Smart communities inside local governments: a pie in the sky?

Purpose - Via embracing the idea that who directly experiences a problem is keener to develop more innovative solutions, local governments have started to engage smart communities in the innovation of public services’ delivery. Even if the meaning of “smart community” generally refers to the community participation in the innovation of public services for urban living, local governments have predominantly stimulated the participation of their citizens. But innovative ideas can potentially spring out also from the insiders. This paper aims to find the managerial and technological issues that public managers have to consider when planning an internal smart community initiative. Methodology - For this purpose, the authors analyse the case study of the Municipality of Turin that developed a participatory smart community project, named Innova.TO, through the theoretical lens of sensemaking (Weick et al., 2005; Weick, 1979). Findings - Results show that there are three main aspects to be considered when implementing smart community initiatives in local governments. Originality - Even if there is the potential, the engagement of public employees in a smart community of innovators is not straightforward and several complexities may challenge its success. Otherwise, real-life examples and empirical studies are still episodic. As a consequence, if it is concretely possible to build a smart community of innovators inside a local government still remains a question to which this paper aims to response

State of the Art and Future Perspectives in Smart and Sustainable Urban Development

This book contributes to the conceptual and practical knowledge pools in order to improve the research and practice on smart and sustainable urban development by presenting an informed understanding of the subject to scholars, policymakers, and practitioners. This book presents contributions—in the form of research articles, literature reviews, case reports, and short communications—offering insights into the smart and sustainable urban development by conducting in-depth conceptual debates, detailed case study descriptions, thorough empirical investigations, systematic literature reviews, or forecasting analyses. This way, the book forms a repository of relevant information, material, and knowledge to support research, policymaking, practice, and the transferability of experiences to address urbanization and other planetary challenges

Data and the city – accessibility and openness. a cybersalon paper on open data

This paper showcases examples of bottom–up open data and smart city applications and identifies lessons for future such efforts. Examples include Changify, a neighbourhood-based platform for residents, businesses, and companies; Open Sensors, which provides APIs to help businesses, startups, and individuals develop applications for the Internet of Things; and Cybersalon’s Hackney Treasures. a location-based mobile app that uses Wikipedia entries geolocated in Hackney borough to map notable local residents. Other experiments with sensors and open data by Cybersalon members include Ilze Black and Nanda Khaorapapong's The Breather, a "breathing" balloon that uses high-end, sophisticated sensors to make air quality visible; and James Moulding's AirPublic, which measures pollution levels. Based on Cybersalon's experience to date, getting data to the people is difficult, circuitous, and slow, requiring an intricate process of leadership, public relations, and perseverance. Although there are myriad tools and initiatives, there is no one solution for the actual transfer of that data

Surveillance, Privacy and Security

This volume examines the relationship between privacy, surveillance and security, and the alleged privacy–security trade-off, focusing on the citizen’s perspective. Recent revelations of mass surveillance programmes clearly demonstrate the ever-increasing capabilities of surveillance technologies. The lack of serious reactions to these activities shows that the political will to implement them appears to be an unbroken trend. The resulting move into a surveillance society is, however, contested for many reasons. Are the resulting infringements of privacy and other human rights compatible with democratic societies? Is security necessarily depending on surveillance? Are there alternative ways to frame security? Is it possible to gain in security by giving up civil liberties, or is it even necessary to do so, and do citizens adopt this trade-off? This volume contributes to a better and deeper understanding of the relation between privacy, surveillance and security, comprising in-depth investigations and studies of the common narrative that more security can only come at the expense of sacrifice of privacy. The book combines theoretical research with a wide range of empirical studies focusing on the citizen’s perspective. It presents empirical research exploring factors and criteria relevant for the assessment of surveillance technologies. The book also deals with the governance of surveillance technologies. New approaches and instruments for the regulation of security technologies and measures are presented, and recommendations for security policies in line with ethics and fundamental rights are discussed. This book will be of much interest to students of surveillance studies, critical security studies, intelligence studies, EU politics and IR in general. A PDF version of this book is available for free in open access via www.tandfebooks.com. It has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial 3.0 license.

