The democratic governance of digital transformation to build smart cities is governed in the interplay between political and professional leaders. This paper presents and discusses how municipal political leaders see their capacity and confidence to build more smart cities in Sweden. The national policy ambitions are to use digitalization in the best ways to build smart urban and regional spaces. The study indicates that these leaders mainly see digitalization and smart city initiatives as a tool for effective administration and improved access. The two main lessons learned from the study are that the size of the municipality is critical for the competences to lead, and that the silo-organization is hampering learning and competence develop-ment. The overall conclusion is that there is a lack of coordinated governance structures to make the most of smart cities and to enhance learning among cities and leaders. Acknowledgement: We are grateful to all participants who contributed and to SALAR for support.
1. Introduction
ed to grasp urban challenges through the use of ICT. Having
previously been more biased towards technology, the concept has become increasingly used as a
citizen-centric concept. Smart cities are built in local communities, on the structures and strategies
that are formed and set up around the institutional arrangements in an intricate interplay of public
values, technology, public management and the local community
New smart city applications are predominantly based on new forms of AI (Makridakis, 2017),
including robot process automation (RPA). These technologies are based on global market models
and principles and the networking approaches guiding social media and other network-based
organizations. As cities become smarter in democratic states, the technologies have to be governed
in new ways to fit with democratic values and public management. Thus, there is a need for public
leadership to develop these technologies in smart cities to become a sustainable component in
democratic welfare states. There is a need to study and develop municipal leadership for
digitalization towards smart cities with an awareness of public values
The Nordic welfare state model compromises economic liberalism and social democracy, in
which equal citizenship, impartiality and well-being are core values (
The aim of this paper is to analyse how local political leaders describe their competences to lead the digital transformation towards smart cities, and to discuss its implications for competencebuilding and change management in the public governance of smart cities. 1.1.
The research presented in this paper builds on a collaborative approach, where the interpretations and actions are formed in a close interplay between researchers and actors in municipal practice. The practical solution to the problem, in this case the need for more competence in digital transformation towards smart city governance, was addressed in lectures for political leaders provided by SALAR. According to Egl et al. (2020), an interactive research study of problem formulation focuses on identifying and creating an understanding of the practical problem within the practices system problem, in order to be able to stretch it into a research phase of theorizing our analytical setting.
The research process was integrated into the work carried out by SALAR, and during November and December 2019 senior staff from SALAR and the researchers delivered the first five lectures for a total of 183 political leaders from Swedish regions and municipalities. The team gave five one-day seminars of lectures including several small group discussions. During the seminars, the participants answered questions and dealt with responses from the small group discussions using the web survey program Menti, using their phones or computers. The results from all the lectures gave a total of 1123 responses, some of which were duplicated responses to questions. The responses have been analysed inductively by all authors and discussed in relation to former research and our general understanding of the municipal context. In addition to the analysis of the results from the Menti survey, we have conducted telephone interviews with ten leaders who volunteered during the lectures.
Smart cities need to be governed, and there are new challenges when public management is set in
digital contexts (European Commission, 2017) that are open to the interdisciplinary research field
A recent literature review identified that public values are addressed in digital government to
improve public services, public administration and the legitimacy of public services among the
general public
Public leadership, in contrast to leadership in market-driven organizations, has to build on public
values and deliver results and outcomes such as democratic legitimacy and trustworthy public
services
Leadership in the local digital transformation towards smart cities is expressed in strategic
decisions, as well as in many daily practices that can range from information security policies to
daily struggles with learning platforms in schools. In all such situations, the leaders have to
reassemble and act in line with core public values
The first focus was on values connected to smart city transformation and digitalization. Most of the leaders mentioned values relating to digitalization on very practical levels, e.g. less use of paper. In a follow-up interview, one leader explained: sheet of everything is available on my iPad. public services. For example, several respondents highlighted the ease with which citizens communicate with the municipality as a positive value. This was expressed as follows by a chairperson from a medium-sized municipality: it facilitates contact with the municipality. The results are summarized in Table 1.
65 52 50 44 10 2
Availability, anywhere, closeness, user support, bridging distances Ease, smooth, smoothness, free time Effectiveness, cheaper, personnel saving, cost efficiency
Speed, fast, instant, fast answer Democracy, participation, openness, transparency, equal for everyone
One of the interesting responses regarding public values concerned the positive effects digitalization could have on more impartial and standardized decision-making for trust-building through digitalization. In a follow-up interview, trust, I feel, and if we are to recover, we should be more correct and clearer, and I believe that digitalization can help us with that.
