E-Democracy for Smart Cities

Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) have strengthened the democratic processes of most democracies in the world. The adoption of E-democracy is to encourage good governance and to properly monitor the democratic processes for the benefits of Lagos residents. Lagos has the fastest and most lucrative ICT market in Nigeria and Africa, yet in spite of this obvious and significant progress, little is known about its E-democracy adoption. This paper provides a comprehensive review of E-democracy in order to assess the levels of E-democracy implementation, evaluate critical success factors of E-democracy implementation and discusses the successes and failures of E-democracy. The analysis of the impact of E-democracy on service delivery in Lagos is also provided. It notes that Lagos is facing a number of challenges in the introduction of E-democracy. Given the importance of the successful implementation of electronic democratic services and from a practical perspective, the paper suggests that government should take a positive position towards the factors which will bring about effective and efficient E-democracy in Nigeria, particularly in Lagos. Lagos State Government needs to widen access to ICT services and guarantee enabling environment for attracting the right level of investments. The paper concludes that there is a lot of hope on the potential of E-democracy to transform the internal efficiency of government and the relationship of government with citizens.

Historically, the urban planning in India has been implemented with a top-down approach where there was little opportunity for citizen participation. The intervention of information technology or ‘smart technology’ is changing this scenario. More people can voice their opinions on different forums online and expedite the process of participation. Currently, this process is widely used within the realm of private/ personal opinion sharing, and improvement of business performance. Though slowly, different government agencies are also catching up the use of information technology. They are using different online services and telecommunications for police response, birth-death certificate registration, payment for different public services, etc. To maintain the quality of these services, it is important for the governing bodies to have an inflow of citizen participation and opinion sharing as a constant process. The 74th amendment of Indian constitution gives authority to Urban Local Bodies (ULB) to self-govern and plan for future of their respective jurisdictions. Outline Development Plan (ODP) is proposed for a period of 20 years that includes future direction of spatial development and economic aspirations of that jurisdiction as per the amendment requirement of economic development and social welfare. Citizen involvement is critical in every stage of development ODP. Traditionally, public participation meetings were held for general public and stakeholder groups’ involvement in the plan development. E-governance and e-democracy, use of information technology for information dissipation, and citizen participation in the plan making is expected to improve the frequency and number of citizens participating. The current study looks at the City of Feroke for implementing the ODP in the e-governance and e-democracy format. With more than 80% people being high-school graduates and very high literacy and e-literacy based on state sponsored project, the city of Feroke, Kerala, is a good example for implementing the use of information technology in the ODP development. Different approaches such as web-based information, interaction, and web-profile in the social networking sites, emails, and telephonic interviews were used as part of the e-democracy while developing the ODP. Along with it, a traditional household survey using a questionnaire was also used. Delphi was used for analyzing the specific stakeholders and expert opinions. Six areas—smart people, smart economy, smart living, smart mobility, smart environment, and smart government—were identified for implementing various smart technologies. The executive framework for Feroke Municipality ODP adopted Internet of People or E-Democracy (IOP), Internet of Government E-Governance (IOG), and Internet of Things (IOT). The project concludes with spatial proposals, specification for IOP, IOG, and IOT emerging out of six systems of Smart Cities.

New Delhi Municipal Council is one of the rare urban local bodies of the National Capital Territory of Delhi, which is governed by Government of India through an organizational arrangement led by senior civil servants who are assisted by professionals like engineers, architects, city planners and others. Normal democratic regimes and routines such as elections and re-elections are non-existent in the working of the New Delhi Municipal Council. As is well known, in the rest of the country, democratic processes are well and truly established since the early 1950s hailing India as the world’s largest democracy. With the declaration of the area under the jurisdiction of NDMC as the first smart city in Delhi, the highly planned and designed city by Edwin Lutyens aspires to become a benchmark for the global smart capitals. Covering the geographical area of 43.7 km² (2.95% of the total area of Delhi), and population of only 0.3 million (1.79% of the entire city state), NDMC expects to achieve the smart global capital status when one also considers that huge investments per person are being made year after year. The key issue that I would like to answer in this chapter is: Can New Delhi Municipal Council unleash e-governance including e-democracy, and pave the way for e-democratic governance in the future for its citizens. I would like to answer this key question by analysing three empirical cases apart from an examination of the NDMC Smart City Proposal with a view to assessing how far the smart city processes have promoted democracy in general and e-democracy in particular (citizen engagement) in the NDMC area leading to transparency, accountability, and ease of doing business. All these are core pillars of Government of India’s urban and economic policies. In the end some concluding are made.

