Dr Ismail Hamoumi

Dr Ismail Hamoumi is a Smart City and Digital Transformation leader with more than a decade of experience advising governments and large-scale urban development programmes across Europe, North America and the Middle East. He helps public authorities turn ambitious smart city visions into operational, data-driven models.

At Egis in Riyadh, Ismail leads Smart City activities across Saudi Arabia and the wider Middle East, advising government entities and development authorities on urban data, digital platforms and city operations. He leads multidisciplinary teams from strategy through to operational deployment, ensuring alignment with public policy objectives, regulatory requirements and long-term sustainability.

Previously, at Dassault Systèmes, he helped pioneer a new generation of urban digital twins for public authorities in Europe and North America, and secured national research funding to accelerate the integration of AI into urban simulation. Earlier, at KPMG France, he co-founded the firm’s Local Public Innovation and Smart Territories practice, contributing to the structuring of the French Smart City ecosystem. He has also taught at Sciences Po Paris and holds a PhD in Sociology from École des Ponts ParisTech, with research on how digital technologies transform urban institutions.

What is your core conviction as a data leader in the urban sector, and how does it translate into your day-to-day actions?

“As a sociologist by training, I am convinced that urban data initiatives succeed or fail on institutional and human grounds long before technical ones. In practice, I always start from the governance and real needs of public authorities rather than from the technology, and I work to build the trust that allows data to be shared and used. Data quality, interoperability and sovereignty are prerequisites, not afterthoughts, and success is measured by what actually changes for citizens and institutions, not by the number of platforms delivered.”

In your view, what is the key role of today’s leaders in turning data into a lever for sustainable impact?

“Today’s data leader in the public sector is both a conductor and a translator. Their role is to make data understandable to those who decide, not only to those who build, and to bridge technology, public policy and the social realities of each territory. It also means placing sustainability and inclusion at the heart of digital investment, and preparing public organisations to adopt AI responsibly, with governance and accountability built in from day one.”