Towards a Frame of Reference for Smart City Strategy Development and Governance

Despite the importance of the smart city concept, few works address how to define and implement smart cities in a clear manner. Furthermore, the smart city literature provides heterogeneous studies and solutions; this heterogeneity creates misunderstanding regarding the smart city definition and strategy. Moreover, stakeholders have multiple and conflicting interests and concerns, which also increase the ambiguity regarding the smart city concept and approach. To meet this challenge and fill this gap, a smart city frame of reference is needed to frame and guide smart city strategy formulation and implementation. In this perspective, the current research conducts a quantitative analysis of various smart city frameworks and strategies, in order to find and demonstrate the common building blocks of a smart city framework. Based on the quantitative analysis, this work proposes a clear and integrative smart city framework. This framework aims to reduce the misunderstanding and ambiguity regarding smart city definitions and strategies by providing a standard smart city approach that fits all smart city contexts. To this effect, the proposed framework considers all smart city concerns and it is composed of the following blocks: Strategic awareness, business strategic planning, IT investment decisions, IT organizational structure, steering committee, IT prioritization process, IT strategic planning, IT budgeting, marketing plan, IT reaction capacity, IT reporting and management strategy.