The office of the Smart City Písek Development project officially started its activities on February 1st, 2017. Moreover, the agenda will fall within the competence of the Deputy Mayor of Písek, Josef Knot. The operation of the office is financed mostly by the employment operational program, which also finances the streamlining of public administration.
"We needed to set up a specialized workplace to cover activities around Smart City Písek and come up with system concepts that set our priorities within the areas defined by the Blue and Yellow Book and design projects suitable for implementation in order to maintain our position as a smart leader among Czech medium-sized cities. As a result, no other Czech city attempting to adopt the smart city concept has established a similar workplace. Therefore, Písek can acquire a comparative advantage," says the Deputy Mayor Josef Knot about the reason of the workplace’s existence.
The operation of the office is financed by the employment operational program from 95 percent. This program also funds the streamlining of public administration. The city council appointed a total of five members to this position, which is set up as a separate organizational unit of the city. They will work part-time for the city, totaling only 2.0 full-time, which corresponds to the needs of the city Písek’s size. .
Although the workplace has not yet begun to function fully, the head Ing. Vladimr Zadina and PhDr. Milos Prokysek, Ph.D. D, the guarantor of the field of information technology, have already set out to solve one of the pilot projects in which the city of Písek has engaged in Limerick, Ireland. It's called BALANCITIES, and Písek was requested to participate a few months ago by the partner city of Trondheim, which serves as the consortium's "principal partner," alongside the previously mentioned Norwegian Trondheim, Leuven, Belgium, and Limerick, Ireland. With European funds, the city of Písek will be able to implement costly but useful smart technologies. Only Prague and Brno have taken part in pan-European flagship initiatives so far, aside from Písek.
"The Norwegians offered us the opportunity to take part as the so-called "Follower City," a type of follower. Our objective will be to track the progress of individual projects in prominent cities and then implement these innovative ideas in our own city. Last week, we spent a lot of time in Limerick working on the final definiton of the project plan, which will eventually involve six cities and roughly 30 other entities, mainly from the technology sector, such as Microsoft and ABB. The meeting helped us in fine-tuning the most recent changes to the project application, which must be presented for evaluation by February 14th," Vladimr Zadina, the head of the Smart Písek organizational unit, said as much.
Mgr. Martin Volny
PR specialist of the Smart Písek organizational unit
