Walter Castelnovo

Smart Cities Governance

Most of the definitions of a “smart city” make a direct or indirect reference to improving performance as one of the main objectives of initiatives to make cities “smarter”. Several evaluation approaches and models have been put forward in literature and practice to measure smart cities. However, they are often normative or limited to certain aspects of cities’ “smartness”, and a more comprehensive and holistic approach seems to be lacking. Thus, building on a review of the literature and practice in the field, this paper aims to discuss the importance of adopting a holistic approach to the assessment of smart city governance and policy decision making. It also proposes a performance assessment framework that overcomes the limitations of existing approaches and contributes to filling the current gap in the knowledge base in this domain. One of the innovative elements of the proposed framework is its holistic approach to policy evaluation. It is designed to address a smart city’s specificities and can benefit from the active participation of citizens in assessing the public value of policy decisions and their sustainability over time. We focus our attention on the performance measurement of codesign and coproduction by stakeholders and social innovation processes related to public value generation. More specifically, we are interested in the assessment of both the citizen centricity of smart city decision making and the processes by which public decisions are implemented, monitored, and evaluated as regards their capability to develop truly “blended” value services—that is, simultaneously socially inclusive, environmentally friendly, and economically sustainable.

Global strategy and practice of e-governance : examples from around the world

Over the past decade, there has been continual development and renewal of strategies and practices surrounding e-governance. Governments around the world have embraced new information and communication technologies to increase the efficiency of internal processes, deliver better and more integrated services to citizens and businesses, invite citizen and stakeholder participation in planning decisions, improve communication, and sometimes even enhance democratic processes. This book provides readers with an overview of relevant strategy and policy-level theoretical frameworks and examples, as well as up-to-date implementations from around the world. This book offers valuable insights into best practices, as well as some of the issues and challenges surrounding the governance of and with information and communication technologies in a globalized, knowledge-based world.

Co-production Makes Cities Smarter: Citizens’ Participation in Smart City Initiatives

Making cities smarter is more and more considered as the solution to many critical problems affecting contemporary cities worldwide. Citizens can contribute to the development of smart cities by actively participating in smart city initiatives, thus providing their smartness to the cities they live in. Smart city initiatives are highly information intensive and often use citizen-generated information. In the chapter, the role of citizens as sensors/information providers is discussed as a way for citizens to participate in smart city initiatives. Assuming the concept of co-production as the lens through which to look at citizens’ participation, it is argued that citizens as sensors/information providers can act as co-producers only if they are given back the control over their user-generated information. The chapter thus concludes that the development of a user-centric personal data ecosystem is an enabling condition for citizens’ participation in smart city initiatives as sensors/information providers.

Italy’s One-Stop Shop: A Case of the Emperor’s New Clothes?

The setting up of municipal One-Stop Business Shops (SUAPs) plays a vital role in the Italian legislator’s work to simplify government relations with business and industry. The paper analyzes the outcome of the SUAP simplification programme launched in 1998 and, using secondary data sources, shows that not all the targets have been achieved. The paper’s findings indicate that the shortfall clearly can be attributed to the fact that the entire SUAP-centred simplification process has suffered from legislative overkill while neglecting to address the all-important practical side of implementation, and the impact of the new laws on the behaviour of the actors and the decision makers that populate the different levels of the country’s PA.

E-Govern Evaluation Using the Whole-of-Systems Approach

Evaluating e-government is a difficult and costly activity. On the one hand the evaluation of egovernmentis difficult because it is not always clear what should be evaluated. Actually, it is quitedifferent to evaluate the efficiency of a single e-government service, the benefits that derive fromthe implementation of an e-government project, the effectiveness of a programme for the spreadingof e-government or the outcomes of an e-government policy. On the other hand, the evaluation of egovernmentis costly because it requires performing some specific activities that add further costs tothe costs for implementing and operating ICT systems and applications. In this paper, we argue thata whole-of-system approach to evaluation, based on the use of secondary data sources, can helpreducing both the complexity and the cost related to the ex-post evaluation of e-governmentinitiatives. A whole-of-system approach considers how an e-government initiative contributes to theachievement of global society objectives and to the delivery of public value to citizens. Moreover,by simultaneously considering the different interests involved, a whole-of-system approach allowsfor a better evaluation of the distribution of the benefits that possibly derive from an e-governmentinitiative.The use of secondary data sources sensibly reduces the costs for the evaluation of an egovernmentinitiative since it can take advantage of data already available. Moreover, besidesreducing the costs for data collection, the use of secondary data sources provides some furtheradvantages as well, such as easy reproducibility, ability to generalize the results arising from largerdatasets, reliability of the data deriving from their having been compiled by trustworthyorganizations.We discuss what a whole-of-system approach to the evaluation of e-governmentamounts to and argue that a public value evaluation must be performed at the system level. Thisapproach will be exemplified with respect to the evaluation of the impacts of an e-governmentinitiative at the country level, based on the use of secondary data sources.

