Abstract

۱٫ Introduction

۲٫ Integrated Data Exchanges: The Foundation of Smart Cities

۳٫ Applying Governance Approaches to Provisioning IDE Services

۴٫ Discussion: Governance and Sustainability of IDEs

۵٫ Conclusion

References

Abstract

     Collecting, processing, and distributing information has always been a core function of government. This core function has evolved from the earliest ancient governments using clay tablets to today’s smart cities relying on integrated data exchanges (IDE). A smart city “uses information and information technology to make better decisions to improve the quality of life” (Nam and Pardo, 2011). The IDE framework builds upon the data platform literature (O’Reilly, Jan. 2011) by incorporating governance systems to manage a smart city’s activities. This conceptual paper takes existing research, synthesizes it, and creates a new framework to identify how cities can select the appropriate governance rules to facilitate the political, financial, and operational sustainability of their IDEs, and derivatively, their smart city efforts.

Introduction

     Managing information has always been a core function of government
Managing information has always been a core function of government. For example, one of the earliest civilizations in the world, the ancient city of Sumer in Mesopotamia (c. 4500 – c. 1900 BCE) (Anon Feb. 01, 2020) used cuneiform tablets (Anon Apr. 01, 2022) to record contracts and property transfers. In fact, most of the clay tablets that were unearthed, were used to support a public function. Some historians also believe that the expansion of these earliest empires critically depended on a code of law that could be communicated to the far-flung parts of the empire (e.g., the famous Hammurabi’s Code, 1758 BCE) (Charpin and Todd, 2010). Since then, new technologies have developed to improve the collection and distribution information, generating new challenges and opportunities for civilization and also how government should provide data and information1: including the printing press (Adelmann, Mar. 19, 2012) (McLuhan, 1962), the telegraph (Howe, 2007), the Internet (Castells, 2001), AI (Yigitcanlar et al., 2022) and block-chain (Tsampoulatidis et al., 2022). “Smart cities” are the latest conceptualization about how technology can improve government (Anthopoulos and Reddick, 2022) 2. Although by some accounts, the term has become a brand that businesses use to sell technologies (Smith and Prieto Martín, 2022), this study defines smart cities as those that “use information and information technology to make better decisions to improve the quality of life” (Nam and Pardo, 2011).

Conclusion

     If good public management is good decision-making (Simon, 1947), then information is the lifeblood of government. Creating, storing, and analyzing information is not only a core government function, but it is also foundational to the rest of society. As for government, evidence-based or data driven decision-making is key to be recognized as a “smart” city. Foundational to smart city efforts is an IDE to manage vast and disparate sources of information. One of the contributions of this study is defining an IDE and its role in curating, managing, and disseminating information.

     In constructing a conceptual framework for an IDE, dimensions of political sustainability, operational sustainability, and financial sustainability emerged. This study makes the argument that IDE sustainability may be dependent on different governance models: municipal, regional cooperative, and PPP. If an important goal is to use up-to-date technology to make sure that the city stays innovative, it makes more sense to have this function governed by public-private governance systems and their accompanying rules than to keep that within a municipal governance system. If, however, the strategic goal is to make sure that the public is actively involved in smart city efforts or to be transparent and accountable, a public governance system is more appropriate for those functions.