Public administration is being pressured for innovation, driving service delivery towards a more personalized, outcome-driven, participative, efficient and collaborative model. In this regard, Web 2.0 technologies are potential powerful tools for supporting public engagement, intended to improve public services and to establish relationships between government and citizens based on information sharing and dialogue. This paper seeks to analyse the influence that political variables could have in the perception of policymakers regarding the use of Web 2.0 technologies for user participation, for knowledge sharing, and for technological innovation in public service delivery. Findings indicate that policymakers are prone to using Web 2.0 technologies to improve internal productivity of local governments and the engagement of citizens in the process of public services' delivery, but with the aim of making suggestions through consultations. In addition, political factors such as ideology, political competition or political stability could influence the perception of policymakers regarding the use of Web 2.0 technologies for citizen participation and knowledge sharing in public sector delivery.

In the last years, cities are actively developing strategies towards the goal of becoming "smart" with the promise of producing a higher quality of life (QLF) for citizens in the urban environment. This paper seeks to analyze whether smart cities are those with a higher QLF in the urban environment as well as to investigate the smart dimensions that could have an influence on the citizen's perception of QLF. Findings based on a sample of European smart cities indicate that the smart city's promise of increasing the citizen's QLF is true, but it seems to be mainly focused on the outcomes (smart living dimension) and not in other smart dimensions that could be focused on the process to obtain the outcomes (smart governance or smart environment, for example).

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