Citizen engagement has taken many centuries to evolve from its roots during the Greek period, developing along with the concept of democracy to its current form as it is practiced today. Participation in the planning process emerged in Great Britain in the 1940s, and began to become institutionalized in 1960s. This participation increased in popularity during the 1980s and 1990s as it was seen to result in better decision making, and eventually became known as participatory planning.  Citizen involvement continues to evolve and varies with specific context, but is generally aimed to influence the policies and decision making process that shapes the communities and cities of those citizens. More recently, the tools of public engagement are transforming considerably with the advancement and use of ICTs during the digital age, which has led to the emergence of internet-enabled online public engagement, also known as ‘e-engagement’. Planning in Hong Kong has evolved rapidly over the last two decades, transforming from a top down decision making process to a more participatory process involving active citizen engagement that has become more pronounced since the handover from British Rule in 1997. Since then, with a renewed sense of ownership, the citizens of Hong Kong have become more interested and involved  with the planning and the political processes. However, through more public engagement and increased participatory planning, there can be seen positive changes in various urban processes in Hong Kong such as urban renewal, heritage conservation, harbourfront development. In Hong Kong, information is readily available and accessible both in English and Chinese and in printed and in online formats. In addition to participatory processes, the use of e-engagement is becoming more prevalent for numerous development studies and projects in Hong Kong. The Kai Tak Development Case Study demonstrates that although the planning process has been underway for more than two decades, community involvement has been instrumental in its planning and development to date. There is now a considerable amount of e-engagement in the Hong Kong planning process and various tools are being used and developed to engage people in more creative ways during both formal and informal engagement processes. With the emergence of the digital age and through the use of ICT, e-engagement has become an integral part of citizen engagement. E-engagement has the potential to transform the public participatory process through specific events such as workshops and forums, and the continuous engagement of the public over the internet. ICT also creates the opportunity to be more open, transparent and inclusive by creating a platform for on-going engagement to develop greater trust between the community and NGOs with the public and private sector. While much progress has been made,  e-engagement in Hong Kong can be improved further through the use of various tools and social media available to more effectively engage the wider community rather than only hearing the voices of the vocal minority. This will further remove barriers to the formation of public, private and community partnerships and will help develop Hong Kong into a more affordable, walkable, liveable, sustainable and resilient city for its citizens, as well as become a model for other cities in Asia and the world.

A theory is a simplified cognitive construct of a certain aspect of the reality built for the purposes of explaining that reality in a reasonably simplified form. Internal coherence is a central feature of a structure of any theory. One significant aspect of today’s city and urban planning in India is the reality of the smart city. Government of India is steadfast in developing 100 smart cities. A large number of seminars, conferences, and panel discussions are held since the last two years in the major cities of India involving global and local policy makers, business people, and academics examining and presenting policy elaborations, assessments, analyses and critiques. In view of this author, so far a theory of E-Governance specifically in the context of the Indian Smart Cities Mission has not been built and this paper is an attempt to fill this gap. One caveat however is necessary—a unique E-Governance theory for a smart city is necessary and possible for the Indian city given the special circumstances of Indian urbanization and its unique historical and cultural settings. The E-Governance theory for a smart city can be constructed in the form of a number of prominent nodes including use of information and communication technologies for enabling economic, social and political transactions, selective commodification and intense development of places within cities, intensification of inequalities within the city as conceived and defined by census, and development to be carried out through projects disconnected from city plans. In the understanding of this author, E-Governance theory should prominently focus on issues such as fairness of decision making processes in governments, businesses, NGOs, and most importantly decisions taken by the private sector and decisions taken by governments under the influence of the private sector. Second, E-Governance in Indian cities should focus on the nature of the technological agenda being pursued by governments and the private sector supported and promoted by big national and international think tanks. Third, the Indian E-Governance theory should also focus on reducing the material inequalities in the cities specifically related with access basic services such as clean drinking water, sanitation, education, health, and decent housing for all citizens. Fourth aspect of E-Governance theory is that it should encourage and promote economic activities that involve the city’s urban poor. No smart city can have an adequate theory of E-Governance without simultaneously looking after its citizens because E-Governance theory in a smart city is essentially for citizens’ welfare.

