Hexadone will get things done
Orange France has made a pact with regional development fund Banque des Territoires to help local authorities make wiser decisions over public policy with better intelligence. Hexadone, the name given to the cloud based system underpinning the project, has a brief to give local authorities wider context on every decision they have to make, from tourism to traffic management, libraries to leisure facilities, children’s playgrounds to climate change. It will do this by aggregating all data, standardising it and giving it greater liquidity. The duo have formally agreed on a joint venture, with work starting in the first half of 2023.
However, one analyst warned that the soaring ambition must be tempered with caution. Data must be both liberalised and protected said Nitesh Patel at Strategy Analytics. “Hexadone will enable local and regional authorities to use their data assets more effectively and efficiently,” said Patel, “but an ecosystem approach [must be] underpinned by strong privacy and data security infrastructure will be key to its success.”
The aim is to become each regions’ trusted intelligence partner, according to Orange, which promised ‘sovereign exploitation and valorisation’ of their data, in other words respect for privacy, integrity of information gathering and fair and efficient distribution to those who need to know. According to an Orange statement, local authorities are facing enormous difficulties getting accurate intelligence to the right people when they need to make decisions. This hampers them when assessing a range of issues they need to act on, such as purchasing, energy and environmental transformations and the aesthetics that affect the perceived attractiveness of each region.
The improvement of citizen’s well-being could involve the sourcing of contentious information that needs to be weighed up, it said. Then there are the more tangible areas in which there are large sources of information that need to be organised and prioritised, such as the ‘mutualisation and optimisation’ of infrastructure costs. With the digitisation of the economy and society comes a speeding deluge of information flows and regions must manage these, said Orange. The rising levels of complexity, quantity and insecurity of data forms and sources can undermine regional data management policy.
The Hexadone cloud platform will simplify all these challenges, claims Orange, since all partners must adhere to a single standard and a single system. Orange explained how Hexadone could help a council to control the entire waste management value chain of a town. By aggregating the data obtained by the geolocation of rubbish bins, communicated by the concession holder in charge of them, and cross referencing with the information about traffic conditions instantly available from another branch of the town’s services, the waste collection operator could organise its rounds more efficiently and optimise its route planning.
The key aspect of the mission is create a robust, simple, secure, and open tool according to Olivier Sichel, Director of Banque des Territoires. Hexadone will effectively blend all the data sources from an entire set of regional supply chains and create a coherent universal whole, according to Christel Heydemann, Chief Executive Officer of the Orange Group. “By developing this platform, Orange is once again committing to a responsible digital environment that is useful to everyone.”