2017 IEEE International Conference on Smart Grid and Smart Cities
Smart Governance: a Key Factor for Smart Cities Implementation
Nuno Vasco Lopes
United Nations University
Operating Unit on Policy-Driven Electronic Governance (UNU-EGOV)
Guimarães, Portugal
e-mail: lopes@unu.edu
Abstract — Smart Governance is one dimension of Smart Cities,
it relies on good governance such as open (i.e. transparent),
accountable, collaborative (i.e. involving all stakeholders) and
participatory (i.e. citizens’ participation) principles and on
Electronic Government (e-Government). This paper tries to
answer the question - “What governance models are being
implemented in smart cities?”. To answer this question, six
interviews were conducted with people involved in Smart
Cities initiatives from Brazil, Singapore, Colombia, Portugal,
and Uruguay. The empirical analysis of the interviews shows
that Smart Cities and e-Government present a similar
evolutionary trajectory, both converging to smart governance.
The paper concludes that all the initiatives underlie heavily in
technologies and follow the same sort of smart governance
model, a mix of collaborative, open and participatory
governance. We claim that advanced technologies, innovation
and smart governance are essential prerequisites for
developing smart, creative, innovative and sustainable cities.
Keywords-component. Smart Governance; Smart Cities;
Sustainable Cities.
I. INTRODUCTION
According to Giffinger [1], Smart Governance is one
dimension of Smart Cities, which embraces all the aspects
related with political participation and services for citizens,
as well as the functioning of the local administration. He
defines a Smart City as a city that performs well in these six
dimensions: smart economy, smart people, smart governance,
smart mobility, smart environment, and smart living.
On the other hand, and according to Scholl [2], the Smart
City research can be seen as a strand of local electronic
government research area, it is a city that should have a
smart City government responsible for governing the city by
applying the adequate policies towards smart city purposes.
It is an urban area that should have the culture of creativity
and innovation, high quality of life, economic growth, be
secure and safe, and be socially, economically and
environmentally sustainable.
In an extensive literature review, Bernardo [3] identified
the factors presented in most of Smart City initiatives, which
include: e-participation, e-services, e-consultation,
Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), open
data, e-decision-making, governance, good governance,
smart governance and WWW second generation (Web2),
which corresponds also to the factors normally found in e-
government initiatives.
The smart governance can, through its interaction
between technologies, people, policies, best practices,
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resources, social norms and information, support effectively
city governing towards a Smart City [4]. Smart Governance
is therefore at the core of a Smart City initiative [5].
Similar to Bernardo [3], Chourabi et al [4] summarized
the relevant factors/principles of Smart Governance that he
found in the literature, which include: collaboration,
leadership and champion, participation and partnership,
communication, data-exchange, service and application
integration, accountability and transparency.
Empirical studies indicate that the governance model of
Smart Cities initiatives follow the same principles of the
governance model preconized by e-government research area
[6][7][8][4][9], that is, being open, accountable,
collaborative and participatory. This paper corroborates this
idea by making an empirical analysis of six case studies and
showing that the governance models that are being used in
those cases are smart. Therefore, in order to know: 1) what
were the governance models that were used in the case
studies; 2) in what context they were implemented; 3) what
was implemented; 4) what were the challenges they faced; 5)
which sort of risks they were subject to; 6) how initiatives
were assessed, and 7) what lessons were learnt from them.
Six interviews with decision-makers of Smart Cities
initiatives were conducted and empirically analysed. This
study is particularly useful for decision-makers who want to
give concrete steps towards a better design of Smart Cities.
The remaining part of this paper is structured as follows.
Section 2 describes the methodology used to do this research
work. Section 3 presents the analysis of the interview
questions resorting to conceptual maps and scientific
literature in the area. The last section presents the main
findings and the conclusions.
II. METHODOLOGY
This study extends the work done in report [10] by
making an empirical analysis of the governance model used
in six of the twenty-one Smart Cities initiatives collected in
the report. Furthermore, to have a deeper insight, interviews
with the decision-makers involved in the initiatives have
been conducted. The UNU-EGOV research team decided to
send nine invitation letters for interviews. From those nine,
six agreed to do the interview within the limited time frame
of the project. The interviews have been transcribed and
organized in categories, which included: context, challenges,
risks, implementation, measurement, lessons learnt and
governance. With the information gathered from the
interviewees, an empirical analysis focused in governance
category was made in order to evaluate if initiatives have
similar governance models and to know to which extent they lessons learnt with the implementation of the initiative; 7)
are smart, that is, they are framed within the Smart City Governance - what type of governance model was used to
purposes and concept. The research methodology used to implement the initiative.
conduct this study (Figure 1), which coincides with the Table I shows the identification, name, city, country,
structure of the paper, is organized into 5 phases: 1) Smart contact of the case study and data of the interview.
Governance - explaining the smart governance concept; 2)
Case Studies - selecting the case studies and sent invitations III. ANALYSIS OF THE INTERVIEWS
for interviews; 3) Interviews - conducting the interviews; 4) This section aims at gaining a better understanding on
Smart Cities Information - proceeding with empirical how the Smart Cities initiatives listed in Table 1 have been
analysis and 5) Findings - drawing the conclusions based on implemented and what was their local context for its
the analysis of 4). development.
TABLE I. LIST OF CASE STUDIES THAT HAVE BEEN INTERVIEWED. For streamlining the analyses of the interviews,
conceptual maps have been built with the answers of the
ID Name City Contact Date interviewees for each of the seven questions. The empirical
ID1 Smart Nation Singapore Infocomm 28 analysis of the seven conceptual maps is presented in the
Program (SG) Development May following paragraphs.
Authority of 2015 The cultural, social, political, organizational and
Singapore (IDA) technological context of the cities can vary a lot. Therefore,
ID2 Integrated Curitiba Architect and 23
Transportation (BR) Urban Planner June
it is impossible to have an off-the-shell solution for Smart
Network 2015 Cities that embraces all this variety of settings. Therefore, it
ID3 Large Outdoor Medellin Departamento 15 is demanding to design Smart City solutions properly
Escalator (CO) Observatorio de June adapted to the local context [10]. As depicted in Figure 2
System Sociedad 2015 (note that at the end of each context is the ID of the Smart
ID4 Dreams Guimarães Guimarães 20 city case), the interviewees’ answers to the context question
(PT) Municipality June
2015
were organized into 5 classes: cultural, social, political,
ID5 Geographic Bogotá Spatial Data 28 organizational and technological. The social context rises
Information (CO) Infrastructure May questions like the importance of the citizens’ sensing of
Bogota 2015 belonging to enhance their participation in the city activities
ID6 Open Data - Montevideo Government 18 [11], involve citizens to overcome the resistance to change
GXBus (UY) June [12], the balance between attractiveness and preservation of
2015
the historical heritage [13] and having talented people on
ICT for leveraging the ICT industry [14]. The social context
of Smart Cities could be quite diverse, in the selected cases,
were appointed the violence of city, which is more frequent
to happen in societies huge social contrasts [15] and social
instability due to rising inequalities, unemployment and other
factors [16]. In the organizational context, the promotion of
incentives for open data [17], collaboration between agencies
to reduce costs and amount of work [18], research centres to
enable innovation [19] and creation of spaces for citizens
participation [20] were pointed out by the interviewees. The
technological context points out the technical complexity of
finding the right solutions for same cases, such as, frame the
escalators with the landscape, seamless public services,
competitive platforms and interoperability among systems.
The Smart City initiatives face multi-dimensional
challenges: political, governmental, social and cultural, and
Figure 1. Research methodology. technical, as shown in Figure 3. To face these challenges it is
necessary to include the human capital as part of the equation
Six interviews have been conducted, using a template for the four dimensions [21]. The political challenges
with seven questions: 1) Context - what were the major local referenced by the interviewees address issues such as
factors driving the initiative; 2) Challenges - what were the political efficiency [22] (i.e. integration of government
major challenges for implementing the initiative; 3) Risks - agencies, effective front and back offices), having a smart
what were the major risks associated with the city strategy with a holist view of the city [23] and empower
implementation of the initiative; 4) Implementing - what civil society. The governmental challenges mentioned in the
were the major changes were needed for implementing the interviews were promoting accountable and transparent
initiative; 5) Measurement - how the initiatives were governance, involving all stakeholders in a collaborative way
evaluated and measured; 6) Lessons Learnt - what were the on city governance [24], developing smart sustainable cities
[10][25] and changing the political mind-set of seeing a city

