Most of the definitions of a “smart city” make a direct or indirect reference to improving performance as one of the main objectives of initiatives to make cities “smarter”. Several evaluation approaches and models have been put forward in literature and practice to measure smart cities. However, they are often normative or limited to certain aspects of cities’ “smartness”, and a more comprehensive and holistic approach seems to be lacking. Thus, building on a review of the literature and practice in the field, this paper aims to discuss the importance of adopting a holistic approach to the assessment of smart city governance and policy decision making. It also proposes a performance assessment framework that overcomes the limitations of existing approaches and contributes to filling the current gap in the knowledge base in this domain. One of the innovative elements of the proposed framework is its holistic approach to policy evaluation. It is designed to address a smart city’s specificities and can benefit from the active participation of citizens in assessing the public value of policy decisions and their sustainability over time. We focus our attention on the performance measurement of codesign and coproduction by stakeholders and social innovation processes related to public value generation. More specifically, we are interested in the assessment of both the citizen centricity of smart city decision making and the processes by which public decisions are implemented, monitored, and evaluated as regards their capability to develop truly “blended” value services—that is, simultaneously socially inclusive, environmentally friendly, and economically sustainable.

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The purpose of this panel is to discuss actual developments in the co-creation of public services and the role of information science within it. With the advent of the knowledge society, participation and co-creation of public services have become crucial in smart-city decision-making processes. Transfer of knowledge through face-to-face interaction and the transfer of information through digital networks are spurring the process of innovation. The combination of both dimensions needs particular attention in the field of information science to enable suitable methods of knowledge management at a city level. This panel will bring together best-practice examples and research frameworks. In real-world scenarios, citizens are involved in decision-making in the case of public library development. First, frameworks of smart-city assessment and of knowledge management at the city level are discussed. Finally, the role of information science in open innovation processes will be the focus of this panel. For this purpose, the panel brings together researchers and practitioners from library and information science, as well as from neighboring disciplines, to discuss how information and communication technology (ICT) and open innovation are changing our society, culture, and urban space.

in Public Administration (CNIPA) introduced the concept of Local Alliances for Innovation (ALI) as the tool for the inclusion of small municipalities in the spread of E-Government in Italy. Based on the CNIPA's definition, the paper discusses the concept of ALI as an organizational model that can be resorted to in order to reduce the administrative fragmentation of the system of Local Government in Italy. By elaborating on the relation between the ALI model and the model of inter-municipal cooperation, the paper considers under what conditions an ALI could evolve into an Integrated System of Local Government, that is a system of Local Government Organizations strictly interoperable. Since it determines a form of virtual integration among the partners, an ISLG allows a simplification of the system of Local Government while preserving the autonomy of its members.

The heuristic device of a complexity-based lens is applied to the local implementation of a public programme to understand the possible misalignment of its outcomes with the central plannersâ\u80\u99 goals. The authors supersede the dominant use in complexity theory of simplifying or ambiguous metaphors to focus, instead, on the core concepts of emergence, co-evolution, and self-organization. The paper reinterprets extant literature and analyses an exemplary case, concluding that policy implementation must be approached pragmatically as a self-organizing system and that the public managers need to strategically engage with complexity in a manner that is consistent with such a pragmatic understanding