Smart cities, transparency, civic technology and reinventing government

Abstract

This chapter looks at the potential of the civic technology movement to enhance the development of smart cities and the smart city movement. Civic technology combines open civic data, technology, and a new set of collaborative civic technology practices in order to facilitate effective government. What distinguishes civic technology from traditional uses of technology to improve urban administration is its reliance on open and voluntary sharing of information, ideas, and initiatives among governments and other stakeholders. This has the potential to change the relationship between government and other sectors, and blur the boundaries between them. In the best case, this might promote creativity, education, innovation, and learning; remove barriers to participation, knowledge, and services; and build intellectual, social, and human capacities. This is a qualitatively different proposition from viewing smart cities as simply a continuation of urban politics and management as usual, but with some efficiency and effectiveness gains enabled by improved technology. In a less inspiring possibility, business and technically proficient elites might use the tools of civic technology to capture urban governance and direct it to their own purposes. While it is still too soon to tell whether smart cities will realize a civic-technology utopia, dystopia, or something in between, it is clear that the blurring of boundaries will happen in some form. Urban public management practice and education must therefore work proactively to develop informed strategies that will preserve core values of democratic administration, democracy and efficiency.