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Smart city projects have plenty of on-paper advantages, but city leaders are keen to remain in the good books of residents and broken promises, lack of city funds, and failed projects don’t make a good resume.

It’s part of the reason we aren’t seeing much smart city investment outside of hubs like San Francisco, New York City, and Austin, Texas, where city planners can afford to spend a few million on projects.

See Also: Latin America smart city market to grow 19% by 2020

U.S. lawmakers want that to change and are looking to create a bill that gives city planners more smart city legroom, hopefully inspiring city leaders to embark on missions to revive their city centers.

Democratic Rep. Suzan DelBene has said she and a team of like-minded individuals are working on a bill to improve pilot programs for cities, encouraging public and private investment and reducing the hardships for city leaders that fail to achieve the project goals.

“We have draft legislation as well on smart communities that we are working on in conjunction with folks in the Senate so that we have grant programs and understand pilot programs so we get best practices” said DelBene at an Information Technology and Innovation Foundation event in Philadelphia on Wednesday.

The success of the Department of Transportation’s Smart City Challenge, where the government awarded the winning city $40 million and Paul Allen’s investment firm Vulcan gave an additional $10 million, may lead to more federal funding and grants for smart city projects.

Even though Columbus, Ohio was declared the winning city, city leaders in Denver, Colorado, Portland, Orlando and San Francisco were surprised by the level of private sector interest in smart city projects and the enthusiasm from the public for new upgrades to the city.

Some of the city leaders even called for the projects to continue regardless of the result, receiving enough private sector funding to start building smart systems.

DelBene sees this as an opportunity to push smart city projects even further, by ensuring that regardless of private sector investment, the government will be there to back projects and offer advice.

The Ipswich City Council, located in one of Australia’s fastest growing regions, recently announced plans to move forward with a “smart city” agenda.

Global consulting firm Accenture has been selected to manage this transformation and help implement plans. Blueprints will be developed to improve community engagement, examine city operations and grow digital technology.

See Also: Smart cities require smart construction

Councilor Paul Pisasale, mayor of Ipswich, stated that the initiative is an effort to create more jobs, establish a flourishing economy, utilize data to anticipate and help prevent problems and digitize city services to improve the overall functioning of the city as a whole.

“We are a city which leads by example, embracing the positive impact of technology and digital trends for the benefit of our local businesses and community,” Pisasale said.  “We really believe digital cities are better enabled by digital governments who are not afraid to adopt a more human-centered approach in order to better serve their citizens.”

Accenture was chosen for this project based on their vast global ‘Smart City’ experience, expert knowledge in the industry and analytical skills. Having worked with clients in over 120 countries, Accenture offers a vast array of services and solutions.  The company focus for this current project will be to identify and develop new strategies to both maintain and improve the city, making it a safer, more connected and productive city to live in.

Accenture’s Health & Public Service Leader for Australia and New Zealand, Catherine Garner,  explained, “Rather than proposing a product driven, technology-centric solution, we have embedded our consulting and strategic approach around the vision and needs of the Ipswich community. Innovation is at the heart of a strong economy. When done well, it keeps a city competitive, cutting edge, creates jobs and maintains a high standard of living.”

Australia is currently pushing to upgrade cities across the continent to employ the latest smart technologies.

Ipswich is one of Australia’s most rapidly growing regions and it has developed a reputation for being a progressive and motivated city.  This new ‘Smart City’ project may set the standard for other cities to follow suit.

Alphabet subsidiary Sidewalk Labs is meeting with several top executives to discuss plans for a rejuvenation project in an existing city. The plan involves billions of dollars in investment to make the city high-tech, automated, and vibrant.

While details are scarce at the moment, The Information reports that Sidewalk Labs CEO Dan Doctoroff will meet with Alphabet CEO Larry Page to receive a green light on the “Sidewalk Project.”

See Also: Are smart citizens being lost in rush for smart cities?

If the project is approved, Sidewalk Labs might solicit bids from states or cities in need of rejuvenation. Similar to Google Fiber, Sidewalk wants the state to remove regulations on utilities, parking, and city design to give the company more autonomy over the re-design.

That might scare off some cities that are not willing to ceed control to a corporation, though others that require a major upheaval might accept these terms if it means billions in private investment, turning the city into a tech epicenter.

