Clara Benevolo

Smart Mobility in Smart City

Smart City is a recent topic, but it is spreading very fast, as it is perceived like a winning strategy to cope with some severe urban problems such as traffic, pollution, energy consumption, waste treatment. Smart City ideas are the merge of some other more ancient urban policies such as digital city, green city, knowledge city. A Smart City is therefore a complex, long-term vision of a better urban area, aiming at reducing its environmental footprint and at creating better quality of life for citizens. Mobility is one of the most difficult topic to face in metropolitan large areas. It involves both environmental and economic aspects, and needs both high technologies and virtuous people behaviours. Smart Mobility is largely permeated by ICT, used in both backward and forward applications, to support the optimization of traffic fluxes, but also to collect citizens’ opinions about liveability in cities or quality of local public transport services. The aim of this paper is to analyse the Smart Mobility initiatives like part of a larger Smart City initiative portfolio, and to investigate about the role of ICT in supporting smart mobility actions, influencing their impact on the citizens’ quality of life and on the public value created for the city as a whole.

Governing Smart Cities

Smart cities (SCs) are a recent but emerging phenomenon, aiming at using high technology and especially information and communications technology (ICT) to implement better living conditions in large metropolises, to involve citizens in city government, and to support sustainable economic development and city attractiveness. The final goal is to improve the quality of city life for all stakeholders. Until now, SCs have been developing as bottom-up projects, bringing together smart initiatives driven by public bodies, enterprises, citizens, and not-for-profit organizations. However, to build a long-term smart strategy capable of producing better returns from investments and deciding priorities regarding each city, a comprehensive SC governance framework is needed. The aim of this paper is to collect empirical evidences regarding government structures implemented in SCs and to outline a framework for the roles of local governments, nongovernmental agencies, and administrative officials. The survey shows that no consolidated standards or best practices for governing SCs are implemented in the examined cities; however, each city applies its own governance framework. Moreover, the study reveals some interesting experiences that may be useful for involving citizens and civil society in SC governance.

Centralization vs. Decentralization of Purchasing in the Public Sector: The Role of e-Procurement in the Italian Case

In this work, we sought to better understand the possible role of e-procurement in the evolving strategies of centralization (and decentraliza- tion) of public purchase centres. We conducted an explorative research study in the Italian context, where both centralization and decentralization of e-procurement have been experimented. The analysis of the Italian case highlighted an aspect that has been overlooked in literature so far: the strong and sudden centralization of purchasing caused by e-procurement adoption may present problems, especially in complex contexts with a past tradition of wide-spread de-centralized purchasing powers. The Italian case suggests that a possible solution may be the adoption of a hybrid model, where a centralized structure coordinates a network made of regional semi-centralized e-procurement centres, which, in turn, mediate with local contexts and involve or control the smallest agencies. The main features, strengths and weaknesses of this emerging organizational model for e-procurement agencies are discussed.

International service delivery and internet-based technologies

In this paper an analysis is proposed of how firms can use internet-based technologies to deliver their services online to foreign markets or to support an offline international service delivery. The focus is consequently on the front office, that part of the production and delivery system where service becomes available to the recipient and is actually consumed. We propose a model which shows how a service firm may become international, according to the characteristics of the services it offers and the supply system it sets up; to this purpose, a classification is presented which helps to identify different internationalisation modes for the delivery system. Then, the impact of the application of internet-based technologies to service delivery is evaluated, by showing the implications for the internationalisation processes and, consequently, for our model. Examples are given of different ways to internationalise service delivery via internet-based technologies.

Evaluating the quality of web communication in nautical tourism: A suggested approach

In this article, the quality of web communication in nautical tourism is assessed, through an analysis of tourist ports websites. Tourist ports address their offer to a large variety of actual and potential customers (boaters, charter companies, crews, etc.), with every group having different drivers for interest in the port, variable expectations and specific needs to be satisfied. As a consequence, tourist ports should be capable of fine tuning their communication strategies and tools to the peculiarities of each group, to attract potential users, provide useful information to actual users and generally encourage loyalty toward the port itself. Websites, given their potential in reaching a wide international audience with rich and adaptable contents, play a major role in this purpose. This article puts forward an original evaluation tool to measure the quality of tourist ports websites, in terms of both quantity and value of the information provided; this tool is subsequently tested on a sample of tourist ports in Northern Sardinia (Italy), an area of great importance for nautical tourism in the Mediterranean Sea. Our work not only supports theoretical reflection about the quality of web communication in nautical tourism but also contributes practical recommendations to port managers on how to improve the quality of the port website.