The governors of school markets? : Local education authorities, school choice and equity in Finland and Sweden

As one of the key elements of the Nordic welfare model, education systems are based on the idea of providing equal educational opportunities, regardless of gender, social class and geographic origin. Since the 1990s, Nordic welfare states have undergone a gradual but wide-ranging transformation towards a more market-based mode of public service delivery. Along this trajectory, the advent of school choice policy and the growing variation in the between-school achievement results have diversified the previously homogenous Nordic education systems. The aim of our paper is to analyse how Finnish and Swedish local education authorities comprehend and respond to the intertwinement of the market logic of school choice and the ideology of equality. The data consist of two sets of in-depth thematic interviews with staff from the local providers of education, municipal education authorities. The analysis discloses the ways in which national legislation has authorized municipal authorities to govern the provision of education.Peer reviewe

Smart cities in the new service economy: building platforms for smart services

Recent changes in service environments have changed the preconditions of their production and consumption. These changes include unbundling services from production processes, growth of the information-rich economy and society, the search for creativity in service production and consumption and continuing growth of digital technologies. These contextual changes affect city governments because they provide a range of infrastructure and welfare services to citizens. Concepts such as 'smart city', 'intelligent city' and 'knowledge city' build new horizons for cities in undertaking their challenging service functions in an increasingly cost-conscious, competitive and environmentally oriented setting. What is essential in practically all of them is that they paint a picture of cities with smooth information processes, facilitation of creativity and innovativeness, and smart and sustainable solutions promoted through service platforms. This article discusses this topic, starting from the nature of services and the new service economy as the context of smart local public services. On this basis, we build an overall framework for understanding the basic forms and dimensions of smart public services. The focus is on conceptual systematisation of the key dimensions of smart services and the conceptual modelling of smart service platforms through which digital technology is increasingly embedded in social creativity. We provide examples of real-life smart service applications within the European context

Towards Cities as Communities

Cities should be communities that ensure high quality of life promoting effective services, sustaining knowledge acquisition and developing innovation, using technology to sustain urban growth and promote value creation. Cities becoming smart communities should adopt a smart approach to driving social and economic urban development employing information technology to promote innovation. Information and communication technologies (ICTs) help cities to achieve successful issues as smart communities within knowledge-based global and local economies and open societies. Sustaining smart growth relies on rethinking the city as a smart and sustainable community using technology to support collaboration between local government, businesses, education and research centres and people to change the city in a significant and positive way. Sustainable, inclusive and open cities should evolve as communities that use technology to support human capital value, to use knowledge sources encouraging public and private organizations to believe in cooperation for sustaining change through innovation