Moving beyond Smart Cities
Digital Nations for Social Innovation & Sustainability
Arpan K. Kar (Indian Institute of Technology Delhi)
Vigneswara Ilavarasan (Indian Institute of Technology Delhi)
M.P. Gupta (Indian Institute of Technology Delhi)
Marijn Janssen (TU Delft - Information and Communication Technology)
Ravi Kothari (Ashoka University)
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Abstract
The next step after smart cities is the creation of digital or smart nations. A digital nation requires a national transformation across diverse institutions including the urban and rural areas of a society. Besides diverse social innovation initiatives, sustainability is a key aspect, so that rather than greenfield projects, long-term solutions will involve brownfield, smart city projects. A digital transformation to a digital or smart nation requires a great deal of innovation in planning, process re-engineering and execution. Whereas research work and policy actions are traditionally focused on a city level, these efforts need to be widened to the national level. Existing city-scale theories and frameworks may be used and adapted to meet the larger-scale needs of the future smart nations. The new issues and research challenges which arise need to be addressed through interdisciplinary approaches. This special issue on the theme of digital nations attempts to address the need in the academic literature to provide a better understanding of digital nations.