Standards Compliance

Aligning Smart City Strategies with National and International Best Practice

We support towns, cities, and regions in achieving compliance with national and international smart city standards, ensuring their strategic initiatives align with best practices, ethical guidelines, and regulatory requirements.

This includes guidance on working with global standards such as the ISO 37000 series for Smart and Sustainable Communities, as well as those developed by regional and national standards bodies, the ITU (International Telecommunication Union), and IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers).

By aligning local strategies with these frameworks, we help cities future-proof their initiatives, build credibility with funders and partners, and develop more coherent, effective and responsible digital transformation programmes.

Why Standards Matter

Standards are more than just technical checklists—they are shared frameworks that enable consistent, transparent, and scalable action across complex systems. In the smart city context, compliance with recognised standards helps cities:

  • Demonstrate Maturity and Readiness: Showing that digital initiatives meet internationally agreed benchmarks.

  • Improve Governance and Accountability: Embedding structured principles for decision-making, transparency, and citizen engagement.

  • Ensure Interoperability and Resilience: Supporting system-wide integration and future adaptability.

  • Attract Investment and Partnerships: Building trust with institutional funders, development banks, and private partners.

  • Align with Policy Goals: Connecting local actions with regional, national, and international strategies such as the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the European Digital Decade.

  • Mitigate Risks: Addressing cybersecurity, privacy, equity, and sustainability risks through proactive design and implementation.

Our aim is not to turn standards into bureaucracy, but to use them as the tools they are intended to be - for clarity, coherence, and confidence in delivering public value.

Our Approach

We guide cities through a practical and strategic process of standards compliance, whether they are starting from scratch or seeking to formalise and refine existing strategies.

Our services typically include:

  • Gap Assessment and Readiness Audits
    Reviewing current policies, strategies, and governance structures against relevant standards to identify strengths, gaps, and areas for improvement.

  • Standards Navigation
    Clarifying which standards apply, how they relate to one another, and which ones are most relevant to the city’s context, goals, and maturity level.

  • Strategic Integration
    Supporting the integration of standards into smart city roadmaps, digital policies, procurement frameworks, data strategies, and programme governance.

  • Capacity Building
    Training staff, decision-makers, and delivery teams on the practical application of standards and the principles behind them.

  • Monitoring and Reporting Frameworks
    Developing mechanisms to track compliance, report progress, and embed continuous improvement practices.

Frameworks We Work With

We help cities navigate and apply a range of key smart city and digital governance standards, including:

  • ISO 37000 – Core principles of good governance for public sector entities.

  • ISO 37101 – Management systems for sustainable development in communities.

  • ISO 37106 – Guidance on establishing digitally enabled city governments.

  • ISO 37107 – A management system standard for sustainable and smart community projects, providing structured guidance for planning, implementation, and monitoring.

  • ISO 37122 & ISO 37123 – Indicators for smart and resilient cities, supporting benchmarking and performance monitoring.

  • ISO/IEC 38507 – Governance implications of using AI in public services.

  • ITU-T Y.4900 Series – International standards for key performance indicators (KPIs) in smart sustainable cities.

  • IEEE P2784 – Smart City Planning and Technology Guide.

  • National and Regional Standards – Including those from BSI, CEN/CENELEC, UNE, and other national smart city frameworks.

We help cities make sense of this evolving landscape and apply the right standards in the right way.