Smart city in the making: How Almaty is turning data into a public resource
Almaty, the former capital of Kazakhstan (1929-1997), is going through a digital governance turn. Since the national program Digital Kazakhstan's launch in 2017, Almaty has been laying out ambitious plans to strengthen its position as a major socio-economic hub in Kazakhstan by transitioning into a smart city by 2025. The "Smart Almaty" initiative increasingly relies on digital data as a public resource, warranting critical examination into the deployment of the technologies and their social impacts. Speaking at the DFCA23 conference, the director of the Digitalization Department, Bayan Konirbayev, shared a vision of the "city-as-a-service" through which municipal services are tailored for customer-like citizens.
“Almaty city will never be able to be controllable if we do not have digital instruments. When we are talking about the digital government, it is about very specific customer solutions for every citizen", said Konirbayev, stressing that with 3 million inhabitants within the metropolitan area, the city provided 14,5 million online services in 2022.
Focus areas of digitization projects in Almaty. Source: Almaty Digitalization Department (2023)
Some 94% of the city’s services—such as reserving a school place for a child or getting water service—are now available online. According to Konirbayev, Kazakh citizens are no longer satisfied with the basic government services of the past: "Especially in the beginning of post-Soviet Union time, people were happy to get any service. But it is not like this now. With the development of digitalisation, we see how affordable digital services have become. You can use Kaspi, HalykBank, and a lot of other mobile applications. Thanks to this, a lot of people think that they need a very good service provided online".
Flagship project in partnership with private sector
During the presentation, Konirbayev also detailed the idea behind the Almaty Data Lake, a flagship project of the Department of Digitalization that aims to facilitate data exchange between governmental bodies, private companies and academic institutions. The project received support from the city government and the private sector, namely the Singaporean CrimsonLogic and the local IT company Alseco.
It includes a data warehouse where data from different city departments are integrated to provide proactive services for residents. Proactive services include initiatives where the government automatically applies policies towards specific groups. For example, Almaty households that include a disabled person automatically receive discounts on utility bills, according to a report by the Thoughtlab think tank. The methodology was inspired by the Singaporean ‘Citizen 360⁰’ by which data governance allows implementing the principle that "data runs after a person, not a person after his data".
"Qualified service will come with some level of customization. If the service is for everybody, probably 50% of the people will not be happy. This is the reason why the city has started to move towards proactive services, especially focused on digital inclusion", asserted Konirbayev.
IT strategy for Almaty Smart City in four stages. Source: Almaty Digitalization Department (2020)
From cybersecurity to business-led data
At the centre of ongoing discussions regarding its implications for individual privacy, a digital surveillance system is being developed as a core element of the Smart Almaty initiative. According to Konirbayev, a unified video surveillance system comprising 30,000 cameras connected to 11 AI-based algorithms – including face recognition – will provide 83% of coverage inside the city and 95% of coverage of the road infrastructure. The objective is not only to provide mobility and security solutions but also to fill the business ecosystem with aggregated city data, which further warrants questions about the commodification of citizen information.
"The development of the tracking solution offers a strong cybersecurity solution, utilising triangulation analysis of mobile users. Every individual entering the city is tracked and anonymized. From this data, we can correlate non-cash transactions with specific aspects of business activity. This enables us to discern, for example, the number of coffee purchases made in a particular district within a specified timeframe", points out Konirbayev. "Based on data-driven decisions we are trying to develop a digital economy where the city will be a supportive power".
Performance of Almaty against the Key Performance Indicators for Smart Sustainable Cities. Source: UNECE (2023)
Despite the acceleration of the digitization efforts, the city still faces several challenges to smart and sustainable development, as highlighted by a recent report from the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE). The evaluation of performance indicators for smart sustainable cities indicates concerns over renewable energy sources, air quality and pollutant emissions, with disparities between official government sources and independent assessments. Additionally, growing concerns over algorithm biases, with numerous documented cases disproportionately affecting marginalised communities, underscore the need for oversight, accountability, and safeguards to strike a delicate balance between technological innovation, governance and individual rights.