Smart Human Rights Cities

Centering human rights in the procurement of smart city technologies

Human rights are fundamental entitlements inherent to all human beings by virtue of their humanity, not granted by any state or institution. They are universal, applying equally to every person regardless of nationality, ethnicity, religion, or other status, and inalienable, meaning they cannot be legitimately revoked except through due process in limited circumstances. All categories of rights—civil, political, economic, social, and cultural—are indivisible and interdependent. Central to human rights is human dignity, including the right to participate meaningfully in decisions affecting one’s life.

America’s cities and towns are increasingly on the frontlines of protecting and advancing human rights. Self-identified “human rights cities” are spreading across the United States, leading in a decentralized manner beyond the traditional view of human rights as a primarily state- or internationally-led movement. At the same time, municipalities are becoming more digitized and data-centric, deploying smart city technologies—sensors, data analytics, and algorithmic systems—to improve services, increase efficiency, and promote sustainability. These technologies create new human rights challenges and opportunities that local governments must navigate.

Technology procurement is a key site where human rights decisions are made, often implicitly. Each purchasing decision—what data a system collects, who has access, how algorithms make determinations—shapes residents’ privacy, autonomy, equity, and participation in civic life. These guidelines help small and mid-size U.S. municipalities make smart city technology purchasing decisions that promote core human rights principles and norms. They have been developed by an interdisciplinary team at Northeastern University’s School of Law, College of Social Sciences and Humanities, and the City of Boston.

Audience and Use

These guidelines are written primarily for staff who support technology procurement within municipal government, including procurement teams, policy staff, legal counsel, and program managers. They are also intended to support elected officials, community stakeholders, and oversight bodies seeking to understand how human rights considerations can be integrated into local technology procurement. While the document reflects lessons drawn from the City of Boston’s governance context, it is designed to be adaptable to other municipalities.

What is Smart City Technology?

These guidelines apply to smart city technologies—the hardware and software systems that municipalities deploy to collect data, automate processes, and inform decision-making. This includes:

  • that collect data from the physical environment, such as traffic cameras, air quality monitors, gunshot detection microphones, and license plate readers

  • that aggregate, process, or visualize information from multiple sources

  • that automate decisions or generate predictions, such as tools for benefits eligibility, risk scoring, or resource allocation. A single procurement may involve multiple categories. These guidelines encourage municipalities to evaluate human rights implications across all components of a technology acquisition.

A single procurement may involve multiple categories. These guidelines encourage municipalities to evaluate human rights implications across all components of a technology acquisition.

Key Human Rights Principles

This section introduces the human rights and guiding principles most relevant to smart city technology procurement.

  • Privacy protects individuals from unwarranted intrusion into their personal lives, data, and decisions. Autonomy is the right to make meaningful choices free from manipulation or coercion. Smart city technologies often depend on extensive data collection, raising questions about who controls personal information and how surveillance—even when well-intentioned—can undermine residents’ sense of freedom and restrict their ability to exercise these rights.

  • Individuals have the right to participate in public life and in decisions that affect them, and to freely express their views. Smart city technologies can enhance these rights through digital platforms that enable broader civic engagement, or burden them when opaque algorithmic systems make consequential decisions without public input.

  • Technology must not discriminate based on race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, age, immigration status, language, religion, or other protected characteristics. Because smart city technologies can inherit and amplify biases present in their training data, municipalities must scrutinize these systems for disparate impacts.

  • Residents have rights to services necessary for a dignified life, including education, housing, healthcare, and government services. Smart city technologies that mediate access to these services must not create barriers for people who lack digital access, literacy, or ability to use technology.

  • The right to a healthy environment is increasingly recognized in international frameworks. Smart city technologies may advance sustainability goals, but they also carry environmental costs—particularly energy- and water-intensive systems. These impacts are often borne by communities far from the cities deploying the technology.

Guiding Principles

  • Reliance on private vendors to perform public functions can limit democratic oversight and shift decision-making authority away from accountable institutions. Technology procurement should be treated as an extension of governance, not a substitute for it.

  • The “digital divide” creates compounding inequalities: populations without access to devices or connectivity do not build digital literacy, further restricting their participation. Procurement decisions must consider whether technologies will be accessible to all residents and whether non-digital alternatives will remain available.

  • Every technology choice prioritizes some values over others. Municipalities should use structured frameworks to evaluate whether a technology pursues a legitimate goal, whether less restrictive alternatives exist, and whether any limitation on rights is proportionate to the benefit gained.

