But we are also fully aware that a single city (in particular, a small city like the city of Porto) cannot do much alone and by itself; but collectively, cities can join efforts towards creating social, environmental and economic impact in our citizens’ and cities’ quality of life, while preserving and enhancing citizens’ digital rights and privacy.

Since municipalities are seen by citizens as their main contact point with public institutions, we believe that cities can play a major role in acting as a strong wall, assuring and creating the right policies towards preserving citizens’ digital rights, privacy, freedom of expression, dignity, democracy and other social rights. Besides, since municipalities manage and rule the public space in the cities, they need to be particularly aware, vigilant and active towards fully assuring citizens’ digital rights and privacy in the public space.

We strongly believe that collaboration and knowledge sharing between cities is key towards increasing citizens’ and cities’ quality of life, and responding to citizens’ demands and needs with innovation.

For all these reasons, the city of Porto – with the direct support of the Mayor and the Vice-Mayor – has proudly joined the Cities Coalition for Digital Rights, and wishes to be an active participant in the Coalition.

Existing initiatives

1. Universal and equal access to the internet, and digital literacy

• Optical fibre network (MAN – Metropolitan Area Network)
• Public access Wi-Fi network and Wi-Fi service available on the city buses
• Data portals
• Municipality’s web portal for inhabitants and companies
• Water supply company’s web portal for clients
• Human-assisted digital counselling at the office for inhabitants and companies
• User’s guides/manuals of the digital services
• Computers with Internet connectivity for free public use
• Computers with Internet connectivity for blind citizens, and audio contents in digital format, both available on premises and online (digital audio library)

2. Privacy, data protection and security

• Data Protection Officer (DPO) at the Municipality of Porto
• Data Protection Department at the Municipality of Porto
• Single and unified privacy and cookies policies (both online and in paper documents, when applies)
• Specific area related with privacy and data protection issues at the Municipality’s webpage, which includes the direct contact of the DPO
• Systematic process for obtaining informed authorization for personal data gathering and processing from citizens
• Policies and actions related with (cyber)security and data privacy issues of the public access Wi-Fi network
• Mitigation plan related with the traffic monitoring cameras (real-time video visualization versus citizens’ privacy)

3. Transparency, accountability, and non-discrimination of data, content and algorithms

• Single and unified privacy and cookies policies (both online and in paper documents, when applies)
• Specific area related with privacy and data protection issues at the Municipality’s webpage, which includes the direct contact of the DPO
• Systematic process for obtaining informed authorization for personal data gathering and processing from citizens
• Inhabitant Ombudsman, whose job is to guarantee the defence and the pursuit of the legitimate rights and interests of the citizens before the Municipality, its services and companies, in particular, in order to meet the special needs of certain groups of citizens with greater vulnerabilities
• Database of all the sensors, IoT and communication devices, and other data gathering devices that are deployed in the city on public space, and app that enables citizens to identify and report any unlisted device in the city, to question the Municipality and to get feedback about it from the DPO (PrivacyApp)
• Specification and deployment of an open data portal
• The public access Wi-Fi network is fully neutral and does not filter, block or reduce QoS of any website, app or other content

4. Participatory Democracy, diversity and inclusion

• Porto Innovation Hub, whose purpose is to bring together the innovation agents of the city and the region, and to involve the citizens more and more in the process of continuous evolution and improvement of the city, thus calling for more active civic participation in the process of co-creation of services and other solutions (mostly technology-based)
• Use of the guiding principles of service design to the (re)design of more efficient and accessible public services, as well as to promote a sustainable organizational change
• ScaleUp Porto programme, which is a strategy that commits the city towards the promotion of the ecosystem of innovation and entrepreneurship
• Hackacity Porto, which is a hackathon that aims at testing big data and promoting its use to develop ideas  that can have an impact in the city, but also fostering collaboration amongst stakeholders
• Desafios Porto, which is a competition that aims at identifying (through citizen´s engagement) the biggest challenges lived by the city, and to find technology-based solutions that give the most innovative and scalable answers to those challenges
• Citizens are requested to actively participate in several ongoing public consultation processes related with new regulations, decisions and/or policies

5. Open and ethical digital service standards

• The Metropolitan Area Network (MAN) and the public access Wi-Fi networks assure a certain degree of independence from the market and technological sovereignty, and enable the Municipality to provide free or low-cost digital services to the citizens and local institutions, respectively
• The Urban Platform, which uses open APIs, open data models and open standards (all royalty free) as building blocks, and whose reference architecture is based on the Minimal Interoperability Mechanisms (MIMs) adopted by the Open & Agile Smart Cities (OASC)
• The use of open components (vendor-neutral and technology-agnostic) as building blocks of the Urban Platform, the implementation of MIMs in its architecture, and the use of open standards and open-source software, assures technological sovereignty and interoperability, and empowers the Municipality of Porto to avoid vendor lock-ins

