Consider Engaged City instead of Smart City?
Municipalities should engage their citizens as stakeholders in controlling the infrastructure of a city. Citizens get only limited or no access to information on infrastructure projects, programs, plans and data; and therefore, are not involved adequately in the assessments. Instead to hide the “Data,” the city administration should disclose those data as “Open Data”; and moreover, strictly be unconnected from the executing enterprises to prevent corruption. The citizens should report via social media about any crime and corruption and actively participate in the decisions process. The citizen as engaged stakeholder should secure in their involvement, that the city administration and executing corporations deliver results that are financially and technical successful, as well as socially and environmentally acceptable and sustainable. Engaging stakeholders in a smart way is fundamental to achieving this. In difficult situations the City administration mutually agrees with the stakeholder to engage an independent, professional engagement practitioner or experienced NGO (*).
Smarte Stadt: Barcelona beteiligt Bürger statt Tech-Unternehmen, Barbara Wimmer, Kurier, Samstag 11. März 2017.
John Aston and Alan Knight, Smart Engagement, Why, What, Who and How, 2014
Roland Leithenmayr, VFV
NGO Committee on Sustainable Development Vienna 