  • Certain practices violate fundamental rights regardless of promised benefits. No resident should be denied access to essential government services because they cannot or will not use technology. No system should enable pervasive, population-wide surveillance.

Implementing Human Rights by Procurement Stage

This section highlights how municipal decisionmakers can promote human rights principles at each stage of the procurement process: planning, solicitation, review and award, contract negotiation, legislative approval, deployment, and maintenance. Not all municipalities use each stage.

  • Stakeholders: Affected Communities, Planning Commissions, Human Rights Commissions, Technology Departments

    The planning stage is a powerful intervention point. Begin by asking:

    • What problem are we trying to solve?

    • Is a technological solution appropriate, or does this reflect structural underfunding requiring public investment?

    • Who will be affected, and have we meaningfully engaged those communities in defining both the problem and potential solutions?

    Talk to constituents before vendors. Include deliberative processes with residents who will be impacted—particularly those from marginalized communities. Document human rights implications:

    • How might this technology affect core human rights?

    • How might this procurement shift power toward private vendors?

    • What trade-offs are we making between efficiency and human rights?

    Build these considerations into your problem statement and success criteria before any RFP is drafted.

  • Stakeholders: Procurement Officials, General Counsel, Human Rights Commission

    Your RFP should explicitly state that proposals will be evaluated on compatibility with human rights values and ability to mitigate harms, not only cost and functionality. Require vendors to disclose:

    • What data will be collected and how privacy will be protected

    • Training data sources and steps taken to ensure equitable outcomes

    • Effects on digital equity and accessibility

    • Environmental footprint.

    Structure evaluation criteria to weigh human rights alongside technical and cost factors. Be explicit about non-negotiable trade-offs. Proprietary claims should not excuse vendors from providing information necessary to evaluate human rights impacts.

  • Stakeholders: Finance and/or Procurement Team, General Counsel, Human Rights Commission

    Assemble a diverse evaluation team including staff with expertise in civil rights, privacy, and community engagement—not only IT and procurement specialists. Scrutinize vendor responses with healthy skepticism: look for concrete evidence, not vague assurances.

    • Has the vendor provided performance metrics disaggregated by demographic groups?

    • Have they disclosed actual limitations? If no proposal adequately addresses critical concerns, consider whether proceeding is appropriate, or whether delaying or restructuring the procurement could better align with public values.

  • Stakeholders: General Counsel, Nonprofit Advocates/Consultants

    Do not simply accept vendors’ standard agreement templates. Insist on contract language specifying the vendor’s human rights responsibilities and your city’s retained authority. Include provisions requiring:

    • ongoing transparency with disaggregated performance metrics,

    • clear data governance terms specifying what data can be collected, how it will be used, who owns it, and how/when it will be disposed of,

    • the city’s right to conduct independent audits,

    • performance benchmarks tied to human rights outcomes.

    • regular review periods incorporating community input,and 

    • exit clauses allowing termination without prohibitive penalties if the technology proves harmful, including no-cost data transfers back to the City in an appropriate format

    Small municipalities can level the playing field by forming coalitions with peer cities to share evaluation costs and present united fronts to vendors.

  • Stakeholders: Affected Communities, Nonprofit Advocates, Elected Officials

    For cities where contracts require legislative approval, this stage provides a critical democratic checkpoint. Council members should receive comprehensive briefings addressing fundamental human rights questions:

    • How will this technology affect residents’ privacy and autonomy?

    • What communities will be most impacted?

    • What are the equity implications

    Legislative staff should have access to the full procurement record. The process should include opportunities for public comment and community testimony. Council members should be prepared to reject contracts that lack adequate human rights protections or concentrate too much power in private vendors’ hands.

  • Stakeholders: Affected Communities, Planning Commissions, Nonprofit Advocates, Frontline Workers

    Before any technology goes live, ensure affected communities understand how the system works, what data it collects, and what recourse is available to resolve concerns. Provide clear, accessible communication in multiple languages and formats. Establish public-facing channels for community feedback. Create accountability mechanisms that give residents genuine power: community advisory boards with authority to recommend modifications or suspension, regular public reporting, and clear escalation procedures. Train frontline workers to exercise human judgment and identify potential harms rather than deferring uncritically to algorithmic outputs. Frame initial deployment as provisional with clearly defined evaluation checkpoints (e.g., six months or so).

  • Stakeholders: Affected Communities, Planning Commissions, Nonprofit Advocates, Elected Officials, Human Rights Commissions

    Maintenance is about continuously asking whether technology should continue running at all. Create regular review cycles (quarterly or biannually) assessing human rights impacts:

    • Are privacy protections holding up?

