A model to promote citizen driven government in a Smart City
Probably the most valuable resource of a city is its residents. Even so, in some cases, smart city initiatives are launched without the citizens’ evaluation of the improvements made to their city. We propose a model to enhance citizen participation in order to support the Smart City master plan development. Then, how to generate a standardized way to prioritize smart city projects considering citizens’ satisfaction? In order to provide theoretical bases and empirical support for planning and developing the cities of the future, a proposal was made by adapting Kano model into a survey based in the KPIs from the Boyd Cohen’s Smart Cities Wheel. This research has generated a methodology of public consultation that could help develop and evaluate projects of smart cities focused on citizenship. It proposes an investment model that allows the allocation of the necessary resources to areas of highest priority for citizenship, thus preventing citizen dissatisfaction and encouraging greater identity of the people with their city, greater loyalty, quality of life, and an economic recovery to reduce the leakage of human talent.Keywords – Smart cities; Citizen directed government; Kano model; Smart city metrics; Crowdsourcing; Satisfaction clustering.
Due to current urbanization trends, cities are challenged to provide a reasonable quality of life, and priority of investments in the cities’ infrastructure can ́t always be managed efficiently. However, with the rise of the smart cities concept, Information Technologies and multidisciplinary approaches are helping cities to improve their services and use of infrastructures, looking to keep a balance in terms of sustainability in social, economic and environmental impact[1], [2]. The process for cities working to be transformed into smart cities need to assume that technology and sustainability are an intrinsic part of their survival. In terms of technology, cities must apply information technology, and more advanced analytical tools, to develop a more citizen-oriented approach of services where the citizen must be at the center of change, being the main beneficiary of the new urban paradigm. Therefore, citizens must be consulted and through an assessment of citizen satisfaction, it can understand the needs of citizens and help develop cities focused on its residents. To start the transition to a Smart City, we need to stablish a metrics model in order to set goals to improve the quality of life of citizens. Different models have been proposed for smart city metrics, in this study, Boyd Cohens model was used to develop the research tool considering also the ISO 37120 standard, in order to determine the satisfaction generated in the citizens by each KPI based on Kano methodology[3], [4]. Once the metrics model is stablished, we developed a model to include citizen participation by using traditional strategies from customer service research, in order to understand the priorities of the citizens in the creation of a Smart City master plan. This model should improve the success and acceptation of future smart city projects.