🎯 Theme: Building Use Cases That Demonstrate Real Value

This page outlines a framework for implementing data strategy in cities through practical use cases, covering the methodology for generating, selecting, and prioritizing data-driven initiatives that align with strategic goals and demonstrate early impact.

Introduction

In digital transformation work, especially in cities, it’s critical to define tangible scenarios—or use cases—for how strategically using data will have an impact on the organisation’s policy goals. This ensures a link between strategy and delivery, which need to go hand-in-hand in order to make an impact for service users. The strong focus on uncovering and addressing problems at hand will drive progress when implementing the broader data strategy.

Why Use Cases?

Use cases are a helpful tool used when implementing a strategy in order to demonstrate impact early and often. The goal should be to deliver it quickly—get a prototype out as soon as possible, acknowledging flaw upfront in order to build trust with users.

This is a key component of OCL’s tried and tested delivery approach, which is summarised in the following diagram.

Typically the data strategy process forms the project baseline and use cases are then used to implement the data strategy. This creates a feedback loop where principles and strategy can be established, tested and iteratively improved or pivoted through the learned experiences of the use cases. Each use case provides a deliverable that improves decision-making within the context, usually one or all of the following:

• Data management intervention and tool
• Data analytics module/s
• Interface design
• Capacity building and handover
• Policy and strategy insight
• Governance support

The figure below shows the general use case mechanism methodology OCL deploys in implementing city data strategy.

How to Run a Use Case

Start with Design Principles

Generate Use Cases

Generating use case ideas typically involves collaborative and structured activities, often centered around interactive workshops. During these sessions, stakeholders from across city departments participate in divergent exercises to generate ideas, brainstorming broadly to uncover potential use cases. This open-ended exploration encourages creative thinking and brings diverse perspectives to the table.

When narrowing down a problem, it’s important to consider the impact and risk of addressing it. Questions to ask include:

• Impact:
  • How many people will it benefit and how much? You should solve a problem which benefits many people and they will notice.
  • Is this solving a common problem? Solve a user need that can be copied to other teams - other teams are facing similar problems.
• Risk:
  • How institutionally complex is it? Pick projects owned by your organisation and that have institutional boundaries. Add 6 months to the timeline for every department you involve.
  • Is it greenfield or brownfield? A greenfield service is one built to meet a user need that is new (or at least, newly identified). There is therefore not much to think about in terms of how existing laws, norms, expectations or choices provide a guide or constraint on how the users’ needs should be met. Brownfield services, on the other hand, come with differing levels of attached expectations. Brownfield always come with baggage. Suggestion is to start with small services that are small or new or so irretrievably broken that you get a blank sheet of paper.

Subsequently, further converging exercises refine these ideas by evaluating their feasibility, alignment, and potential impact, ultimately narrowing down to a prioritized shortlist.

Another effective approach is leveraging existing strategic priorities of the city (e.g. enhancing public safety, improving transportation systems, or increasing sustainability) to anchor use cases directly to established goals. Additionally, examining successful examples from other cities can provide inspiration and validation, enabling stakeholders to learn from proven models and adapt relevant strategies within their unique local context.

Roll-Out Methodology

The use case approach has been used effectively by Open Cities Lab in city interventions, including as an example the Electricity Asset Management use case in the previous UK FCDO Future Cities South Africa project, using the following roll-out methodology:

• Weekly agile sessions with key city personnel and the translations of requests into development objectives
• Weekly development sessions to implement requests from agile sessions
• Testing sessions with the main implementing group followed by inclusion of requests

The above occurs in development ‘crunches’ of 6-8 weeks at a time over a 9 month period. Each use case will typically have 2 - 3 ‘crunches’ with a month break in between for technical documentation, user testing, capabilities development, and institutional requirements to be carried out.

The workshops, events, toolkits and training sessions can be seen as use cases with the baseline being the extent of effective collection, collation and sharing of data driven-governance processes for local governments.

Use Case Decision-Making Framework

The objective of the use case decision framework is to guide city decision-makers to identify, select, and prioritise data-driven use cases that support strategic goals, improve services, and align with governance standards.

The framework is intended for a phased implementation, where initial groundwork sets standards for data use, followed by practical deployment and refinement through specific use cases.

Core Criteria for Use Case Selection

When narrowing down use case ideas to a shortlist which can be acted upon, you should map out the following elements to compare against each other.

1. Business Need and Problem Assessment:

First, identify specific problems or needs within city operations where data can provide meaningful solutions. Clarify how the use case supports the city’s broader strategic objectives, including data strategy alignment. Then, evaluate prior solutions, noting lessons and how they inform the proposed use case.

1. Actors and Stakeholders:

In order to effectively implement a use case, you must determine who will supply, handle, analyse, and regulate data in the use case. Identify both internal and external beneficiaries, and outline data governance responsibilities.

1. Data Governance and Architecture Alignment:

When building use cases, be sure to adhere to city governance standards, including mandatory principles for data privacy, retention, and metadata management. Verify the alignment of data structures, cataloging requirements, and architecture with the city’s information systems and scalability needs.

Evaluation Criteria

Selecting use cases to pursue and prioritise can be tricky, but leveraging the following critera will ensure due diligence by the planning organisation and increase the likelihood of effective implementation.

Feasibility:

Assess data availability, technical complexity, and required resources to ensure the use case can be implemented within existing constraints.

Acceptability:

Confirm stakeholder buy-in, ensure sensitivity to relevant political or social contexts, and address any data sensitivity or security concerns.

Suitability:

Determine alignment with city priorities, the significance of the impact, and potential for skill development and capacity-building.

Viability:

Establish long-term support for maintaining and funding the use case, with a focus on continuous improvement in data management and governance practices.

Scoring and Prioritisation Process

Each use case is scored on the core criteria to determine its priority level, with high-scoring cases prioritised for implementation.

A subset of high-priority use cases may be selected for piloting, especially those that offer scalability potential and quick wins in alignment with city strategy.

Scoring Table

Below is a scoring table with the criteria defined and elaborated.

Example with scoring table