Democracy means a million-different transaction of information to a million-different people, so does E-democracy with the help of information technology system and social media. At present the world is experiencing a dramatic “E-democracy evolution.” In this evolution, the role and interests of the current and future activities of all sectors—government, public and citizen is undergoing an immense transformation. The transformation is rapid and continuous for many cities of the world and Dubai is one such city which is progressing steadily in the sector of online activities to achieve the greater goals of E-democracy. Innovation has played a major role in the region. With immense support from the ruler and his extremely progressive vision, Dubai residents has shown readiness and activeness that has supported government smart strategies and in return, the government took responsibility by continuously creating jobs for the citizens. This chapter is a presentation of a framework which shows how UAE and Dubai has developed a strategy in many sectors including the field of non- oil sectors where smart technologies and innovations of government and resident’s collaborative approach has resulted in the strong bonding between the public and private sector and eventually became responsible in the growth of the country. The chapter illustrates the potential role of government in introducing smart technologies and letting the residents enable the transformation of traditional identities into state of the art-digital identities. Further, the chapter highlights the impact of oil prices and the government’s renewable energy initiatives to keep the pace of development unaffected and transform the country into a green country through its effective policies and world class project development by the year 2030 using underline strong bonding of government and its people- setting a unique feature of democracy.

Water management has become a key issue in the 21st century, with increasing population, economic growth and climatic variability. Water is a stressed resource in India. Annual per capita water availability is expected to decline to 1140 m³ by 2050, from 1545 m³ in 2011 (Government of India in Water management, [1]). With 45% of population living in urban areas by 2050 (Shukla in How India earns, spends and saves: unmasking the real India. Sage Publications, India, [2]), the availability of water will become a paramount issue. The availability of water is fundamental element to human life, economy and political stability and hence, sustainable water management is critical for existence. Government of India has launched a Smart City Mission for building 100 Smart Cities, in which 24 × 7 availability of water is one of the major emphasis. Traditionally water allocation decisions have been the exclusive domain of technical experts, public officials or political interests, but now there is a shift towards participative involvement of other stakeholders, namely citizens. Adequate water being the essential input in Smart City, calls for an inclusive and participatory management of this resource which extends beyond the city limits. Smart Water management in cities seeks to address challenges in the urban water management through integration of ICT and eDemocracy. Hydro-Informatic approache that is data driven and is technology  based can form the basis of analyzing the complexities in water management, particularly in water scarce areas. This chapter looks into inclusive and eDemocratic measures for planning of water smart cities. The need is to develop eDemocracy based collaborative planning efforts to tackle pervading water issues.

Cities are for citizens and also ‘by & of’ its citizens. However, citizens’ participation which is one of the key agenda of Good Governance is generally in conflict when it comes to urban planning process which is more technocratic with a top down approach. Citizens generally are more aware and concerned about private interest rather than city as whole when they participate about the Development plans and neighborhood when we consulted on the Town Planning Schemes (TPS). In the context of Urban Planning when the plans are laid out, regulations are drafted which is meant for the citizens ought to ensure the factor that these documents are “by” & “of” the citizens indicating proper consultation in the process. Gujarat has been one of the progressive states of India so far as rate of urbanization is concerned and Town Planning schemes which have been practiced since early twentieth century has been a model for other cities. Practitioners state that the process for preparing a TPS as prescribed in GTPUDA (Gujarat Town Planning and Urban Development Act, [3]), and its rules, seem to be a complex and long process involving over 50 steps that can take a maximum of four years and one month as provisions of the GTPUDA, but in practice takes much longer. Administrators of central government are leading to educate Indian citizens to practice the excellent platform of E-Governance, which shall enable the citizens to express their thoughts and willingness in a more free way. The intention of this chapter is to throw light on ICT, specifically the planning process adopted in a fast growing state of Gujarat. Apart from that, issues regarding E-Democracy initiatives are also addressed. Though the process of E-Governance is in its infant state from user’s point of view, but this will surely gain momentum in the days to come. This practice will instil high-democratic values and plan implementation within desired time frame.

