TR259 Smart City Maturity and Benchmark Model R16.0.1

There are many maturity models around that measure aspects of city smartness. Many of these models are excellent in measuring a portion of what it means to transform into a smart city. Very few take an end-to-end holistic view across city agencies and departments.

This Smart City Maturity and Benchmark Model has been designed to capture the key aspects of a city’s transformation journey to become a smarter city. A smart city is characterized by a high level of community and citizen engagement, by making the city attractive for businesses and by efficient and sustainable city operations.

The model draws from a large number of reputable sources in the urban innovation field, ranging from standards and industry organizations to policy and best practices organizations. The model allows a city to fairly quickly assess its strengths and weaknesses in five key dimension areas related to city smartness and to set clear goals as how it wishes to transform over the next two to five years. It enables the city to benchmark itself against similar cities and identify other cities with whom it can partner to tackle similar challenges.

In order to plan and execute a program of continuous improvement in the pursuit of a smart city strategy, a method of assessing various dimensions of attributes at the current and target maturity levels has been found a useful approach to that end.

It should be noted that a city is seldom monolithically lodged in one level of maturity across all dimensions of attributes. The path to comprehensive improvement in implementing a smart city strategy will thus vary according to factors unique to the circumstances and environment in which the city finds itself at any given time.

For a city to plan and execute a program of continuous improvement around their smart city strategy, it is necessary to have a means to assess their maturity across key defining factors of what it means to be a smart city. The model is inspired by the Customer Lifecycle and the Frameworx business model, providing a structured and practical approach to creating this best practice.