Abstract
The advent of Smart Cities is one of the greatest challenges and field of opportunities in the goal to achieve sustainable, comfortable, and socially responsible living environments. A large number of factors, spanning from government/administration/citizen interaction models, heterogeneous communication network, interoperability, or security determine the capabilities and functionalities that can be deployed. In this chapter, different factors in the implementation and adoption of E-Government within Smart City scenarios are described. The authors include the Interoperability Principle as a part of the Open Government concept and link this concept with the Smart Cities view. Then, they describe a new model of public organization that they call “Intelligent,” characterized by the “Smart Government,” and they propose a matrix with the elements of this model. Then, the authors analyze the technical and infrastructure dimensions of the matrix.
TopIntroduction
Efficiency, effectiveness, sustainability, and citizen-centric services are obligations that governments need to fulfill. In order to achieve them, society and governments need to understand that everything is interconnected in our society nowadays. Concepts, actors and institutions, systems, environments, energy, citizens, infrastructures, information, policy and technology are elements or subsystems that are interweaved within a larger system, which needs to adopt the key of the governance efficiently. We refer to a system of systems within our current Information & Knowledge Society’s context.
The evolution in population distribution is heading towards the increase in the amount of people living in large urban areas. This poses one of the biggest challenges for mankind: achieving sustainable cities as well as increasing the quality of life of such environments, in which the local government is the closest to citizens. Administrations have the responsibility to provide the best public services to citizens. They can more easily know and understand their needs, and foresee the best way to satisfy them. The local government is the government of cities and, in this context, it has the key to transmit and provide their services to the citizenship by using off-the-shelves tools for a true and real adoption of the governance paradigm.
The nexus between Government & Governance and Citizenship & Cities within the Information & Knowledge Society are keys of a new view of our world as a “system” in which its optimal status should be to achieve the highest degree of governance within a city, in which their benefits are maximized and their disadvantages are minimized. The first key, should be associated with the adoption of the governance paradigm from the Open Government and, the second one, should be associated with an intelligent way to understand our environment as a Smart City. Both together are the optimized level of a new ecosystem within the public organizations, characterized by an open & smart government, where ICT and interoperability are powerful tools. The implementation of a Smart City is a complex task that requires a multidisciplinary approach. In this chapter, we provide a holistic view following a top-down approach so as to present the characteristic elements of Smart Cities and the challenges that have to be faced in their deployment from an ICT & Infrastructure perspective.
In this chapter, different factor in the implementation and adoption of e-Government within Smart City scenarios will be described. We will include the Interoperability Principle as a part of the Open Government concept and we link this concept with the Smart Cities view. Then, we will describe a new model of public organization that we call “Intelligent”, characterized by the “Smart Government”, and we propose a matrix with the elements of this model. Then, we analyze the technical and infrastructure dimensions of the matrix.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Smart City: A developed urban area that creates sustainable economic development and high quality of life by excelling in multiple key areas; economy, mobility, environment, people, living, and government.
Interoperability: The ability to exchange and use information, allowing systems and organizations to work together.
Smart Government: The use of innovative policies, business models, and technology to address the financial, environmental, and service challenges facing public sector organizations. The concept of Smart Government relies on consolidated information systems and communication networks.