Determinants of Smart Digital Infrastructure Diffusion for Urban Public Services

Abstract

The Government of India’s ‘Digital India’ initiative intends to build a robust digital ecosystem that fosters innovation and entrepreneurship enabling better citizen service and citizen empowerment. Digitization in India involves geo-demographic and socio-economic dependency, choice of smart technologies undergoing rapid innovation, strategic roll-out planning, and flawless implementation as prerequisites of technology diffusion and benefit realization. This study identifies technical and non-technical determinants of smart digital framework roll out that can accelerate digital diffusion in urban public services in India. This study follows inductive exploratory method, combining grounded theory and text mining for primary data analysis. The study reveals digitization is an ecosystem of private and public enterprises and citizen participation, identifies integrated use analytics and IoT can enable connected smart city, whereas technology cost, digital literacy, and sustainable innovation are identified as non-technological determinants towards resilient urban digital infrastructure in India.