Alphabet already has a few high-tech divisions working on products that are useful in a smart city. The self-driving car, Project Wing, Makani, and Project Insight — which came from X Labs — could all be implemented in a controlled smart city environment.

Add to that Alphabet’s potential partnerships with other smart city companies and it might be the perfect opportunity for cities or states that require a major rejuvenation to bring residents and companies back.

No cities were mentioned in the report and for all we know Sidewalk Labs might have to go out and persuade downtrodden cities or neighborhoods to let them re-build, before they get any offers.

Rejuvenation of an entire city is hard and much harder when you remove its historic value in favor of high-tech and low regulations. While the city might look fancy, as the WSJ points out, it might lack the vibrancy of cities that were able to naturally grow into super-cities.

As the Internet of Things (IoT) drives ever more smart city initiatives, security experts fear IT departments will soon be overwhelmed by hackers attracted by huge new troves of data.

A recent article by ITWeb discussed increasing IoT and smart city security issues with Paul Williams, major account manager for network security firm Fortinet.

Williams sees a new IoT-driven era emerging where cloud services and connected workplace devices proliferate rapidly. While IoT technology growth is undeniably benefiting productivity, he warns that it is also creating chaos for Chief Information Officers (CIOs) whose tightly held control over their IT systems is being shattered.

“CIOs now have to grapple with the idea of employees using unsanctioned cloud services via unsecured phones to hook up to corporate servers and accessing sensitive business data,” said Williams. “CIOs should look at IoT devices that offer device-to-device encryption, and bolster comprehensive encryption schemes to protect data in networks, cloud services and endpoint devices.”

He sees the quickly expanding smart city services technology and services available as adding to this chaos with new targeted security vulnerabilities.

“Connected devices will generate huge data repositories and businesses that adopt big data systems will see an even larger data deluge,” he said.

“To protect huge amounts of data with large inflows and outflows, the bandwidth capabilities of security appliances will come to the fore.”

He says smart cities bristling with connected devices face a major vulnerability in that most of IoT technology only requires a one-time authentication process across multiple sessions. This differs from laptops and cell phones which usually require authentication every time.

“This will make them attractive to hackers looking to infiltrate into company networks, as it allows easy control and sniffing of traffic,” said Williams.

“CIOs should map out where these gateways are and where they are linked to − they can reside internally or externally and even be connected to IoT device manufacturers.”

The dangers posed by the growing global footprint of smart cities are very real, and he says new viruses are emerging to specifically target IoT technology. Williams gives the example of the new Conficker worm which was designed to attach itself to IoT devices and spread via PCs.

“Such worms and viruses are persistent and can propagate from device to device particularly with mobile and the Android operating system,” he warns. “They can easily infect up to 50 million PCs if the spread of IoT worms is not properly mitigated.”

The US federal government should bust out the checkbook and invest billions in making its cities smarter, says the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) in a new report.  advising the federal government to invest billions of dollars in smart city technology.

The report, entitled “Technology and the Future of Cities,” outlines the current state of smart city technology infrastructure in the US and describes opportunities for economic growth. PCAST also recommends the best steps the federal government should take to efficiently improve the lives of its citizens through harnessing data collected by the Internet of Things (IoT).

Around the globe, smart city technology is poised to provide citizens services ranging from traffic management to a better coordination of health information. Countries in Europe andAsia have already funded widescale smart city initiatives, and there’s the feeling that most of the US is being left behind.

Support for smart cities is nothing new from the Obama administration. Last September, it announced a plan to invest $160 million on research and local infrastructure. In this new report, PCAST urges the federal government to scale up this effort for a “more integrated approach to supporting new technologies.”

To do this, the report recommends that the administration seek legislation for an initial $10 billion appropriation from the Treasury Department, allowing for the financing of an eventual $100 billion in local infrastructure development and retrofitting projects.

But the report’s primary recommendation is for the Secretary of the Department of Commerce, Penny Pritzker, to launch the “Cities Innovation Technology Investment Initiative.” This initiative will require open collaboration between the Departments of Commerce, Housing and Urban Development, Energy, and Transportation, along with the local agencies needed to organize these efforts.

