Digipolis and the City of Antwerp developed the Antwerp City Platform as a Service (ACPaaS), a technical platform that collects and unlocks generic back-end IT components (notifications, online payments, digital signatures, profile management, etc.) from the digital platforms that provide personalized digital services and communications through the citizen portal A-town. Through ACPaaS, the generic back-end components of the specific platforms can be reused and do not have to be developed or purchased over and over again.

V-ICT-OR developed the Vlaamse Virtuele Gemeente (VlaVirGem), a reference architecture for municipalities based on open data, open standards and open processes. The goal is to support Flemish cities and municipalities in their service delivery, (internal) organization, operations and IT deployment so that they can offer efficient, customer-oriented and integrated services to citizens.

Digipolis and V-ICT-OR have put ACPaaS and VlaVirGem side by side and have come to the conclusion that a further development of ACPaaS as proposed by VlaVirGem could be of great benefit to all Flemish cities and municipalities as well as other government agencies. The creation of a Smart City Operating System for the Flemish Virtual Municipality could be accelerated by adapting existing components and integrating additional reusable components.

With the PIP project Open City Application Programming Interface (OCAPI), Digipolis and V-ICT-OR want to transcend the local level and realize the foundations of VlaVirGem based on the experience and components of ACPaaS, so that each Flemish city, municipality or other government department can build software applications on a common City Platform as a Service (CPaaS) and still maintain its individuality. The goal is an integrated Smart City Operating System that is modular (and thus sustainable) built from reusable generic components (tools and engines) and that allows for faster (and thus cheaper) development and better support of specific software applications.