February 2021. Texas. A winter storm hit, and what should have been a challenging few days turned into one of the most catastrophic infrastructure failures in modern American history. Over 10 million people lost power. Some went days without electricity. Hospitals limped along on backup generators. Water treatment plants shut down. Tragically, hundreds of Texans lost their lives.
Here’s what keeps me up at night about that crisis: Texas was just 4 minutes and 37 seconds away from a total blackout that would have taken weeks – maybe months – to restore. Four minutes.
The real problem wasn’t the ice or the snow. It was that power grid operators couldn’t communicate with natural gas suppliers.
Transportation departments had no coordination with emergency services. Water utilities weren’t looped in with power management. Each agency had data. Lots of it. Sensors everywhere, monitoring everything. But when the crisis hit, those digital walls became actual barriers between life and death.
The smart city promise nobody talks about
Cities have poured billions into IoT infrastructure. Smart traffic lights. Connected water systems. Real-time monitoring everywhere. The global smart city platforms market is projected to expand from $24.51 billion in 2025 to $39.52 billion by 2030. That’s a staggering amount of investment.
And yet, recent analysis from Harvard’s Data-Smart City Solutions found that many smart city initiatives have fallen short of expectations. The technology works fine. The sensors collect data beautifully. Systems function as designed. But they function in isolation.
When your traffic management system can’t share real-time data with emergency services, you haven’t built a smart city. You’ve just put expensive sensors on the same old problems.
The OECD’s Smart City Data Governance Report puts it bluntly: “Smart city data are often stored in silos, which prevents interoperability.” Translation? Cities are drowning in data they can’t actually use when it matters.
What actually working together looks like
The fix isn’t to add more sensors. They are everywhere; we have enough. What we need is to break down the walls between departments so that information flows.
Take Auckland Transport in New Zealand. They’re managing one of the fastest-growing transportation networks in a region of 1.8 million, and they’ve figured out how to unify their data systems across departments. The result isn’t just “improved efficiency” (although, yes, they have this). More importantly, when something goes wrong, everyone who needs to know, regardless of department, is automatically informed in real time.
Emergency response is the obvious use case, but it goes deeper. When emergency vehicles can access real-time traffic data, construction updates from public works, and weather conditions all in one place, response times drop. In cardiac arrests, strokes, and major accidents, those minutes matter.
Infrastructure coordination may not receive as much press, but the cost avoidance based on reduced repair work and minimized street closures can be massive. When public works, utilities, and transportation can see what everyone else is planning, you stop getting those nightmare scenarios where someone tears up a street that another department just repaved. Projects stay on schedule. Costs stay predictable. Citizens can get where they need to go.
Budget oversight changes completely when you can see across departments in real-time. Water treatment costs spiking? You see it now, not three months from now when someone finally runs a report. Traffic congestion building in a specific corridor? Transportation and urban planning can coordinate before it becomes a crisis that ends up on the evening news.
The money question
City managers facing budget committees need hard numbers, and integrated smart city initiatives – as opposed to shotgun-style smart cities – can deliver them. Cities implementing targeted initiatives typically see initial returns within 3-5 years. Traffic management systems show results even faster—sometimes within 2-3 years.
But ROI isn’t just about cost savings. It’s about:
- Faster emergency response times
- Infrastructure projects that finish on time, on budget, and within scope
- Reductions in traffic accidents
- Avoiding another Texas-style infrastructure failure
Government technology solutions could unlock nearly $10 trillion in value worldwide by 2034. But only if we connect the systems we’re building.
Making it happen
This requires both technology and organizational will. Unified IoT data platforms, such as OpenText IoT platform, can connect different systems while maintaining security and compliance – that’s the technical piece. Modern platforms handle integration with external partners too, from private contractors to telecommunications providers.
The core capabilities you need:
- Real-time data exchange between city systems
- Secure collaboration with external data sources (smartphones, telecom networks, private sensors)
- Automated compliance reporting—because audits aren’t going anywhere
- Analytics dashboards that show you what’s happening across departments
Solutions like OpenText’s public sector platforms tackle exactly this problem. The goal isn’t ripping out existing systems, it’s creating the connective tissue that lets them work together. You’ve already invested in sensors and monitoring. Now make them talk to each other.
The path forward
Every city is making a choice right now, whether they realize it or not. Keep going with disconnected systems where each department operates independently? Or take the path toward integration?
Texas showed us what disconnection can mean: lost lives, billions in damages, and a near-miss that still haunts infrastructure planners. The technology to prevent similar disasters exists today. The sensors are already installed in most cities. What’s missing is the connections needed to unlock their value.
Smart cities that succeed won’t be the ones with the most sensors. They’ll be the ones who broke down the silos. Because when the next crisis hits – and there will be a next one – you might have four minutes to respond. Will your systems be talking to each other, or will they be operating in isolation while the clock runs out?
Ready to break down data silos in your municipality?
Learn how integrated IoT platforms can transform your city’s operations and emergency response capabilities. Explore smart city solutions that are already making a difference. Learn more about how OpenText is supporting the public sector.