The Smart City Mission launched by Government of India focuses on the comprehensive development of physical, social, institutional and economic infrastructure to enhance the quality of life, attract people and investments to a City, setting growth and development in motion and all these happening with a citizen centric approach. And moreover, the selection process of smart city mission trained the City Authorities to adopt a citizen participative approach. The cities which scored high in the challenge were those which had adopted citizens identifying the problems and democratic process for selection of solutions. And what was expected to be smart, was the role of ICT in the entire consultation process be it the social media, mobile telephony or the web based applications, citizens participation was overwhelming. Now the question is do we need to make of citizens smart to make a city smart or is it other way round, a smart city shall make the citizens smart? It is felt that the former approach would yield constructive and sustainable results, where a citizen graduates to a netizen in a smart city. While Indian citizens are vocal and being a democratic set up each citizen have aspiration to be represented in the decision of the Muhalla (vernacular term which means a place where a community stays together), Ward, Zone, City, State or the Nation as the case may be. Smart City Mission guided ULBs to increase participation of citizens to all its functions citing them as City’s Eyes and Ears. The National e-Governance plan of Government of India, states that the citizen engagement has various stages starting from inform, consult, involve, collaborate and empower. Under the mandatory reforms prescribed in earlier schemes under the aegis of Central government or the State government, Cities Authorities had undertaken certain e-governance and m-governance initiatives which were to the level of inform the citizens. After being tagged as Smart Cities, many Indian Cities have strived to enhance their citizen engagement activities but to what extent in the engagement ladder is something requires assessment. More importantly, does the system put in place by the Authorities for engagement, provisions for citizens participation making decisions democratic is what this paper has assessed for two Indian Cities, Bhubaneswar and Surat. It also suggests how these tools could be utilized further in engaging citizens from identification of issues, project conceptualization, budgeting, and implementation.

In broad context, e-Governance is a functional subsystem under e-Democracy, since Governance and hence, entire Government itself is an important section of democracy itself. Hence, smart city development is in fact, the transformation of approach in their futuristic contexts towards responsibilities, interests and rights of all its stakeholders; such as citizens, government, administration, services, utilities, etc. Globally, consistent focus for financial growth and quality of life has ultimately resulted into unprecedented rise in consumption of electrical energy. Electrical power management in India has become a critical issue with rising population, increasing life expectancy, economic growth and, more importantly, due to vibrantly changing and difficult to predict weather. Electrical power supply has always been a resource in deep scarcity in India, so 24 * 7 electricity is an issue causing concern. Efficient decision-making at different levels rely upon reliable availability of electricity, which has been an integral element of citizens’ life, therefore stable and sustainable power management, especially supply reliability is a need of today. Government of India has launched a Smart City Mission for building 100 Smart Cities, in which 24 × 7 availability of electricity has been one of the major focus. Historically, electricity generation, transmission and distribution decisions have been the exclusive domain of utility companies, domain experts, bureaucrats or sometimes political interventions, but now a paradigm shift could be observed towards citizens’ participation and active involvement. Sufficient electricity being the mandatory element of a smart city necessitates an inclusive and participatory management of this resource. Smart electricity management in upcoming smart cities encounters challenges in the urban electricity management through smart grid via integration of ICT and e-Democracy. Smart Grid as an energy backbone of smart city is immensely vital and serving at the core of Smart City realization. Evolving e-Democracy, smart grid includes highly interactive participation of citizens in energy consumption domain, based on humanitarian and customer centric approach. Different types of prosumers (producers + consumers), their different energy requirements at different timings, different types of energy resources and their switching feasibilities considering different aspects have been integrated. Under National Smart Grid Mission, Government of India has launched Restructured Accelerated Power Development and Reforms Programme for funding Smart Grid initiatives and Gujarat has been one of the leading states of India as far as self-reliance and reforms like solar city, smart grid, etc. are concerned. Renewable Power Plants and Smart Grid Pilot Projects implemented in Gujarat have been proved models and case studies for other locations. Moving ahead from our earlier contributed chapter “E-Governance for Photovoltaic Powergrid: Solar City Gandhinagar, Gujarat, India”, in the book E-Governance of Smart Cities, in this chapter, we now present citizen-centric approach of design-implementation of smart grid with case study of pilot project at Naroda, Ahmedabad.