278
as a very complex problem [26]. The social and cultural
challenges range from social inclusion [27], as it is the case
of the Medellin escalators, create jobs, preserve the city
assets from disorders, raise awareness of importance of
spatial data [28] and changing mentalities regarding policy
the role. The technical challenges referred in the interviews
include: frame the escalators with the natural landscape,
technical complexity of the solution, being able to create a
competitive platform for business [29], integration and
interoperability of systems [30] and develop seamless public
services [10].
The risks associated with a Smart City implementation
can come from different city entities and from the
implementation itself. They can have an organizational,
implementation and human capacity nature, as shown in
Figure 4. In the organizational risks perspective, low
economic resource, the knowledge, competence and
technology access (i.e. readiness) [31], low accountability
and credibility, and lack of leadership [23], are the
mentioned aspects by the interviewees. The risks associated
with the implementation of the solution include: the security
of the systems and data privacy [31], data quality, accuracy
and update [20], publish data and software without
ownership and the risks of the community taking control of
the implemented system. The human capacity risks are the
citizens not being prepared to implement and adopt the smart
solution, lack of action, not having the necessary ability to
deal with industry and not be able to materialize the project.
The implementation of a smart city project is a
transformation process that must be guided by policies,
conducted by objectives, managed by a strong leadership
management and use advanced technologies for improving
the efficiency. Figure 5 shows the objectives, policies,
management and technology used in the implementations of
smart city initiatives of the interviewees. The objectives that
guided the implementation of the initiatives were making
government data public for society [17], resilient city [32],
knowledgeable people [33] and changing the culture on the
way of working. The policies that were mentioned as
important for implementing the Smart Cities initiatives
include: policies to enforce the release of organizations’ data,
Figure 2. Context.
279
policies for supporting the implementation process such as
laws and development plans. In the management of the
Smart City implementation, the interviewees highlighted the
importance of making a trade-off between simplicity and
perfection, planning the development knowing that there will
be changes along the way, accelerate the implementation
process, having a proactive behaviour and having an efficient
management of the procedures and human resources.
For monitoring and evaluating the performance of Smart
Cities implementation, it is essential to have appropriated,
measurement methods and, impact and performance
indicators, to measure [34]. Figure 6 shows the measurement
methods and the impact and performance measurements that
have been used in Smart City initiatives of the interviews.
The methods used to measure the initiatives encompass
questionnaires to citizens, dashboards, technical assessments
of the action plan and measuring the contribution for the
achievement of the goals of the smart national program. The
criteria used for measuring the impact and performance of
the initiatives were: - how the release data affects the society;
- evaluate the citizen opinion; number of jobs created; -
urban, human and environmental indicators and return to the
economy; - costs and performance; - effectiveness and
efficiency indicators; city indicators and compliance with
objectives and budget of the smart city project.
An additional question, with optional answer, was made
to the interviewees, which was – “Is there any other
important issue or lesson learnt from the initiative that you
would like to share”. The answers to this question were
divided into three types of categories (see Figure 7):
awareness, cultural, and technological. Regarding to the
lessons learnt related with awareness, it was highlighted the
importance of raising awareness in the sustainable
development and in the advantages of spatial information for
the development of Smart Cities. In what concerns the
cultural aspect, it was stressed that: it must be shown that it
is possible to implement the solution; there is a cultural that
the city’ problems are too complex and not waiting for the
answers of central governmental to move forward (be
proactive).
 Figure 3. Challenges.

