Smart Governance: Opportunities for Technologically-mediated Citizen Co-production

Citizens increasingly contribute directly to the evolution of sustainable cities, in particular where new Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) promise to transform urban governance into ‘Smart city governance’ and where ICTs are integrated in strategies for citizen participation and the co-production of public services and policy. This article provides a multi-disciplinary understanding of Smart city governance, including new insights around the opportunities for citizen engagement in the co-production of service-delivery and decision-making. Using findings from a review of Smart cities literature and practice, the article aims to establish the breadth of Smart city initiatives which emphasise citizen participation and the realities of delivering such initiatives in complex city environments. Emphasising the emerging role of the technologically ‘empowered’ citizen, a new conceptual model is presented, where mutual trust, shared understanding and new opportunities for co-production emerge in an environment mediated by new technology – this form of Smart governance is referred to here as ‘technologically-mediated municipal reciprocity’.

to reduce costs, but crucially identifies that the conditions necessary for successful and sustainable co-production are dependent upon changing behaviours of both public officials and citizens. In its most simplistic form, co-production may well be regarded as a diluted form of eGov, involving purely transactional activities where citizens may have been asked to comment only on the format or their preference for using this type of service, rather than being asked to contribute ideas which could genuinely influence the content or structure of service delivery. Meijer and Bolívar [52] contend that Smart city governance is not just a technological issue, but rather one which involves a complex process of institutional change, and that we should acknowledge the political nature and appealing visions of sociotechnological governance.
The remainder of the article is split into five main sections. The next section, Section 2, sets out the methods underpinning this research, with specific reference to the international SmartGov research project. Following this, Section 3 explores the concept of Smart city governance in more detail, and sets out a list of mechanisms which facilitate Smart city governance, engagement and participation. Section 4 presents the 'technologically-mediated municipal reciprocity' approach to understanding Smart city governance. This is followed by Section 5, which offers concluding comments and discussion.
The underlying purpose of the article is to identify the core elements of Smart city governance, and how these elements interact and relate to one another in a process that is perceived to be mutually beneficial and provide positive societal outcomes. The new conceptual approach based on reciprocity and technology, offers a basis for further academic research and practitioner enquiry, which shifts the focus of attention from just technology, to one which emphasises the role of citizens and the increasing opportunities which they now have to participate in local affairs.

Methodology
This article is based on research undertaken for the 'SmartGov' (Smart governance of sustainable cities) research project 1    provision. Very few articles addressed directly the combination of sustainable urban governance using citizen-centric Smart city technologies, and it was evident from the literature review that there has to date been limited published work on the processes by which citizens are incentivised to engage in co-production and the ingredients necessary for successful sustainable co-production using ICTs in Smart city environments.

Smart City Governance
This section of the article engages directly with current discourse around Smart cities, cocreation, co-production, and Smart city governance. It includes an exploration of the contemporary concept of Smart cities, examines the distinction between co-production and co-creation, and considers the role of the citizen in Smart city governance arrangements. It also presents a categorisation of the different ways in which citizens participate in and cocreate Smart city environments.

