“Privacy and cybersecurity — those are not departments, they’re not people, they’re values,” she said. “We have to make sure that everyone in the community understands and truly believes that we mean that when we start on these smart cities projects. Because if we do not protect their data, if we do not afford them the privacy that we have promised, that we would give them, then we will destroy the trust that they have in this organization.”
Maxwell said to gain trust, TGT shares a clear vision with the community of what a project is aiming to accomplish and asks for input. You can’t rush this process, he said; often TGT looks at trust-building within a community as a precursor project to the main project.If the company is looking to lay cable or install other tech hardware in a community, it may spend a few months building a collaborative framework — open communication and feedback with a community to discuss outcomes — before starting the actual installation work.
Source: Smart city collaborations: Lessons from North Carolina’s Research Triangle | Smart Cities Dive