At two of the lectures, we also followed up in Menti by asking about possible negative values
related to digitalization. Here, a common response was that the participants stressed the importance
of physical meetings as superior to digital meetings, in terms of both building trust and
understanding each other. For example, as one of them emphasized in a follow-up interview:
refer citizens to digital solutions that make it more legal many of them might feel a little alienated.
They might not trust it. ust have physical meetings
for the democratic processes. This is a sector that is not entirely suitable for digitalization.
together, the positive values the leaders identify in relation to digital transformation are commonly
related to easy and accessible processes. These results are also in line with what
To focus on personal competence as a leader, enough competence to lead in a digital age
Yes Unsure No Count We later asked the same question during interviews where the respondents had the chance to elaborate on whether or not they believe they have enough competence, and why. One of the respondents who competent. I have managed the situations I have faced and have otherwise gotten help. Competence
The majority of the respondents answered that they were unsure or did not have enough competence to lead in a digital age, but some were interested in learning more. During the interviews, one of the respondents a chairperson from a medium-sized municipality not believe that I have enough competence We have not discussed education. We hand over a lot .
In most of the interviews, digital competence was discussed in relation to age. Some expressed that their feeling about their own digital competence depended on the people they were currently surrounded by. Many of the interviewees said that they believed it is easier for younger people to learn and use digital tools. All the respondents expressed that the older generation risks being excluded when cities become generation have a hard time with them and using the tools. It takes tim The main topics, examples and reasoning during the interviews concerned specific technical solutions in relation to running the municipal council meetings. This indicates that there might be a specific need for increased strategic competence.
Overall, the interviewees took a positive approach to digitalization and most of them had confidence in their own capacity to lead. However, during the discussions at the lectures there were reflections on how they experienced their competence. Some even said that they believed their competence was sufficient, but others might had evaluated their competence differently.
The first part of the lectures focused on the meaning of digitalization and the national digital strategy and some key policies. Following on from this, the lectures developed to focus on transforming the own municipal organizations. Here, the small group discussions were designed to focus on deal with daily changes. In the discussions, there was a particular focus on digital support. In the Menti survey, we asked the of 67 participants responded to this question, giving a total of 102 answers. In the interviews, we asked the same question as above and the respondents pointed towards many different sources of support including management and colleagues. One respondent reflected on this in the follow-up interview. They pointed towards the need to identify two aspects of this question, where technical support in using digital tools is one aspect and is different to support from re talking about the technology, but when it comes to leading During the lectures, the participants reflected on what actually constitutes a local issue and what can be standardized, like different digital systems for patient records, learning platforms, public transport tickets and many more applications.
Taken together, this indicates that the public administration supports the democratic political s. The support from political party organizations seems to be less important to those who responded here. However, the reflection expressed in one of the interviews may also show that the question has to be broken down for accurate interpretation.
This paper has presented the results of how municipal leaders in Sweden believe their competences lead the digital transformation towards smart cities, and has discussed the implications regarding the relevance of competence-building and change management in the public governance of smart cities. The results indicate that there is a need to study in greater depth how political leaders develop their competence to lead for transformation towards smart cities combining competences for both technical changes and democratic leadership.
The overall impression is that most leaders are confident that they have the capacity to lead their
municipality in a digital era, and they reflect on this
The political leaders in this study raise issues that are clearly related to the institutional framing of smart cities within smart nations, which must be further addressed in research, in policy and in practice. In all the interviews, the respondents stressed that digitalization is inevitable and that leaders have to adapt. Most of the participants said that they were unsure or did not have enough competence to lead in a digital world. There is a need to include knowledge about public values and the unique institutional setting for public leaders in analyses of smart cities. The leaders in this study are struggling to reassemble and act in line with core public values and to combine the values of digitalization with the context of the Nordic welfare state regime of equality, participation and consensus-building institutions. A more long-term solution to the practical problems might be to rearrange the division of duties and responsibilities among public agencies and market actors.
Aneta Kulanovic Fredrik Calrsson Aneta Kulanovic is a research assistant in Political Science at Linköping University, Sweden. She wrote her master thesis about how the public leadership is challenged by artificial intelligence.
Fredrik Carlsson is a PhD student in Political Science at Linköping university, Sweden. He is interested in studying different aspects of leadership within digitalization of Public administration. Elin Wihlborg