OASC (Open & Agile Smart Cities Initiative)

The Open & Agile Smart Cities initiative (OASC) is a city-driven, non-profit organisation. The overall objective is to create a Smart City market. OASC was founded in January 2015 and came to life with the first wave of cities joining in March 2015. OASC continues to grow.

OASC kickstarts the use of a shared set of methods to develop systems and make them interoperable across a single city as well as between multiple cities. Today’s smart cities are pioneering solutions that improve local practices while promoting sustainable job creation. OASC provides the network for cities all over the world to share best practices, compare results, and avoid vendor (and city) lock-in while advocating for de facto standards.

Smart City market through four de facto standards

Global de facto standards for portability and interoperability provide a clear path to creating a true global market for smart city services. OASC advocates cities to adopt four simple mechanisms as de facto standards. The first mechanism is a driven-by-implementation approach: This implies, among other things, that communities and developers can co-create their services.

The other three mechanisms are technical: an API, a set of data models, and an open data platform, which are described more precisely in the Open and Agile Smart Cities Background Document.

Companies benefit from the OASC initiative as they can now offer services that comply with these mechanisms to help cities with implementation. Interested companies can be listed on the initiative website and can join us at events.

The initiative is governed by the OASC Task Force and overseen by the Connected Smart Cities Network Board. However, cities remain in charge and each country is represented on the Task Force with one Task Force member.