How smart governance is driving the advancement of smart cities?

Abstract

Smart cities are often linked with development projects to reach the smartness level for which a city administration aims. There have been several studies on how to assess a smart city’s performance using different methodologies and assessment criteria. There is no standard method for doing such an assessment, however. We observed that smart governance has been a key dimension in smart city knowledge management and driving smart city development. In fact, more than half of the studies we analysed (20 out of 30 studies between 2015 and 2020) included smart governance as an assessment dimension for measuring the performance of smart cities. Hence, we emphasize in this paper the role of governance in the development of smart cities and demonstrate how governance is being measured and assessed by various assessment tools. Smart governance is defined as how a governmental body of a city, public administration of a city, or those responsible for managing and administering a city are performing. The dimension is measured via indicators such as city vision, resources and reserves per capita, policies, knowledge management and investment levels, as well as e-government services. In this paper we shed more light on the indicators used in different assessment tools, as well as the cities that have scored high in the smart governance dimension. We follow a theoretical approach with a combination of quantitative and qualitative analyses to investigate the commonalities and correlations among top-performing cities in terms of smart governance. How does information and communications technology (ICT) facilitate and drive the smart governance dimension? What is the role of information systems in enabling e-government services and is it supported by a digital infrastructure? In addition, we want to discover the roles and expected interactions of e-citizens. The findings of this paper will help stakeholders involved in managing and developing smart cities to be more aware of a crucial dimension (smart governance) in the advancement of a smart city.