E-Governance in Smart Cities: Global Trends and Key Enablers

A smart city is a complex concept that can be analyzed from different aspects and points of view. E-governance plays a key role in facilitating the integration of all elements of a smart city. The purpose of the article is to investigate key enablers of e-governance in terms of economic, social, political, information and technological indicators. The research base includes 68 smart cities selected on the basis of different regional affiliations and different economic, social and political developments. The authors apply the methods of cluster analysis (to divide smart cities into clusters according to e-governance indicators); construction of an integral indicator using the linear mathematical model and the Fishburn formula; VAR/VEC modeling (to stud the key factors influencing the development of e-government in smart cities). It was found that the Human Development Index has the greatest impact on e-governance, while the GNI per capita indicator demonstrated the absence of influence for all clusters. The factor of information technologies was defined as the main factor of direct influence on the Smart City Governance Index for smart cities of the first cluster with the highest indicators of e-governance.