Suha AlAwadhi

Building Understanding of Smart City Initiatives

This study presents the first results of an analysis primarily based on semi-structured interviews with government officials and managers who are responsible for smart city initiatives in four North American cities—Philadelphia and Seattle in the United States, Quebec City in Canada, and Mexico City in Mexico. With the reference to the Smart City Initiatives Framework that we suggested in our previous research, this study aims to build a new understanding of smart city initiatives. Main findings are categorized into eight aspects including technology, management and organization, policy context, governance, people and communities, economy, built infrastructure, and natural environment.

Aspirations and realizations: The smart city of Seattle

Smart city initiatives have been launched on every continent. That notwithstanding the concept of “smart city” has remained ambiguous. We systematically interviewed officials of an acclaimed Smart City (Seattle) and explicitly asked the officials for their own definitions of “smart city,” which we then compared to the respective projects run by that City. While the definitions given by the practitioners were found different from those in the literature, the smart city projects lived up and matched the practitioner definitions to a high degree. We document the projects and their expected and realized benefits, which illustrate where a leading City government is headed in terms of smart government. However, “Smart City” initiatives in local government might be only a steppingstone in making the greater urban space a “smart city,” which appears to be a more challenging undertaking.

Creating Smart Governance: The key to radical ICT overhaul at the city of munich

Around the end of the first decade in the 21 st century, quite a few city governments in municipalities of various sizes began conducting so-called smart-city initiatives. While many of these initiatives have successfully reached for low- hanging fruits and easy wins when responding to the growing demand of smart online services, others have identified the need for fundamental change and overhaul with regard to organizational integration and alignment as well as interorganizational information system interoperability as a pre-requisite for creating smart operations and providing smart services. Sweepingly changing the governance over citywide information and communication technologies (ICTs) turned out to be at the core of creating an environment conducive to smart operations and smart services, and ultimately, smart city government. The City of Munich in Germany embarked on a fundamental overhaul of its ICT structures. The article describes the case and the challenges, insights, and workarounds in this multiyear change program, which ultimately led to the successful overhaul of the ICT governance model. In principle, Munichs approach might be transferable to other cases. At the very least, the case holds valuable lessons learned when engaging in smart government initiatives in practice. When Microsoft ended the support for Windows NT 4.0 in late 2003, with its some 18,000 desktop workstations the City of Munich made a dramatic decision in disfavor of migrating to the then next version of the proprietary Windows platform (Windows XP). Despite a dramatic personal onsite en- gagement of Microsofts then CEO Steve Balmer who attempted to make the City cancel its decision with a blend of cajoling and coercing, Munichs elected officials were unimpressed and stayed course in their decision to walk away from proprietary platforms and rather migrate to an open source-based (Linux) platform for their servers and desktops. The City of Munichs move made headlines around the world, since such an attempt to escape the proprietary path dependencyand vendor lock-in had been un- heard of before, since the inevitable switching cost were (and still are by many) considered prohibitive. While for the vast majority of the Citys systems the migration ultimately took exactly a decade to com- plete at overall cost by and large as projected, the City governments elected officials, senior appointed officials along with the Citys ICT leadership had entered an uncharted territory, in which they felt capa- ble of building the Citys future ICT landscape. However, when the migration to Linux began in 2006, it quickly became obviousthat an even deeperand more fundamentaloverhaulof organizationalstructures

Smart cities and service integration initiatives in North American cities: a status report

E-government initiatives have been stepping forward in governments of all levels around the world. One of the most important strategies that are being carried is that of providing citizens with a single entry point for services that involve different government entities. The Smart Cities and Service Integration project (hereafter, SmartCities) aims to establish a framework for smart city service integration that would assist in the management of large scale projects related to the integration of services across governments. By using comparative case studies of six cities (New York City, Philadelphia, Seattle, Quebec City, Mexico City, Macao, and Shanghai), the project aims to develop a theoretical framework to guide smart cities service integration. This poster summarizes some of the most important results of the interviewing process. These results correspond to the analysis of four cities in North America: Philadelphia, Quebec City, Seattle and Mexico City. The research project is funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Exploring academic libraries’ use of Twitter: a content analysis

Purpose – This research aims to analyze academic libraries’ Twitter content and present a categorization framework for the study of their tweets. Design/methodology/approach – The research adopted a statistical descriptive analysis in addition to a content analysis of the tweets. Consequently, many categories and subcategories were created to classify the tweets according to different aspects. A total of 17 academic library accounts were examined. Findings – The findings show that academic libraries used Twitter as a multifaceted tool. “News and announcements” received the highest score as the type of information most often posted on Twitter by libraries, followed by “library collections” and “library services”. The subcategories that received the highest scores were “library marketing and news”, “answers and referrals” and “books”. Academic libraries showed a penchant for posting links more often than other content. Other results show different patterns of communication and interaction between libraries ...

