Pooling and Leveraging Scarce Resources: The Smart eCityGov Alliance

While the term Smart City had been used in academia and practice rather casually as a summary label for all types of technology-supported innovation in urban spaces and City governments for quite some time, more recent research rigorously delineated the concept of a Smart City via an eight-category framework, which was developed by several research teams from different parts of the world as a joint initiative. Meanwhile a number of studies have appeared, which used the framework to systematically further explore the phenomenon. This case study on the eCityGov Alliance also employed the Smart City Framework in its design to investigate the Smart City approach that a number of small and mid-size municipalities near Seattle in the Pacific Northwest of the United States have taken. The case is unique and critical since it exemplifies how smaller and less resourceful local governments can pool and leverage their resources in ways that no single participant city could have accomplished on its own when pursuing the objective of creating a smart urban space supported by a smart municipal government. The eCityGov Alliance was found a model for successful intergovernmental collaboration although challenges with regard to long-term sustainability were also identified.