Affiliations: [a] University of Washington, Washington, WA, USA | [b] Kuwait University, Kuwait
Abstract: Around the end of the first decade in the 21st century, quite
a few city governments in municipalities of various sizes began conducting
so-called smart-city initiatives. While many of these initiatives have
successfully reached for low-hanging fruits and easy wins when responding to
the growing demand of smart online services, others have identified the need
for fundamental change and overhaul with regard to organizational
integration and alignment as well as interorganizational information system
interoperability as a pre-requisite for creating smart operations and
providing smart services. Sweepingly changing the governance over citywide
information and communication technologies (ICTs) turned out to be at the
core of creating an environment conducive to smart operations and smart
services, and ultimately, smart city government. The City of Munich in
Germany embarked on a fundamental overhaul of its ICT structures. The
article describes the case and the challenges, insights, and workarounds in
this multiyear change program, which ultimately led to the successful
overhaul of the ICT governance model. In principle, Munich's approach might
be transferable to other cases. At the very least, the case holds valuable
lessons learned when engaging in smart government initiatives in practice.
