IoT, Smart Cities, Services and Government

Track Description
Advances in digital technology has culminated in new, and more sophisticated, nuanced forms of services. The Internet of Things (IoT) is one such digital technology, which by rendering the world around us to be better connected and more responsive, has given rise to novel forms of service innovations that blur the distinction between the digital and physical world. IoT denotes the network of physical devices—“things” connected to the internet, all collecting and exchanging data via actuators, embedded sensors, software, or other technologies. Blending artificial intelligence, big data analytics, cloud computing, and mobile technologies, these devices range from individual wearables to intelligence household gadgets to cutting-edge industrial applications that allow seamless communication among people, processes, and things. With the proliferation in the number of connected IoT devices, the data generated by these devices is growing exponentially, opening up promising avenues of research on ways to collect, store, model, process, analyze, apply, and secure the massive volume of data for generating insights to guide the development of smart services. It is hence unsurprising that IoT is projected to have a widespread impact on the increasingly service-based economy by transforming business strategies, operations, security, service provision, supply chains, as well as many other aspects of digital servicing. In combination with the emergence of smart services, digital government and smart cities are becoming much more prevalent. Smart cities refer to an urban environment where citizens’ daily activities (work, school, safety, and leisure) experience significant enhancement over previous standards facilitated by modern information technologies. These improvements span multiple dimensions ranging from economic to governmental to socio-political, to name a few. In this sense, deriving and gaining insights into how cities can extract value from context-aware data elicited through digital technologies (e.g., IoT) for both citizens and governments has become pivotal for developing capabilities to quickly react to and rebound from unprecedented situations like the global COVID-19 pandemic. With governments worldwide going digital, new forms of value co-creation in citizen participation as well as service development and delivery are emerging within and across citizens and governments.

Track Chairs
Rahul Dé, Indian Institute of Management Bangalore
Satish Krishnan, Indian Institute of Management Kozhikode
Jan Marco Leimeister, University of St.Gallen
Chee-Wee Tan, Copenhagen Business School