During the past couple of decades, advances in digital technology have led to establishment of information systems at sectoral levels like urban, environment, forest, demography (census) and more. The information system for urban areas in India exists in the form of National Urban Information System (NUIS) with the objective to facilitate planning, maintenance and governance of municipal areas. The use of NUIS for planning has been initiated in some urban centers by utilizing the data for preparation of master plans. There are other sectors that play an important role in an urban milieu. These sectors have their own existing systems in place based on information technology. The call of the day is to use these systems in tandem with each other so as to build a comprehensive plan for urban area which is a step towards building smart cities. The authors advocate the integrated use of the information systems that exist in isolation. The approach being exhorted is to particularly use the data in NUIS and data in ENVironmental Information System (ENVIS) as eDemocracy tools towards building smart cities. The available data in both the information systems can be integrated with the perspective of preparation of a master plan as per the Urban and Regional Development Plans Formulation and Implementation (URDPFI) Guidelines. An emphasis is being laid out to incorporate the environmental aspect in mainstream master planning through a suggested framework so as to come up with environmentally sensitive master plans to build sustainable smart cities for posterity. The integration of the two systems will bring in the spatial component into information based democracy and lead to a spatial eDemocratic society.

In the recent past, an overwhelming growth in geo-enabled open source data and tools through web services and data repositories is witnessed. Internet technology has significantly enhanced the utility of geo-enabled data and applications by making them more accessible to a wider range of users, planners and decision makers through geoportals, mobile Apps and Cloud GIS. The Cloud Computing Architecture (CCA), Internet of Things (IoT) and Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) represent new technological development which allow them to send and receive data without requiring user interaction and enhance interoperability in data and information services. The geospatial information available through geoportals and online data repositories have immense scope for its utilisation in smart city planning with many success stories world over. Geo-enabled data and tools can go a long way in creating a range of smart city applications where citizen participation is one of the key objectives. These tools and services have immense application potential for public participation, grievance management and to address many more aspects of e-democracy and e-governance such as Tourism GIS, Municipal GIS and so on. These citizen-centric Apps and web services facilitate faster information dissemination and improve the efficiency and management of infrastructure, which is essential to enhance the quality of life of urban dwellers and one of the key objectives of the smart city movement. In India, the “Bhuvan” geoportal developed by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) provides a milieu of data sets which can be used for building smart city applications. Bhuvan portal hosts high-resolution data (~1 m resolution) of more than 350 Indian cities till date and planning to cover other cities in near future. It also offers thematic maps useful for Master Plan formulation for 152 towns prepared under National Urban Information System (NUIS). Effort is on to use high-resolution satellite images for the overlay and fine-tuning of Urban Framework Survey. It also hosts many other data sets, e.g., land use/land cover, road network, soil, geomorphology, etc. which can be used to plan and manage the smart cities effectively.