Citizens Coproduction, Service Self-Provision and the State 2.0

Citizens’ engagement and citizens’ participation are rapidly becoming catch-all concepts, buzzwords continuously recurring in public policy discourses, also due to the widespread diffusion and use of social media that are claimed to have the potential to increase citizens’ participation in public sector processes, including policy development and policy implementation. By assuming the concept of co-production as the lens through which to look at citizen’s participation in civic life, the paper shows how, when supported by a real redistribution of power between government and citizens, citizens’ participation can determine a transformational impact on the same nature of government, up to the so called ‘Do It Yourself government’ and ‘user-generated state’. Based on a conceptual research approach and with reference to the relevant literature, the paper discusses what such transformation could amount to and what role ICTs (social media) can play in the government transformation processes.

Coproduction and Cocreation in Smart City Initiatives: An Exploratory Study

Citizens’ participation represents an essential condition for successful smart city initiatives. However, citizens’ participation in public initiatives can take many different forms, from simple consultation to the active involvement in their design, implementation and evaluation. When they are actively involved in public initiatives, a shift can be determined from initiatives designed and implemented FOR the citizens, to initiatives designed and implemented with a substantial contribution FROM the citizens, which is what coproduction in the public sector amounts to. With reference to the result of a survey of the relevant academic literature, this exploratory study considers how the concepts of coproduction (and the related concept of codesign) and cocreation are used in the smart city literature. The study highlights a relatively scarce use and a poor conceptualization of these concepts in the smart city literature and identifies some critical aspects that still need a conceptual clarification.

The digital government imperative: a context-aware perspective

ABSTRACT The paper applies a ‘context-aware’ research approach to explore Italy’s digital government trajectory, using the information and communication technology -enabled programme that introduced the One-Stop Business Shop to exemplify its analytical potential. The interpretive lens captures the political, institutional and external forces at play to illustrate how the outcomes of public-sector reforms are shaped not by legislative strong-arming and ubiquitous technological enablement but by the environmental dynamics. To demonstrate the central role of contextual factors in achieving the desired change, the study conducts a qualitative exploratory analysis that opens doors left mostly closed by the deterministic view of the mainstream literature on digital reform.

Open innovation in smart cities: civic participation and co-creation of public services

The purpose of this panel is to discuss actual developments in the co‐creation of public services and the role of information science within it. With the advent of the knowledge society, participation and co‐creation of public services have become crucial in smart‐city decision‐making processes. Transfer of knowledge through face‐to‐face interaction and the transfer of information through digital networks are spurring the process of innovation. The combination of both dimensions needs particular attention in the field of information science to enable suitable methods of knowledge management at a city level. This panel will bring together best‐practice examples and research frameworks. In real‐world scenarios, citizens are involved in decision‐making in the case of public library development. First, frameworks of smart‐city assessment and of knowledge management at the city level are discussed. Finally, the role of information science in open innovation processes will be the focus of this panel. For this purpose, the panel brings together researchers and practitioners from library and information science, as well as from neighboring disciplines, to discuss how information and communication technology (ICT) and open innovation are changing our society, culture, and urban space.

One-Stop Government in Italy and the Lebanon: When the Law Alone Is no Silver Bullet

The paper investigates the implementation of One-stop government in Italy and the Lebanon. The Italian government’s One-Stop Business Shop (‘SUAP’) programme is first analyzed to discover why it has taken 12 years of legislation to get Italy’s municipalities fully on board, and whether it has returned the expected benefits by effectively lightening the administrative load that drags on the competitiveness of the country’s business sector. The critical discussion of the “innovation by law” approach identifies the stumbling blocks that have deterred the Italian government from achieving its mission to set up the One-Stop Business Shops and to deliver e-government. From the analysis of the Italian case some lessons are drawn that can be useful to guide the implementation of One-Stop Business Shop in Lebanon where the process is still at the beginning also due to the effects of the instability that affected the region during the past years.