The Smart City
Providing a precise definition of the term 'Smart city' is not straightforward due to the continually evolving nature of the various components involved, and differences in the conceptual understanding of the term. Whilst the term is relatively new its use is now widespread and is used to capture a range of features of the modern urban environment, including: new models of service delivery [57], innovative use of ICTs [59], new opportunities arising from the Internet of Things [89], and changing dynamics of relationships amongst the actors involved, including the disengaged [75]. The term 'smarter cities' was registered as a trademark by IBM in 2011 and their involvement in the development of Smart cities has been described as "the most developed attempt by a private company to define a model of urban management" [79, p. 307]. Soderstrom et al. [79] refer to the dominant discourse on Smart cities being about efficient and sustainable cities, but that the logic behind the involvement of ICT companies is a commercial logic about market re-positioning so that Smart technologies are seen as a 'must have' asset for cities. Kitchen [43] argues that a profit orientation explains attempts by ICT companies to change the direction of their corporate language on Smart cities from a 'top-down' managerially focused one, to a revised 'bottom-up' approach which stresses inclusivity and citizen empowerment. Difficulties in providing a definition or indeed a shared understanding of the concept are often referred to in the academic discourse on Smart cities [61]. Smart city definitions have been described as tending to be "normative and narrow in perspective" [3, p.326], while others contend that there is a void in the literature, with most writers addressing "only technological aspects" of the Smart city [59, p.185]. It has also been claimed that the term smart city is "basically an evocative slogan lacking a well-defined conceptual core and, in this sense, proponents of the smart city are allowed to use the term in ways that support their own agenda" [83, p.884]. In this respect, the dominant discourse on Smart cities is the positive use of new technology to enhance service provision, arguably an agenda driven by service providers and IT companies [85].
The term 'Smart city' can also be synonymous with other related concepts, such as the 'digital city', the 'wired city', or the 'intelligent city', with the developing role of the citizen in this 'mix' becoming increasingly important [77]. These terms reflect the proliferation in the use of digital devices and infrastructure in cities, as well as ever increasing volumes of data, The apparent 'self-congratulatory' nature of the Smart city can also be challenged, with it being suggested that Smart urbanism should put societal problems first and not look to Smart technology for the answers. A case can be made for greater engagement of the citizen and communities in designing solutions to their problems [35].
Discussions about what constitutes a 'Smart city' are increasingly, linked to the concept of sustainability and the 'sustainable Smart city', where the transformative power of technology is realised if it offers sustainable long-term solutions, and engages citizens in participatory activities linked directly to the services which they need. In a sustainability context, the sustainable Smart city provides "the potential for citizens to improve their lives in the urban context and sustaining it for the future" [18, p.5]. Components of the sustainable Smart city might include government-citizen engagement and participation, leading to cocreation and co-production relative to: the planned use and location of green spaces, waste disposal and recycling, air quality targets, traffic congestion, water management and use of natural resources. With regards to energy usage, the innovative use of ICTs provides opportunities for intelligent uses of energy in a range of contexts, such as in buildings, transport, street lighting, water usage, and energy-capture/energy-transfer initiatives, leading to reduced carbon emissions. Sustainability in this context is much more than simply being environmentally friendly, it is about designing organisational structures and processes, and institutional norms and values that will exist over time, in a manner that enriches citizens' lives and at the same time prioritises the efficient use of societal resources. Smart city governance occurs in situations where actors, including citizens, policy-makers, practitioners, private and third sector organisations, technologies, and the physical and virtual features of the Smart city, engage and interact through the facilitating medium of innovative ICTs, to help to meet the challenges of urban problems. Outcomes, or 'promises', from these interactions might include co-production, leading to shared learning, and improved decision-making. This is not to argue that Smart cities will automatically improve citizens' lives, only through further robust empirical research can this claim be validated. Instead, a more nuanced understanding of the Smart city is required, one which emphasises socio-technical structures and relations in Smart governance arenas [52].

Co-production and Co-creation
There may be a disconnect in the discourse between the perceived transformative potential of ICTs and their realisation in complex public service environments, where administrative solutions associated with service delivery may be easier to deliver than radical ICT-oriented engagement and co-production activities. There is also probably a discord between perceived benefits evident in the literature and the actual practices delivered 'on the ground'. To date, co-production approaches have mostly been 'government-centric' as opposed to 'citizencentric' [50], and it is important to understand the context of citizen engagement and participation in the delivery of services, for example in planning mechanisms where the concern of the policy-makers in local or central government may be more about the distribution of resources, rather than the engagement of citizens, who in practice are kept at 'arms-length'. To aid our understanding of the different roles of the citizen and government, it is important to distinguish between co-production and co-creation. The term 'coproduction' is claimed to have originated from the work of Parks et al. [70,68], where it was found that the trust of smaller communities who knew their local police officers was a critical success factor in realising enhanced policing. In such an environment, the production of public services did not happen in the traditional top-down bureaucratic way, but was the result of the active engagement of citizens or service users in the production process. Co-production has been defined to include the agencies charged with delivering the particular service, and the individuals (service users) or communities which receive it [36,67].
Alford and Yates [2] assert that the extent to which citizens are inclined to co-produce is related to their satisfaction with services received. Bovaird [14] argues that involving service users in service planning is at odds with New Public Management which points to service providers being responsive to the needs of their communities without necessarily engaging them in co-production [22]. The literature on co-production, although presenting a thorough analysis of new practices in the public sector, fails to address the emerging importance of the role of social media, and the 'huge potential' that the Internet now provides [50].
The terms co-production and co-creation are often used interchangeably, and are used to reflect the role of citizens and service users in the creation or production of services and value [68]. This is especially so in relation to the use of new ICTs for service provision.
Conditions of co-creation exist when there is "active involvement of end-users in various stages of the production process" and whilst there are some similarities in the definitions "the co-creation literature puts more emphasis on co-creation as value" in itself [87, p.1335]. One way to differentiate the terms would be to think about the core terms themselves. Coproduction implies involvement in the production and consumption of a service and therefore lends itself to perspectives focused on service design and service users, whereas co-creation implies involvement in processes creating public services more generally, including the cocreation of value, therefore lending itself to citizen engagement in public policy processes, where the outcome of the engagement may focused more broadly on society or a community than on an individual citizen. What is of interest in this article is how citizens co-produce governance in a Smart city environment, the mechanisms by which this is achieved and the degree to which these processes are shaped and controlled by municipalities.

