The future digital city as well as the digital government must be ‘human-centric’ to serve its 3 kinds of stakeholders: its citizens, its businesses actors and its visitors. A city is not smart because it hosts new technologies. A city is smart when most of the citizen are really enjoying the use of top of mind services and systems provided by the municipality. Thus, leaders of future cities must demonstrate a real mindset and leadership in designing their cities with systems and services that their digital citizens will seize. It means a new governance must be established in order to link the needs of the citizens with the smart solutions to be implemented to fulfil those needs, in order to bridge the functionalities and data that are currently segregated by silos in the city (Transportation, Electricity and water distribution, Buildings, Mobility, Waste management, Retail, Public safety, Health, Education, Culture…) and at the end of the day in order the city to become a collaborative environment. The city has to be thought and designed as a complex system of systems and not as a simple juxtaposition of administrative services and data to be provided to its stakeholders.

1. A NEW GOVERNANCE FOR THE ‘SMART CITIES’:
HOW TO DELIVER BEST PUBLIC SERVICE FOR THE FUTURE?
We can observe all over the world many ‘smart city’ initiatives with implementation of ‘ad hoc
solutions’. Most of them are technology-driven solutions that aim to enhance a function or service
of the city or to solve a limited issue that has been identified. But only a very few initiatives in the
world adopt a systemic approach with the mindset to best serve the new ‘digital citizen’ that each
of us now is.
The future digital city as well as the digital government must be ‘human-centric’ to serve its 3
kinds of stakeholders: its citizens, its businesses actors and its visitors. This ‘human-centric’
approach is especially needed for the stakeholders of the Y and Z generations who are the ‘net
generation’ and the ‘social media generation’. This last Z generation is also known as the ‘alpha
generation’ or the ‘cyber-generation’ that means this "digital native" generation will only be happy
when living in an absolute, complete smart city.
So, the question is to know what an absolute, complete smart city is.
A digital smart city or government must serve the digital citizen with best personalized services
that the citizen will be happy to use daily. A city is not smart because it hosts new technologies.
A city is smart when most of the citizen are really enjoying the use of top of mind services and
systems provided by the municipality.
Thus, leaders of future cities must demonstrate a real mindset and leadership in designing their
cities with systems and services that their digital citizens will seize. To do so, leaders must
demonstrate an outstanding capability to fully master both the new trends of technology (e.g.
Internet of Things, Big Data Analytics, Cloud Computing…) and how to define, specify, organize
and structure the new ways to run a city and provide best value to citizens.
It means a new governance must be established in order to link the needs of the citizens with the
smart solutions to be implemented to fulfil those needs, in order to bridge the functionalities and
data that are currently segregated by silos in the city (Transportation, Electricity and water
distribution, Buildings, Mobility, Waste management, Retail, Public safety, Health, Education,
Culture…) and at the end of the day in order the city to become a collaborative environment. The
city has to be thought and designed as a complex system of systems and not as a simple
juxtaposition of administrative services and data to be provided to its stakeholders. The citizens
and other stakeholders are part of the city and so have to be actors of the re-invention of the
future city in a collaborative approach. Social media will also be part of the smart city since they
are now a vital and indispensable component of the life of people who want to interact in the
quickest and simplest way.
The ‘smart city’ needs to be organized and governed this way because the smart city is ‘citizen-
centric’ and ‘local businesses-centric’ with two main features: transparency and efficiency. This is
the key of the success of the smart city, the core of the global competition between cities which
will draw the best cities of tomorrow, with happy citizens, happy tourists, and happy workers.
Design such a governance which also includes risk management, green environment and the
global concept of sustainability, establish the appropriate rules, policies and framework, draw the
suitable roadmap, architect the Digital city, supervise the implementation of its systems and

2. services, all these fundamental activities are the role of a ‘Digital City Architect’. This new role of
‘Digital City Architect’ will bridge the municipality and its stakeholder’s needs with the world of
technology. With an essential independent position, the ‘Digital City Architect’ will build the smart
city with the best smart solutions that could be delivered by the most relevant system integrators
and vendors according to the need of each city.
This approach is a new way of thinking that can possibly frighten certain leaders. But only the
smart leaders taking this new challenge of the future with such a global mindset and using this
needed new governance will promote their cities in the world of the next genuine smart cities,
foster innovation, and at the end of the day boost their economy.
Data is at the core of such a new smart governance model that only leads to the best services.
The strongest technological challenge might probably be linked to the elaboration of high added
value information from the huge quantity of available data in a city. This data analytics challenge
is clearly the main and most difficult role of the Digital City Architect who has to master the full
process of organizing and structuring the smart city as a complex system of systems, process
which goes from the definition of the high level needs of the city stakeholders to the
implementation and operation of smart solutions able to fulfil those essential needs.