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Citizen Participation in Smart Government: A Conceptual Model and Two IoT Case Studies

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Beyond Smart and Connected Governments

Part of the book series: Public Administration and Information Technology ((PAIT,volume 30))

Abstract

In its simplest form, smart government can be understood as the combination of new technologies and organizational innovation strategies to further modernize the public sector. Within this development, the Internet of Things (IoT) often forms a key technological foundation, offering government authorities new possibilities for interaction with citizens and local communities. On the one hand, citizens can indirectly participate in governmental services’ value creation by using public infrastructure or (un)knowingly sharing their data with the community. On the other hand, smart government initiatives may rely more intensively on citizens’ active participation to improve public service delivery, increase trust in government actions, and strengthen community sentiment. In this chapter, we discuss active and passive participation scenarios of smart government initiatives and explain how sensor-based systems may enhance citizens’ opportunities to participate in local governance. We present two practical cases from Switzerland demonstrating these two citizen involvement modes. We argue that active and passive participation of citizens and other stakeholders play a key role in generating necessary data for algorithmic decision-making to enable personalized interaction and real-time control of infrastructure in the future. We close with a discussion of the possibilities and boundaries of the IoT in the public sector and their possible influences on citizens’ privacy and policy-making.

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Abbreviations

e-government:

Electronic government

IoT:

Internet of Things

IT:

Information technology

LoRaWAN:

Long-range wide area network

m-government:

Mobile government

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Acknowledgments

The authors are grateful to Prof. Dr. Michael Bächle, Prof. Dr. Stephan Daurer, and Prof. Dr. Andreas Judt of the Baden-Wuerttemberg Cooperative State University Ravensburg-Friedrichshafen, as well as to Dr. Christian Geiger (Chief Digital Officer, City of St. Gallen) and research assistant Michel Schibler (University of St. Gallen).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Smart Government Lab, Institute for Systemic Management and Public Governance, University of St. Gallen, St. Gallen, Switzerland

    Ali A. Guenduez & Kuno Schedler

  2. Swiss Graduate School of Public Administration, University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland

    Tobias Mettler

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  1. Ali A. Guenduez
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  3. Kuno Schedler
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Correspondence to Ali A. Guenduez .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University at Albany, State University of New York, Albany, New York, USA

    J. Ramon Gil-Garcia , Theresa A. Pardo  & Mila Gasco-Hernandez ,  & 

  2. Universidad de las Americas Puebla, San Andrés Cholula, Puebla, Mexico

    J. Ramon Gil-Garcia

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Guenduez, A.A., Mettler, T., Schedler, K. (2020). Citizen Participation in Smart Government: A Conceptual Model and Two IoT Case Studies. In: Gil-Garcia, J.R., Pardo, T.A., Gasco-Hernandez, M. (eds) Beyond Smart and Connected Governments. Public Administration and Information Technology, vol 30. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-37464-8_9

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