Participating in the Smart City
Citizens participate in the Smart city in a variety of ways, some very traditional, but others are innovative mechanisms facilitated by new ICTs. Some of the participation is oriented towards the consumption of services, whilst other forms are oriented towards influencing decision and policy making. There is extensive literature on eParticipation [90], and eConsultation [86], but much of this literature concentrates on using ICTs to support traditional participatory and consultative mechanisms. The critical feature of the Smart city environment is utilisation of information flows in innovative 'Smart' ways. The data embedded in these information flows emanates from administrative data, service data, data generated by new sensory devices and data generated via social media and open data. In a Smart city, new sources of data originate from new technological applications, or from the combination of existing datasets. Despite the growing proliferation of publicly available datasets [82], there appears to be a conflict in the desire for the use of open data and the experiences of citizens and other groups in actually using them [88]. One reason for the lack of engagement with open data might be attributable to a data literacy deficit, both in terms of the skills of the providers of the datasets in making them publicly accessible, and of citizens, in being able to interpret and use them for their own purposes [84].
Participating in the Smart city is a physical and a virtual experience, and services received will derive from digital personas. However, participating in a Smart city may also be involuntary, for example, sensory devices counting footfall, intelligent street lighting, and traffic congestion, etc. Whilst participating in the Smart city environment is increasingly digital and virtual, many of the contemporary mechanisms involve human and institutional interventions and are not initiated by technology, but by local communities.  technologies are involved engagement will be 'better' [9].

Incentivisation and Gamification
One relatively recent engagement practice is to incentivise citizen participation through some form of applied gamification. The gamification of public services is a novel feature of the Smart city environment [5] and may appeal to the playful, problem-solving and competitive side of human nature, where it can be used to motivate positive behaviours and discourage unproductive ones [28]. It is likely that the use of this transformational engagement-medium will expand as citizens are increasingly exposed to such practices in their everyday lives, through the widespread use of mobile telephone apps and games, and activity monitors such as fitness trackers. Mallon [48] draws parallels with the application of gamification techniques across a number of sectors, including higher education, and claims that the use of digital games is almost 'ubiquitous' in social media. Smart meters and energy apps have been introduced to monitor home energy use [25,27], they offer the potential to moderate citizens' behaviour, the results of which could be reduced fuel costs, and an environmental benefit in terms of a 'feel-good factor' through acting sustainably [60]. Participation in gaming can have positive effects on people's lives [49], including the development of problem solving skills, and the use of well-designed gamification platforms, can also lead to the creation of successful and enduring citizen-state relationships [38]. Whilst gamification may be an appealing medium for service providers, the extent to which it represents a radical form of e-Gov is still to be determined, and there may be a temptation to conflate engagement with participation [29].

Technologically-mediated Municipal Reciprocity
The The idea of some form of mutual reciprocity is linked to the notion of social capital [73], whereby societal groupings and communities develop the skills and knowledge for selfdeterminism and empowerment, and that this occurs alongside political and community leadership in a mutually beneficial relationship [34]. This occurs in the absence of traditional bureaucratic governance structures following New Public Management [66,12]. Reciprocity becomes a key ingredient in the governance mix and is a core characteristic in contemporary citizen-state relations, which are increasingly mediated by new ICTs embedded in new participatory practices [51].
Whilst it is clear that the Internet and social media offer new potentialities for engagement, communication and interaction with citizens, and thereby reaching hitherto untouched audiences, it is at the same time unclear how these process will 'play out in practice', whether or not their potential will be realised, and how citizens will experience and respond to reciprocity opportunities. The various forms of incentives to participate may not be strong enough 'hooks' to catch and retain the involvement of Internet 'lurkers' and other  in the literature review, the specified inputs are illustrative and are not intended to be definitive or comprehensive. The intention here is not to explain in granular detail how reciprocity happens, but to identify reciprocity as a core component of contemporary governance and the municipal and citizen inputs necessary for reciprocity to be mutually beneficial. In practice, the process is unlikely to be 'neutral' and is likely to be shaped by an array of vested interests, as these interests seek to maximise their own personal utility from the process. Municipal inputs in the technologically-mediated municipal reciprocity process are designed to facilitate citizen engagement, whilst citizen inputs imply a degree of trust in the municipality and a willingness to input into the governance process, and in this respect these inputs are related and not independent variables. The results of this interaction are shown in the form of more meaningful and sustainable benefits to local communities and offer a stark contrast to traditional governance practices.
The model can also be used to map a particular context and 'who' is involved in co- or is their community more resilient? Is the city and environs easier to navigate? Is it a healthier place to live, work and play? Have they participated in any shared learning or citywide decision-making? The model of technologically-mediated municipal reciprocity, which has at its core new ICTs blended alongside contextual factors, sets out the key inputs required by both municipalities and citizens (or citizens' groups), if they are to work together to achieve reciprocal benefits and promises for both parties.

