The smart city, from administration to governance

This article examines the way in which the senior officials of a metropolitan administration deal with the integration of user data (administration, complaints, information on mobility) and the specific difficulties they encounter: the complexity of inter-communality, local democracy, and CNIL (French national commission on information technology and freedom) rules. This analysis, which focuses on the overall functioning of municipal administrations, puts into perspective the evolution of governance associated with the new frameworks of the smart city: the persistent weight of incumbent private actors in the face of new entrants; the limited impact on municipal organization of co-production by citizens; and the discrepancy between the slow pace of internal developments and the speed of change on the economic landscape. This leads to a rather pessimistic assessment regarding this goal of user data integration.