, SN could greatly improve its operations by improving the levels of interoperability in the various areas but also ensuring security and privacy in data exchange, give priority to using services via digital channels, ensure long-term accessibility to data storage and make sure to regularly assess the effectiveness and the efficiency of digital solutions offered to communities and citizens.
That was the purpose of the TCD project!
DMA score and results – Stage 1
As interoperability is the core concept of TCD project, leveraging the Minimum Interoperability Mechanisms (MIMs) concretely implemented with open standards and open source components, Somme Numérique has now the capacity to manage the deployment of advanced digital services with high level of guarantee regarding the challenges of sovereignity, replicabiity, scalability and security. This would lead to a significant improvement of the T1 DMA score, namely on the INTEROPERABILITY dimension to reach a score close to 80 percent.
Lessons learned
Do's
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Think global: Leverage the existing deliverables from European Communities such as:
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Open & Agile Smart Cities (OASC)
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Living-in.eu
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Relevant projects like dRural and DS4SSCC.
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Act local: Engage local pilot communities from the beginning to ensure the solutions address their concrete needs.
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Prioritise operational solutions: Focus on delivering solutions that can be practically implemented and meet immediate needs of users.
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Mutualise efforts: Balance generic features with customisation or configuration to meet local needs while maintaining the ability to scale or replicate.
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Scale or fail fast: Start small with pilot implementations, and scale based on real user feedback or pivot quickly if necessary.
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Coordinate transparently: Work openly with public and private stakeholders by:
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Clearly defining roles and responsibilities.
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Using a technical architecture to assign and bound those responsibilities.
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Don'ts
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Don’t overlook feedback from real users: Implement pilot programs and gather real-world feedback before fully scaling solutions.
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Avoid isolated development: Ensure efforts are not siloed. Collaboration between stakeholders is key to achieving replicability and scalability.
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Don’t focus solely on customisation: While customisation is important, prioritise finding a balance with generic features to avoid creating solutions that are too specific and hard to scale.
Other Information
- From end user perspective, here is a short (draft) video (in french + auto translation available) showing the concrete implementation usage of the TCD services supported by SN in the 600 inhabitants rural village of Region Hauts-de-France, named Long: https://youtu.be/V2EK6NIJTN4
- From a more technical perspective, here is a short video showing the concrete implementation of MIM1 and MIM2 requirements, including a short demo in the EDIH CitiVerse: https://youtu.be/DTI_YFLSfns