Concluding Discussion
Smart cities are at the nexus of a range of data flows, emanating from new sensory devices, existing datasets and big data processes. They provide exciting opportunities for citizen engagement in service re-design and co-production, and in influencing public policy agendas technologies [65]. There are significant issues to be addressed around how representative such engagement mechanisms are, although this is a concern for all participatory practices, and also the extent to which such mechanisms lead to 'real' change. The latter is important because citizens will only continue to participate if they derive some value from doing so. A further issue relates to the involuntary use of citizen-generated data, often from social media and used for public policy and service purposes, without the users' consent or knowledge.
This raises ethical and privacy issues that relate to a raft of Smart city practices. Many of these issues are empirical questions which require robust evaluation and testing 'in the field' before concrete judgments can be made. http://smartgov-project.com.   [37].

Living Labs
Living labs are used for developing new products, testing prototypes or ideas involving ICTs, where citizens co-produce with other citizens and industry professionals by contributing their opinions, knowledge and expertise. The living lab can either be a physical or a virtual reality, and with the users shaping "the innovation in their daily real-life environments." [64, p.483]. The strength of the living lab is in the innovation generated through the strength of relationships amongst the participants [56].

Fablabs and maker spaces
Fablabs (fabrication laboratories) are a form of living lab, with the emphasis on communitybased shared learning, and production of either solutions to societal issues using ICTs (and often social media), or the physical production of a commercial item often involving the recycling of materials [78]. Maker spaces are a form of fablab, where experimentation with technologies can take place within the confines of the laboratory, but with the potential for shared learning which extends outwards to the city [62].

Labs
Smart urban labs are also a form of living lab, often at the spatial scale of the city, again with a strong emphasis on innovation, involving the testing of ideas and products by companies, government and citizens. Sustainability features commonly involve sustainable 'living, working and mobility' [8]. [7] define urban living labs as being closely aligned to local government, and with a strong focus on value creation and civic engagement.

Dashboard
A citizens' dashboard is an interactive 'app' located on a mobile phone, tablet, laptop or PC providing opportunities for citizens and businesses to co-create by commenting on urban problems or sustainability issues, and which makes available public information sources, such as traffic congestion, air quality, routes for walking/cycling, open data sources, and online connectivity [91]. Citizens' dashboards can be used to access key performance information from open data, allowing for detailed analysis [44].

Gamification
Incentivisation of citizens to participate in co-production as a means of providing solutions to urban problems, is increasingly taking place through gamification of public services, by tapping in to the apparently growing use of gamification technologies in people's everyday lives. The citizen may assume an 'identity' and might be 'ranked' according to the amount of activity which they generate [5]. Gamification might also be used to improve the skillsets of citizens to allow them to participate more effectively [21].

'Open'
Datasets 'Open' data, often referred to erroneously as 'big data' [20], involves making datasets publicly available, which contain anonymised statistical, performance, or demographic information generated by public bodies, relating for example to employment, housing, health, education, welfare, crime, transport, or simply the provision of services. In the UK, 'open' data is provided by, amongst others, local and central government; government ministers; fire and police boards; national park authorities [82].
Crowdsourcing Crowdsourcing is a Web-based engagement model which collects the online views of citizens (the 'crowd') in relation to a particular social issue, such as a public planning issue [16], or proposals by a municipality perhaps to engage in a particular activity or potential investment, e.g. cycling infrastructure investment [6]. Specific groups can be targeted, or the invitation to engage and participate can be completely open. Crowdfunding, designed to generate financial resources, is an example of crowdsourcing.