The type of governance models used for implementing a
Smart City initiative assume a vital importance in the: 1)
search for the best solution; 2) involvement of all
stakeholders; and 3) management and coordination of the
action plan. The answers to the question - “What type of
collaborative/participatory governance model, if any, was
developed for the initiative?” - is conceptualized in Figure 8.
In the model category, it is possible to observe that all the
interviewees said to have a collaborative or/and participatory
governance model, showing that they are following the same
principles of the Smart Governance and e-Government
advocated by the authors mentioned in the introduction. In
relation to the approach used, two interviewees (i.e. ID2 and
ID5) referred that the governance model was useful to reach
a consensual solution and for the population to help build a
solution. This approach is also in accordance with the Smart
Governance / Smart City purpose of engaging all
stakeholders in the search of innovative and consensual
solutions.

Figure 4. Risks

Figure 5. Implementing.

Figure 6. Measurement.

280
 Figure 7. Lessons.
Figure 8. Governance
IV. CONCLUSION
This paper highlights Smart Governance as a key factor
for the implementation of Smart Cities. Where a Smart City
government uses a Smart Governance model for achieving
their Smart Cities purposes by applying the appropriated
policies towards those purposes. The principles behind the
Smart Governance model can enable and potentiate
significantly the creativity and innovation in the
implementation of Smart Cities. The diversity of a city
contexts (e.g. economic, cultural, social, political,
organizational and technological), challenges (e.g. political,
governmental, social and cultural and technical), risks (e.g.
organizational, implementation and human capacity) and
implementation goals (e.g. objectives, policies, management
and technology) found in the analysed initiatives, clearly
demands contextualized Smart Cities solutions. For
addressing this issue, UNU-EGOV proposed a
contextualized framework for implementing Smart City
initiatives [35]. The initiatives were evaluated and measured
with different method and performance and impact indicators,
which makes it difficult to compare them. Besides, all the
initiatives made some sort of measures for evaluation
purposes, however, they did not follow the same methods
and indicators, what makes difficult or even impossible to
compare them. This raises the question if the methods and
indicators for measuring Smart Cities should not be
standardized or at least follow international policies such the
ones of ISO [36], ITU and UNECE [37] and HABITAT [38].
The empirical analysis shows that all the initiatives are
relaying on technologies and Smart Governance, which may
lead us to conclude that the promotors of Smart City
initiatives are considering them as essential prerequisites and
factors for developing smart, creative, innovative and
sustainable cities.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This paper is a result of the project “SmartEGOV:
Harnessing EGOV for Smart Governance (Foundations,
281
methods, Tools) / NORTE-01-0145-FEDER-000037”,
supported by Norte Portugal Regional Operational
Programme (NORTE 2020), under the PORTUGAL 2020
Partnership Agreement, through the European Regional
Development Fund (EFDR).
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