    • Are equity outcomes matching projections?

    • Is community trust increasing or eroding?

    Maintain community accountability mechanisms established during deployment. Require vendors to provide transparent reporting on updates or modifications—scope creep is common. Establish monitoring systems tracking performance metrics disaggregated by demographic groups, watching for drift. Cities must be prepared to sunset problematic technologies rather than persisting due to sunk costs or vendor lock-in.

Types of Smart City Technology: Human Rights Considerations

Different smart city technologies raise distinct human rights considerations. Below are common categories and the rights most at stake with each.

  • Primary rights: Privacy and Autonomy, Participation and Expression, Non-Discrimination

    Surveillance technologies—including license plate readers, camera networks, facial recognition, social media monitoring, gunshot detection, predictive policing tools, and school surveillance—pose some of the most significant human rights risks. These systems collect sensitive data about residents’ movements, behaviors, and associations, directly implicating privacy. Even well-intentioned surveillance can chill participation and expression. Predictive policing raises serious non-discrimination concerns, as these systems often encode historical enforcement patterns targeting marginalized communities. Municipalities should ask: Is surveillance necessary, or are less invasive alternatives available? In many cases, the most human rights-protective decision is to decline surveillance technology entirely.

  • Primary rights: Privacy and Autonomy, Non-Discrimination, Healthy Environment, and Access

    Traffic management systems promise improved flow and reduced congestion, but often rely on extensive data collection about vehicle and pedestrian movements. Tracking individuals over time can reveal where people live, work, and spend their free time. Non-discrimination concerns arise when optimizations benefit affluent areas while neglecting underserved neighborhoods, or when systems designed primarily for vehicles undermine access for pedestrians, cyclists, and people with disabilities. Procurement should require that traffic systems serve all road users and that performance metrics measure safety and accessibility, not only vehicle throughput. Ask vendors how they protect privacy at the data collection and processing stages.

  • Primary rights: Privacy and Autonomy, Participation, and Non-Discrimination

    Many smart city applications aggregate data from multiple sources to provide insights about population movement, service utilization, or urban patterns. Systems using voluntarily crowdsourced data raise different privacy concerns than those purchasing data from commercial brokers. When residents do not know their data is being collected or combined, autonomy is compromised. Municipalities should ask: What is the data source? Do residents know their information is being used? Can individuals opt out? Are there safeguards against discriminatory applications?

  • Primary rights: Access to Essential Services, Non-Discrimination, and Privacy

    Emergency response systems—such as wildfire detection, flood prediction, and dispatch optimization—can save lives. However, these systems raise questions about which communities receive protection and which bear the costs of false positives or delayed responses. Municipalities should ensure systems can function during degraded conditions with backup communication channels. Access requires that emergency alerts reach all residents—including non-English speakers, people with sensory impairments, elderly individuals, and those without smartphones.

  • Primary rights: Privacy and Autonomy, Non-Discrimination, and Access

    Smart city initiatives increasingly include digital learning platforms in schools, libraries, and workforce programs. Data collection on students—particularly minors—requires heightened privacy safeguards and meaningful transparency for families. Algorithmic decision-making in assessment or placement must be scrutinized for discriminatory impacts across race, disability status, language proficiency, and socioeconomic background. Municipal strategies should ensure digital tools translate into equitable opportunity rather than reinforcing existing disparities.

  • Primary rights: Access to Essential Services, Privacy, and Non-Discrimination

    Municipal financial technologies—including digital payment platforms, benefits distribution, automated eligibility, and fraud detection—can improve efficiency, but automated decision-making may produce erroneous denials or discriminatory impacts, requiring strong procedural safeguards and regular equity audits. Transaction-level data can reveal sensitive information about individuals’ movements and associations. Access is jeopardized when digital systems exclude residents without reliable internet, banking relationships, or digital literacy. Human rights-aligned financial technology requires maintaining non-digital alternatives and ensuring efficiency gains do not come at the expense of dignity.

Smart city technology procurement is not a one-time decision, but an ongoing exercise of public governance with lasting implications for residents’ rights, trust, and wellbeing. By embedding human rights principles throughout planning, solicitation, evaluation, contracting, deployment, and maintenance, municipalities can better align technological innovation with democratic accountability and equity.

These guidelines are not a checklist to complete, but a framework to be revisited as technologies evolve, community expectations shift, and new risks emerge. Maintaining this orientation requires institutional commitment, public transparency, and a willingness to reconsider or withdraw from technologies that no longer serve public interests.