The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), in collaboration with the Office for IT and eGovernment, has chosen a winner of the third open data challenge – “From Open Data To Smart Cities”. Solutions proposed for this challenge came from seven different cities across Serbia and this demonstrates just how quickly the idea of smart cities has spread across the country and captured the attention of IT companies and communities.

The Challenge was announced on November 15, 2019 and all interested stakeholders could propose ideas. Applications arriving from startups, civil society organizations, and small and medium-sized enterprises were especially welcomed. Under the Challenge rules, the winning idea will receive support of up to 8 000 US dollars.

The winning solution comes from the Agency DVAS from Kragujevac, who will be working in collaboration with the company Novatronic. Kragujevac has been one of the cities most actively involved in the open data initiative in Serbia. In the last year, this city has worked on making its public transportation more digitalized and open to its users. As of 2019, Kragujevac has provided open data on its public transportation lines and planned timetables which creates potential space for improving public transportation services if this data is combined with quality real time data. Given that all GAS (City Transport Agency) Kragujevac vehicles have GPS locators and counters of entry and exit of passengers, combining this data with currently open datasets enables the creation of an application which would serve the citizens, as well as GAS Kragujevac itself.

The winning solution will enable citizens to check the arrival of their transportation in real time, as well as check how crowded it will be. Additionally, users of public transportation will be able to leave feedback about the quality of transportation services through the application, hence allowing GAS Kragujevac to continually follow, optimize and improve their work.

Open Data Challenge was implemented in the scope of the project Open Data – Open Opportunities, supported by the World Bank and UK Good Governance Fund, with the goal to enable development of open data ecosystem, through stimulation of open data reuse, promotion of different use cases and benefits of open data, and capacity building of different stakeholders for open data reuse and analysis. The project is implemented by UNDP Serbia in partnership with the Office for IT and eGovernment of the Republic of Serbia.