Analyzing Citizen Participation and Engagement in European Smart Cities

With the advent of smart cities (SCs), governance has been placed at the core of the debate on how to create public value and achieve a high quality of life in urban environments. In particular, given that public value is rooted in democratic theory and new technologies that promote networking spaces have emerged, citizen participation represents one of the principal instruments to make government open and close to the citizenry needs. Participation in urban governance has undergone a great development: from the first postmodernist ideals of countering expert dominance to today’s focus on learning and social innovation, where citizen participation is conceptualized as co-creation and co-production. Despite this development, there is a lack of research to know how this new governance context is taking place in the SC arena. Addressing this situation, in this article, we present an exhaustive survey of the research literature and a deep study of the experience in participative initiatives followed by SCs in Europe. Through an analysis of 149 SC initiatives from 76 European cities, we provide interesting insights about how participatory models have been introduced in the different areas and dimensions of the cities, how citizen engagement is promoted in SC initiatives, and whether the so-called creative SCs are those with a higher number of projects governed in a participatory wayThis work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness (TIN2016-80630-P), and the Spanish Ministry of Culture and Sport (CAS18/00035

E-Government and public service delivery in Nigeria

The innovation in ICTs and the resulting emergence of the internet were strong drivers for shifting to an information era from the industrial age. In this movement, nations found succour in using information technologies for service delivery and this becomes the most significant epoch in the history of governance transformation. Despite the huge commitment of the government towards the e-government project in Nigeria, significant growth is not yet recorded on the use of ICT in governance as evidenced in the 2018 recent ranking by the United Nations on e-Government global ranking and assessment, Nigeria was positioned on 143rd of the 193 United Nation Member States. This paper therefore sought to investigate the reasons for the poor performance in the sector. This was done through secondary data collected with a structured interview from ICT directors of eight (8) purposively selected Federal Agencies in Nigeria. With due use of thematic analysis of the interview data, the study found that the challenges confronting e-government implementation in Nigeria were national challenges such as infrastructural deficiency, ICT illiteracy in addition to peculiar challenges like data privacy, security concerns. The paper thus concluded that unless these problems are tacked, the likelihood of having a successful e-government implementation outing in Nigeria would remain a mirage

Influence of glycomacropeptide on rehydration characteristics of micellar casein concentrate powder

Glycomacropeptide (GMP) shows potential for enhancing the rehydration properties of high-protein dairy powders due to its hydrophilic nature. This study involved formulating micellar casein concentrate (MCC) solutions (8.6% final protein content) with 0, 10, and 20% GMP as a percentage of total protein, and investigated the physicochemical and rehydration properties of the resultant freeze-dried powders (P-MCC-0G, P-MCC-10G, and P-MCC-20G, respectively). The surface charges of caseins in the control MCC and 10 or 20% GMP blended solutions were −25.8, −29.6, and −31.5 mV, respectively. Tablets prepared from P-MCC-10G or P-MCC-20G powders displayed enhanced wettability with contact angle values of 80.6◦ and 79.5◦, respectively, compared with 85.5◦ for P-MCC-0G. Moreover, blending of GMP with MCC resulted in faster disintegration of powder particles during rehydration (i.e., dispersibility) compared to P-MCC-0G. Faster and more extensive release of caseins from powder particles into solution was evident with the increasing proportion of GMP, with the majority of GMP released within the first 15 min of rehydration. The results of this study will contribute to further development of formulation science for achieving enhanced solubility characteristics of high-protein dairy powder ingredients, such as MCC

ROOT CAUSES OF ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE PROBLEMS IN THE PUBLIC SECTOR

Enterprise architecture (EA) is a holistic approach that aligns IT resources with business processes and strategies. Thus, EA has been used in the public sector to improve services and service processes. How-ever, when EA programs are initiated, the organization faces several challenges, such as lack of re-sources or understanding, and radical changes in the organizational structures. In this paper, we study these problems in the public sector context and identify their root causes. We conduct a multiple-case study by deriving qualitative data from three provinces; each has different experiences, backgrounds, and skills. The findings highlight eight generic root causes and several public sector–specific problems. These findings help researchers and practitioners understand and promote EA, and avoid as many chal-lenges as possible as the root causes are known

Digital urbanisms : Exploring the spectacular, ordinary and contested facets of the media city

Peer reviewe

Superimposition of Metanarrative through Counter Narrative in Political Tweets of Maryam Nawaz

This study aims at investigating superimposition of metanarrative by counter narratives in the political tweets of Maryam Nawaz. The data was confined to the tweets of Maryam Nawaz over the period of two months (February and March 2018). The thematic framework of Riessman et.al (2008) was used as a theoretical lens to interpret the data. The study reveals that Maryam Nawaz is inclined to develop counter narratives in her communication through Tweets. These narratives eclipse the often claimed, propagated and manipulated metanarrative (declared in the party Manifesto) in the pursuit of her personal interests. The study shows that the counter narratives are perpetuated against rival parties, institutions and sometimes against the party Manifesto to generate conflict and to instigate the followers for protests. The study also reveals that metanarrative of the party was not communicated by Maryam Nawaz even during significant political events. Not speaking of the party manifesto/metanarrative, she has been using the virtual space interaction to counter attack her rival political parties. This study provides a direction to future studies to investigate the role of social media in helping Pakistani politicians for getting their voice out to a larger community mostly a direct appeal to their voters for information, persuasion and mobilization