PCAST also advises the administration to follow the Department of Transportation’s “Smart Cities Challenge” model. The report asserts that the Commerce Department should “fund five districts with funding in the range of $30-40 million each, from existing sources in its constituent agencies and with at least two of the districts in low-income communities.”

Despite its scope, the report has received some criticism from smart city experts. Chair of the Smart Cities Council, Jesse Berst, supports the effort but isn’t a fan of its suggestion of neighborhood-by-neighborhood implementation. “But even these smaller-scale projects must be driven by a citywide vision,” Berst advises. “Otherwise, you’ll end up with disjointed, less connected neighborhoods.”

Barcelona is Spain’s poster child for the seemingly endless enthusiasm for Smart City initiatives among those in the Internet of Things space. And why not? Industry players stand to make money and city governors can earn kudos for creating budget efficiencies while appearing technologically ‘with it’.

However, some technology experts are wondering if the echo chamber of smart city enthusiasts is drowning out the average citizens’ basic question about smart cities: What’s in it for me?

A recent Computer World article looked at Barcelona’s strenuous efforts to make it one of Europe’s smartest smart cities.

Since launching its smart city push three years ago, Barcelona has instituted smart parking, smart streetlights, smartphone tourism apps and sensors monitoring air quality and noise along its major streets. This adds to a city beach bedecked with self-powered lighting units and the network of free Wi-Fi access points for Barcelona’s parks, beaches and other public areas that will eventually total 1,500 hot spots.

Yet some industry experts have questioned whether Barcelona Mayor Ada Colau is fully committed to continuing the smart city strategy, with many city residents now publically challenging the projects’ tangible value. These technology analysts say that Barcelona is an example of a broader concern about leaders of the world’s biggest cities who are not answering citizens’ questions about  the relevance and value of these IoT projects to their lives.

“They asked, ‘What’s in it for me?’ ” said Bettina Tratz-Ryan, an analyst with Gartner analyst. “We have a lot of smart city tech pushed by vendors everywhere, but cities are asking for citizen engagement [along with smart city projects] and want to avoid test beds where they won’t see any benefit.”

Pushing politicians to adopt ever more smart technology are city managers who look to improve infrastructure efficiencies of their cities for things like street lights and water mains. But much of this technology remains invisible to the average citizen.

However, some elected leaders are beginning to see the importance of more above ground smart city technology that can improve direct services to businesses and citizens.

For example, Amsterdam is implementing smart technology to strengthen the city’s environment and public engagement, while Atlanta is looking to improve public safety through installing more surveillance cameras. Both Kansas City and Boston are pushing to expand Internet broadband to a greater swath of its businesses and residents to boost the technological capacity of its citizens.

“There are different motivations for smart cities,” said Tratz-Ryan. She highlighted Singapore as a city that is adding intelligent technology to many private and government services. “Singapore is in fact seen as a smart city test bed for cities like Dubai and Paris.”

An Australian trial of Internet of Things (IoT) technology hopes to get the lowdown from city sewers without workers needing to get knee deep in the muddy waters. This comes as more global smart city initiatives push the frontiers of data collection both above and below ground.

Gizmodo reports that the state of Victoria is working with IT and communications companies to test out Narrowband-Internet of Things (NB-IoT) systems in its sewer and water systems. Huawei, Optus and Vodafone are partnering with the state agency South East Water for the trial in urban areas that include Melbourne.

NB-IoT is a low-powered, low-cost radio technology that allows thousands of connected devices and infrastructure elements to gather and share data, regardless of the location. The three-month trial seeks to provide operators with access to granular, real-time data to better the safety, reliability and efficiency of Victoria’s sewer and water infrastructure.

“Through this trial, we are building a platform for a more reliable and sustainable water supply, a safer place for our people to work, and more cost-effective services for our customers,” he said.

The trial will see NB-IoT sensors placed on sewer manhole covers to inform city workers of unauthorized access, to reduce the risk of injury and damage to water assets. NB-IoT technology will also be fitted to rainwater tank management systems to monitor storage levels amid efforts to optimize stormwater runoff and rainwater harvesting.

And NB-IoT will replace existing 3G technology across South East Water’s peninsula early connection option sewer network. The real-time information generated will be used to locate faults across the network and to manage waste water flows.