Smart governance as key to multi-jurisdictional smart city initiatives: The case of the eCityGov Alliance

Quite a number of smart-city initiatives from around the world have been analyzed and documented, and a growing body of academic knowledge is evolving around the phenomenon of the smart city. Smart-city government is seen as an important driver for developing a smart urban environment. The eCityGov Alliance in the Pacific Northwest of the USA represents a special case of a successful smart-city collaboration between nine neighboring municipalities, which combined forces to provide smart services to citizens and businesses that no single municipality could have provided alone. Developing and maintaining a collaborative governance model appears as the most important key success factor in such multi-jurisdictional smart-city undertakings. This study investigates the governance model of the eCityGov Alliance and its opportunities, and potential pitfalls. It concludes that the eCityGov Alliance can serve as a role model for such multi-jurisdictional smart-city initiatives.

Continuing Professional Development in Kuwaiti Academic Libraries

This study investigates the current state of continuing professional development activities for information professionals in academic libraries, as well as their perceptions of the value of different continuing professional development activities. A questionnaire was used to collect data from 63 librarians and information professionals working at five Kuwaiti academic libraries, located in two public and three private universities. The findings of the study revealed that, generally, information professionals in academic libraries are of the opinion that they possess personal and professional skills that enable them to serve library users. Moreover, continuing professional development activities and programs are perceived as important for developing a professional workforce and maintaining professional competence.

Introduction to Social Media and Social Networking and Government Minitrack

Social networks, which have almost become part of our daily lives, have established new communication structures and behaviors in society. While citizens and businesses have already extensively used social networks for years, governments continuously increase their interest in the new communication technologies. Sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and Linked In provide a mechanism for individuals to come together based on a variety of factors such as existing friendships, common interests, or work. People have discovered how the use of social networks can facilitate communication and the exchange/sharing of thoughts and ideas. Governments have also discovered the potential for these sites to aid in government information sharing and outreach. The Social Media and Social Networking and Government Minitrack tackles social media and networks relating to e-government which may include the use of social media and networks by any level of government, the implementation challenges, trust and privacy issues, different patterns and trends of social networks, information sharing, information overload, and mobile social networking.

Marketing academic library information services using social media

The purpose of this paper is to examine the use of social media in the marketing of academic library resources and services in Kuwait and identifies the factors related to the use of social media applications in marketing academic libraries.,A quantitative data-collection approach using a paper and online questionnaire has been employed to elicit the opinions of librarians working in academic libraries in Kuwait in both private and public institutions. In total, 89 valid questionnaires have been analyzed using descriptive (frequencies, percentages, means and standard deviations) and inferential statistics (factor analysis, correlations, experimental analysis and regression).,The study shows that the academic librarians have a positive perception toward the use of social media. The identified factors relating to the use of social media for marketing library information resources and services are the usefulness of social media tools in raising awareness and in providing needs analysis and satisfaction assessments. However, management support for the use of social media for library marketing is poor.,This study provides insights into the factors related to the use of modern social media platforms to promote information resources and services at academic libraries to provide outreach services to current and potential users.,This research contributes to the field of information studies as it highlights the importance of using social media platforms in marketing academic library information resources and services. Library administrators could use the results to develop social media marketing plans to effectively promote their library resources.

Introduction to Social Media, Citizen Participation, and Government Minitrack

Social media and online networks have received a lot of attention in the last decade. Platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Weibo and Linked In provide tools for individuals to come together based on a variety of factors such as existing friendships, common interests, or work. People have discovered how social media can be used to facilitate communication, promote an exchange of ideas, and help mobilize fellow citizens around civic and political issues.