New Studies and Research in Social Sciences

This study focuses on the “The Bureaucratic Personality” view through the three prominent woman authors’, who lived in a republican period of Turkey, bureaucratic types are indicated in their literary works. The focused questions are following: 1) How bureaucrats characteristics can be explained in Bureaucratic Personality view? 2) How can be clarified bureaucratic types within the three woman authors’, who lived in republican period, literary works? I have selected the following literary works in considering the research question: Şukufe Nihal "Yalnız Dönüyorum" Halide Edip Adıvar "Zeyno'nun Oğlu" and Halide Nusret "Gül'ün Babası Kim". In questioned literary works are noted as the data set. Bureaucrats’ characteristic and their manner for cases are noticed as indicators, in methodology, this paper is a theoric, exploration study. The study designed into three sections. In the first part Merton, Hummel, and Argrys studies are referenced as Bureaucratic Personality” theories, likewise, bureaucrats’ characteristics are explained. In the next section, bureaucratic types are noted within the Şukufe Nihal "Yalnız Dönüyorum", Halide Edip Adıvar "Zeyno'nun Oğlu", and Halide Nusret Zorlutuna "Gül'ün Babası Kim" literary works. In a similar vein, bureaucrats characteristic and their manner for cases are remarked. In the last part, bureaucratic types are analyzed through “The Bureaucratic Personality” view

Semantic discovery and reuse of business process patterns

Patterns currently play an important role in modern information systems (IS) development and their use has mainly been restricted to the design and implementation phases of the development lifecycle. Given the increasing significance of business modelling in IS development, patterns have the potential of providing a viable solution for promoting reusability of recurrent generalized models in the very early stages of development. As a statement of research-in-progress this paper focuses on business process patterns and proposes an initial methodological framework for the discovery and reuse of business process patterns within the IS development lifecycle. The framework borrows ideas from the domain engineering literature and proposes the use of semantics to drive both the discovery of patterns as well as their reuse

Determinants of user adoption of egovernment services: the case of Greek local government

Various theories and models exist on new technology and eGovernment adoption and explain the phenomenon. eGovernment acceptance though depends on various factors that differentiate among different groups, particularly regarding expectations, cultural variations, the level of use and interaction, commitment to the eGovernment initiatives. Furthermore, in Greece, there are third parties (Citizen Service Centres-CSCs) that operate and play a significant role in the eGovernment context. Nevertheless, their roles in eGovernment acceptance have to be investigated, in addition to other factors. Hence, further research is needed. The ultimate aim of this Research Project is to contribute to the understanding of the user’s intention drivers or barriers for e-services usage at the local government level that has not been sufficiently explored. It succeeds it, by extending the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology 2 (UTAUT2) model and proposing a validation research framework. The enhanced model incorporates ‘trust in the Internet’ and ‘trust in the government’ and the roles of CSCs in the Greek eGovernment, by using ‘Habit of going to CSCs’ and ‘Trust in the CSCs’ factors. Τhe model is empirically tested, using Structural Equation Modelling (SEM). The data (843 participants) came from two cities’ citizens, in Greece. First, the model is being refined by conducting exploratory factor analysis, followed by confirmatory factor analysis and finally the hypothesised structural model is assessed. Ten out of the fifteen hypotheses (relationships and interrelationships among the factors) were confirmed. The findings revealed ‘trust in the Internet’, ‘trust in the government’, and ‘performance expectancy’ to be the primary drivers of behavioural intention to use e-services. Also ‘habit of going to CSCs’ is negatively related to behavioural intention to use e-services. Findings contribute to theory by understanding the drivers of eGovernment adoption in Greece. At the practical level, the research provides guidelines and recommendations that will help eGovernment policy decision makers and web designers in better planning and implementing eGovernment policies and strategies to increase e-services take-up. Furthermore, the questionnaire will be freely available for government organisations in Greece, along with simple directions and recommendations to assess their initiatives