Concerns

 

A smart city’s core concern is to improve the citizens’ quality of life. Realization of the smartness is happening through the smart services. The services are provided by service developers. Government and authorities are responsible for governing the smart cities in terms of realization of the smartness. Responsibility of services in the smart cities is to enhance citizens’ quality of life. To achieve this goal, recognizing the citizens’ concerns is essential. Consequently appropriate objectives have to be set to address the recognized concerns and needs. Referring to defined classes for smart city stakeholders, their associated concerns are as below:

    1. Facilitated daily activities and lower costs
    2. Realization of smartness in terms of facilitated daily activities
    3. More market share and more benefits

 

History

The authorities’ concerns are associated with ensuring the realization smartness in terms of facilitated daily activities. As such, services developers can get more market share and earn more benefits in case of producing more qualified services. In this situation, this research consider a broader range of stakeholders and their concerns toward the service design context, including the citizens, authorities, and service developers. This consideration has been concluded by reviewing many papers related to various classes of stakeholders (e.g. Savage et al. 1991; Freeman 1984). Based on an extensive literature review, the stakeholders’ concerns can be summarized as: 1) Lower cost and facilitated activities for the citizens (Song et al. 2008; Fang et al. 2009; Zapata et al. 2013; Al-Hader and Rodzi 2009); 2) Realization of the smartness and citizens’ satisfaction for the authorities; and 3) Higher profit and more market shares for the service developers.

Example

Concerns in Education Systems

    • Students’ concern: Access to digital learning sources and flexible learning
    • Parents’ concerns: Accessing digital learning portfolio (to view student progress)
    • Teachers’ concerns: Accessing digital teaching sources
    • Administrative concerns: Attracting more students from all around the world and sharing digital teaching resources across the world

Concerns in Healthcare System

    • A matter of concern for legislators was the right of the citizen to raise a complaint when the state itself was providing the service (Allsop, 2008)
    • citizens demanded for transparency, accountability and more open processes (Maxwell, 2003)

Concerns in Transport System

    • Transport systems should be comfortable and low-cost as possible. Also, EU needs to better respond to the desire of its citizens to travel and to be protected against harmful by-products of traffic(Eißel, 2014)
    • A major concern in developing countries is air pollution (Gwilliam, 2003)
    • People concern about safety and security problems are unwilling to use public transport or walk to key services because of fear (Santos, 2010)

References

  • Al-Hader, M. and Rodzi, A., 2009. The smart city infrastructure development & monitoring. Theoretical and Empirical Researches in Urban Management, 4(2 (11), pp.87-94.
  • Allsop, J. and Jones, K., 2008. Withering the citizen, managing the consumer: complaints in healthcare settings. Social Policy and Society, 7(2), pp.233-243.
  • Eißel, D. and Chu, C.P., 2014. The future of sustainable transport system for Europe. AI & society, 29(3), pp.387-402.
  • Fang, H., Chen, J. and Rizzo, J.A., 2009. Explaining urban-rural health disparities in China. Medical care, 47(12), pp.1209-1216.
  • Freeman, R.E., 1984. Strategic Management: A Stakeholder Approach (Pitman, Boston, MA).
  • Gwilliam, K., 2003. Urban transport in developing countries. Transport Reviews, 23(2), pp.197-216.
  • Maxwell, J., Rosell, S. and Forest, P.G., 2003. Giving citizens a voice in healthcare policy in Canada. BMJ: British Medical Journal, 326(7397), p.1031.
  • Santos, G., Behrendt, H. and Teytelboym, A., 2010. Part II: Policy instruments for sustainable road transport. Research in transportation economics, 28(1), pp.46-91.
  • Savage, G.T., Nix, T.W., Whitehead, C.J. and Blair, J.D., 1991. Strategies for assessing and managing organizational stakeholders. The executive, 5(2), pp.61-75.
  • Song, S., 2008. Government promises equitable healthcare for all. Chinese government’s official web portal. China Daily, 8, pp.2008-01.
  • Zapata Cortes, J.A., Arango Serna, M.D. and Andres Gomez, R., 2013. Information systems applied to transport improvement. DYNA, 80(180), pp.77-86.