A smart city steering committee is a team established to promote the digital development of a municipality. It is an independent and neutral unit, typically empowered by the mayor, or a similarly high-ranking civil servant, that is set up to facilitate and promote the city’s vision for digitalisation.

Smart city steering committees serve as the foundation for any goal setting, reviewing of research and analysis, and overall digital decision-making in a municipality. Their lifecycle often depends on the objectives and commitment of the city – whether the committee is to be phased out once initial goals are achieved, or its responsibilities evolve over time in line with ongoing digital development. Many cities have adopted such steering committees as a means to steer their digitalisation initiatives, including major capitals such as London, Singapore and Amsterdam.

Smart city steering committees can be formulated in various ways, as an informal subset of a particular department or as a dedicated unit of government incorporating both civil servants and wider society. The advantages of a single and specialised team is that they provide focused support to ensure ongoing emphasis on digitalisation and data governance. As an independent unit, the steering committee can also help ensure greater accountability, clarity of vision, and improved communication between government and stakeholders.

The steering committee is typically chaired by a senior executive, for example, a chief data officer, who can drive forward the agenda across government. It is important that such an official has high and influential rank within city government (deputy mayor, senior adviser or similar level), as it will be their mandate to build consensus on the agenda and foster buy-in on all committee decisions. The committee’s core members are then generally composed of senior leaders from public and private sector organisations, as well as subject experts, stakeholders, and external advisers from civil society. Their function is to provide a diverse range of insights into strategic direction and to work with delivery partners on implementation.

Typical mandates and responsibilities of a smart-city steering committee may include:

• setting the strategic direction and identifying objectives of the city – including that the committee adequately focuses on priority actions
• identifying key actions and assigning them to competent authorities and agencies
• providing appropriate cross-cutting governance, and setting up communication channels to break down silos between different departments
• ensuring the buy-in of all stakeholders, and making sure they recognise and understand the objectives, policies and action plans for smart urban development
• developing and reviewing policies, and ensuring the legality of actions taken – such actions should be reviewed and revised consistently to adapt to new technology
• reviewing and monitoring performance, and examining the impacts and consequences of certain policies.

There are no doubt other leadership models that could be considered apart from steering committees – for example, distributing and decentralising responsibilities between departments or setting up public-private cooperation models. Some city governments may also assign individualised responsibilities according to departmental mandates and duties. For example, in the city of New York, each municipal department delivers   solutions in line with its own scope, resources and collaborations. The advantage would be that each department can be problem-focused – applying their expertise to deliver on specific goals – but even under such an arrangement, it is likely still critical to work within the scope of a wider cross-sectoral plan.

As mentioned, the committee’s core members are likely to be a mix of non-governmental organisations, subject-matter experts, and private-sector stakeholders (such as telecoms companies, technical solution providers, finance or operations specialists). Representatives from the private sector play a key role, not just in ensuring buy-in from the business community, but also in the provision of vital infrastructure and data to support the digitalisation process. For instance, the maturity and stability of telecoms technologies and services are fundamental to the success of smart city development. Customised network services for several smart city projects can be provided by a single telecom network or the same experimental network. Hence, a telecoms expert will play a key role in negotiating prices for such projects.

Furthermore, several cities may choose for deeper integration of the private sector in the decision-making process, through public-private cooperation agreements to lead on urban development, for instance. In Berlin, for example, the senate has empowered the Berlin Partner for Business and Technology through a public-private partnership,[i],[ii] to be the city’s main business promotion partner and the point of contact for any smart city projects. It is responsible for scoping and executing Berlin’s smart-city strategies, such as funding, policy development, ecosystem formation and experimentation.