In each of the 100 designated Smart Cities across the country, the selected City Data Officer (CDO) is currently undergoing a six-week training by the "Smart Cities Mission" and Tata Trusts. The training helps the officer to “reimagine how information and data can overcome local issues”. In the "Enabling data driven decision making in Urban Local Bodies" course, their chosen case studies showcase their city's new technological objectives.

In Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh, the CDO envisioned a new traffic system that automates e-challans through violation sensors. At Tumakuru, Karnataka, it was a refashioning of buses to include GPS tracking and sensors connected to a mobile application. In Chhattisgarh's Naya Raipur, the chosen problem was maintaining an uninterrupted water supply by monitoring hydraulic parameters in case of outages.

The Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs has developed a structured course specifically designed for training in data.

With the first batch of 35 CDOs graduated and certified, the next 65 officers began their training last week. In February 2019, a CDO was nominated by each city to lead the local data governance strategy.