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Satisfaction Benchmark for Smart Cities

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Happy City - How to Plan and Create the Best Livable Area for the People

Part of the book series: EcoProduction ((ECOPROD))

Abstract

In order to enhance and improve the quality of “public services”, a sound and clear quality management concept is needed. From the process perspective, “high quality” means that a process must deliver satisfaction—the ultimate output variable of any process. A smart city uses information and communication technologies (ICT) in order to increase the quality of its services—which should result in the high satisfaction of the inhabitants. In this chapter, we present a literature overview of benchmarking municipalities and our own primary research of benchmarking satisfaction in over 41 municipalities in Switzerland. As a case study, we show also a benchmarking project conducted in 2013–2014 with the cities of Lublin (Poland) and St.Gall (Switzerland). This chapter will show a framework of a performance dashboard for benchmarking municipalities and how to implement best practice from other municipalities. The key finding of the benchmarking process is to learn from best practice municipalities (the “between analysis”) and identify the variables which drive satisfaction in a municipality (the “within analysis”). The chapter ends with a discussion on how a smart city can employ the data derived from ICTs to refine the aforementioned benchmarking process. Our conclusion is that it is vital to embed the smart city concept in a management system that helps decision makers to steer the municipality in a complex environment. To illustrate this point, we show synergies of traditional quality management and smart government approaches in fostering the value of benchmarking outcomes.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Business Administration, University of Applied Sciences, St.Gall, Switzerland

    Oliver Christ, Michael Czarniecki, Christian Kressig & Lukas Scherer

Authors
  1. Oliver Christ
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  2. Michael Czarniecki
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  3. Christian Kressig
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  4. Lukas Scherer
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Lukas Scherer .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Logistics, WSB University in Wrocław, Wrocław, Poland

    Anna Brdulak

  2. Institute of International Management and Marketing, Warsaw School of Economics, Warsaw, Poland

    Halina Brdulak

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Christ, O., Czarniecki, M., Kressig, C., Scherer, L. (2017). Satisfaction Benchmark for Smart Cities. In: Brdulak, A., Brdulak, H. (eds) Happy City - How to Plan and Create the Best Livable Area for the People. EcoProduction. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-49899-7_5

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