Future plans

1. Universal and equal access to the internet, and digital literacy

• Expand and upgrade the existing optical fibre and public access Wi-Fi networks, with the intention of providing additional and higher quality digital services and broadband connectivity to the city and to the citizens
• Optimize and upgrade the existing Municipality’s web portal for inhabitants and companies, the data portals and other web portals with new features and functionalities
• Create new free and universal digital communication channels with the citizens (but keeping traditional ones in place, such as phone lines and physical places)
• Create dissemination campaigns about the public access Wi-Fi network, so that more people will be aware of its existence, its features and the location of hotspots in the city
• Create dissemination campaigns about the existing digital services, increase the human-assisted digital counselling to the citizens, and update and increase the guides and manuals of digital services
• Create digital literacy and digital counselling programmes, with the objective of overcoming the existing digital divide

2. Privacy, data protection and security

• Create and publicize the user’s terms and conditions of service and the privacy policies of the public access Wi-Fi network, which will also inform the user of which personal data is gathered, for what purpose, for how long, and how and why this personal data is processed (when applies)
• Implement personal data anonymization mechanisms, retention periods and data removal policies and procedures of the public access Wi-Fi network
• The public access Wi-Fi network will not require the users to register or to provide any user’s identification (users will be kept unidentifiable) and Wi-Fi tracking will not be allowed
• Keep the single and unified privacy and cookies policies updated
• Create easy conditions for citizens to access, update or delete any personal information that is stored by the Municipality (across all databases)
• Assure that any existing or future services (either digital or ‘analogue’) are provided with privacy assurance (‘privacy by design’ principle) and that only the strictly necessary personal data will be requested, gathered and processed (and the no longer necessary data will be properly deleted)
• Create specific digital literacy and digital counselling programmes about privacy, not only for the citizens but also for the civil servants at the Municipality of Porto
• At the networks, systems and applications layers, proper reliability and cybersecurity defence measures will be continuously implemented and updated (both at the hardware, firmware and software), responding to new, unforeseen or undetected vulnerabilities and treats

3. Transparency, accountability, and non-discrimination of data, content and algorithms

• Keep the single and unified privacy and cookies policies updated
• Fully deploy the PrivacyApp, which will enable the citizens to have and request information about IoT and other data gathering devices deployed in the city
• Launch the open data portal, with open datasets of the Municipality and its companies, and also from several public organizations linked to the city management and operations
• Implement a full net-neutrality policy (without any kind of filtering , block or QoS policy based on website, app or other related content) for the public access Wi-Fi network
• The public access Wi-Fi service will be provided in a best-effort policy and global QoS policies could be implemented in order to ensure the level of service for all users
• The transparency and accountability portal of the Municipality of Porto will be enriched with more public interest documents, and will also be redesigned and upgraded in order to ease its use and to facilitate document/information finding

4. Participatory Democracy, diversity and inclusion

• Citizens will have the chance to directly question the DPO of the Municipality of Porto regarding the user’s terms and conditions of service and the privacy policies of the public access Wi-Fi network, and also of the IoT and other data gathering devices deployed in the city (the latter also through the PrivacyApp)
• Release and make publicly available more city governance public interest documents and city’s open data
• Increase citizens’ engagement and participation through participatory innovation (co-creation of solutions, participation in open debates and discussions, and active development of data-based digital solutions in hackathons)
• Make a stronger effort in publicizing and engaging citizens’ participation in future public consultation processes related with new regulations, decisions and/or policies
• Take particular attention to new digital technologies, infrastructures and/or data that may have an impact on citizens’ social rights, and engage the community in order to shape the use of these technologies at the local level and to better inform the Municipality in the decision and policy making processes
• Launch a new civic issues reporting platform, which will enable citizens, companies and other institutions to report civic problems to the relevant departments of the Municipality

5. Open and ethical digital service standards

• Once the city’s Urban Platform is fully deployed, the Municipality of Porto will also work towards the integration of specific ‘vertical’ applications (such as, mobility, environment, energy, waste and civil protection), which will use/provide data from/to the Urban Platform through open APIs, and thus assuring interoperability of the ICT infrastructure among several departments and services
• Avoid any vendor lock-ins at the application layer, by requiring any application to use open standards and open APIs to communicate with the Urban Platform
• Avoid any vendor lock-ins at the devices layer, by requiring any device to use open standards and open APIs to communicate with the Urban Platform
• Work towards the interoperability of all the ICT infrastructures, databases and datacentres among different departments, companies and institutions of the Municipality of Porto, according to the same principles of openness, standardization and interoperability
• Implement open electronic identification and authentication standards (ID interoperability) and implement Once-Only Principle (OOP) policies and procedures among different departments, companies and institutions of the Municipality of Porto (data interoperability)
• Launch the open data portal, which will be based on open source data management solutions, the datasets will use open data models and data will be accessed through open APIs
• Keep the public access Wi-Fi network interoperable with the EDUROAM (World Wide Education Roaming for Research & Education) network and the Wi-Fi service available on the city buses