The role of responsible citizens in any country—whether in a city or a village–is to actively participate in the development of their areas. This is a key pre-condition for the attainment of sustainable development, and is deeply entrenched in the sustainable development goals. While the citizens’ right to the city and to actively contribute to a sustainable world cuts across the 17 goals, the provisions of goal 16, to “promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels” clearly spells out the need for inclusiveness, participation, and access to information at all governance levels; which would promote a sustainable, inclusive and prosperous world (Kimani in Overview of SDGs in Kenya. Paper presented during the County Capacity Forum at Hill Park, Diani on 20 June 2016, [1]). These are central elements of democratic spaces, which are greatly being enhanced by today’s advances in information and communication technologies (ICTs). Kenya has over the recent past made huge strides in the area of promoting e-government services, which has resulted in increased e-democracy alternatives. This has particularly been the case since the creation of the e-government strategy in 2004 (Government of Kenya in e-government strategy 2004. Government Press, Kenya, 2004, [2]), as well as the review of various national laws and policies including a change in the country’s constitution in 2010. These reforms have expanded opportunities for citizens to participate in development processes, including governance. The advances in ICT in the country, which has seen mobile phone penetration rise from less than one percent to 88.1% in just 15 years (2000–2015), and broadband increase from a mere 28 Megabits per second in 2004 to 193.58 Gigabytes per second in 2015 (Export Processing Zones Authority in Kenya’s information and communications technology sector 2005, 2005, [3]; International Telecommunication Union—ITU, 2016, [4]; Communications Authority of Kenya in First quarter sector statistics report for the financial year 2015/2016, 2015, [5]) has further expanded the options for citizen engagement in shaping the country’s smart growth. As a result of these changes, more Kenyans today can easily access information on, and participate in various processes such as national and local budget preparation and plan formulation processes; demand for accountability from the political class on resource utilization; or even submit complaints on poor governance and service delivery through a diversity of platforms. Equally, citizens are able to easily and quickly access services through a few clicks on their phones or computers, services that traditionally took months to acquire through bureaucratic processes. This chapter outlines how Kenya has in the recent past adopted ICT tools and methods in a bid to attain inclusive, transparent, effective and efficient governance. It discusses how the country is utilizing various ICT avenues to promote access to information by the citizens and through which governance structures get feedback on issues. It further illustrates the existing avenues for active citizen engagement in democratic and governance processes and analyzes how effective the adopted ICT systems are in promoting inclusive and smart growth.

The study is devoted to the development of open government data (OGD) policy in Russia, its regions and cities. We argue that although OGD are a potential driver of citizen participation and smart city innovations, these effects can be interfered with by political, institutional, socio-economic (structural) factors, as well as by agency. We use a mixed quantitative—qualitative methodology, and data gathered within the Infometer project, to unveil the determinants of OGD success and failure. Our findings suggest that although some general patterns can be traced, agency as a motivation to innovate plays a crucial role.

A community, understands its needs the best; much better than a social scientist, architect or planner, politicians and various institutions such as municipal bodies and all stakeholders need to collaborate with the community to get the best results and fruitful outcome and impact. Most projects for the community are undertaken without input from the community dwellers. There are forums and municipal websites which formulate proposals for comments and but these proposals were not developed out of the community voice, needs and aspirations. With this background, this chapter proposes a mobile online social platform to connect different stakeholders to generate high levels of engagement in decision making, planning, idea generation and lead to resilient, smart and sustainable communities. People act as data donors by leveraging smartphone technology and the platform empowers the users to bring positive change.

Digital technologies have dramatically changed people’s daily life and made our life components much smarter. Nowadays, all users, including both human beings and devices, are connected to centralized servers. These servers act as the authorities, which are trusted by all users, making it possible to exchange critical information and money between untrusted users. However, maintaining large servers is costly and it’s not affordable if such digital systems for cities’ critical infrastructures are hacked. Blockchain, a technology revolution starting from 2014, offer the potential to solve these problems. It is essentially a tool that records every single transaction and digital event that happen in the virtual world. All the records are open to every user and the information asymmetries between two users are minimized. Thus, it’s not possible for one user to cheat or hide information from another user. In other words, two strangers do not need to worry about being cheated by each other. They are allowed, for the first time in history, to do business without a centralized authority. Since a centralized authority is no longer a necessity, these two problems disappear naturally. This survey first explains how blockchain makes this magic happen and then introduces the blockchain’s powerful applications in Internet of Things, E-governance, and E-democracy.

The concluding Chapter attempts to put together various conclusions derived out of seventeen chapters of this book at one place. This work is accomplished in collaboration with the 42 authors editor of this book. This chapter then end with general conclusions and way ahead.