BT Consulting and Systems Integration: Creating Positive News From Government IT

BT had signed a major partnership agreement with the City of Edinburgh Council to develop a completely new way of managing and delivering public services. At a time when government IT projects were two a penny, and the only ones gaining media attention were the notorious failures, the challenge was to turn yet another big local government IT outsourcing deal into something that would ignite the imagination of the media on a local and national basis. BT needed an overarching theme that the city's citizens and the media could latch on to. Aspectus homed in on one phrase that BT and the council has used to describe the project internally - The Smart City.