Recommender systems for e-governance in smart cities: State of the art and research opportunities María E. Cortés-Cediel Facultad de Ciencias Políticas y Sociología Universidad Complutense de Madrid Spain mcorte04@ucm.es Iván Cantador Escuela Politécnica Superior Universidad Autónoma de Madrid Spain ivan.cantador@uam.es Olga Gil Facultad de Ciencias Políticas y Sociología Universidad Complutense de Madrid Spain olgagil@ucm.es ABSTRACT E-governance can be considered as the core and most important challenge of smart cities initiatives. It refers to the use of information and communication technologies in the public sector with the aim of improving information and service delivery, reinforcing government transparency, accountability and credibility, and encouraging citizen participation in decision- making processes. In this paper, we survey the state of the art in recommender systems for the e-governance domain, showing that there are few studies on the topic and that published recommendation approaches are quite simple and focus on a very limited number of applications. Moreover, we propose a number of challenging e-governance scenarios where recommender systems could be exploited, and thus represent new research opportunities. KEYWORDS recommender systems, e-governance, e-government, smart cities 1 INTRODUCTION Today, 54% of the world population is living in cities, a proportion that is expected to increase to 66% by 2050, as stated by the 2014 revision of the World Urbanization Prospect produced by United Nations 1 . The uncontrolled growth of the population and the raising demand for resources, under poor organization and management, not only make cities principal sources of congestion, pollution and waste, but also exacerbate a variety of socio-economic problems, such as the increase of poverty, unemployment and criminality in the cities. Managing urban areas thus represents one of the most important development challenges of the 21 st century, including new actions on infrastructures, energy sustainability, natural environment, education, health care, and public safety, to name a few. Cities, however, are also a key part of the response to such problems. In particular, the concept of smart city has been conceived as an approach to address urban problems, by making use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) to increase the quality, efficiency and interactivity of urban services, reduce costs and resource consumption, and improve the interactions between government, citizens and businesses [1]. 1 United Nations World Population Prospect, https://esa.un.org/unpd/wup/ 1 CitRec, August 27, 2017, Como, Italy 2 © 2017 Copyright is held by the owner/author(s). Publication rights licensed to ACM. 3 ACM ISBN 978-1-4503-5370-0/17/08...$15.00 https://doi.org/10.1145/3127325.3127330 The definition of smart city differs among disciplines, and has evolved over time. In [8], Chourabi et al. identify eight critical factors of smart city initiatives: (1) management and organization, which should be addressed in the context of e-government projects; (2) technology, referring to new-generation integrated hardware, software, and network technologies that provide information systems with real-time awareness of the real world, and advanced analytics; (3) economy, including factors around economic competitiveness as entrepreneurship, innovation, productivity and flexibility of the labor market, as well as the integration in national and global markets; (4) built infrastructure, referring to the availability and quality of the ICT infrastructure, such as wireless connection (fiber optic channels, Wi-Fi networks, wireless hotspots), and service-oriented information systems; (5) natural environment, i.e., the use of technology to increase sustainability and to better manage natural resources; (6) people and communities, whose quality of life, and levels of information, education, and participation may be affected by ICT; (7) policy context, where governmental actors and external pressures, e.g., policy agendas and politics, may influence the outcomes of IT projects; and (8) governance, which, with the use of ICT, should be accountable, responsive, and transparent, allowing collaboration, data exchange, service integration, and communication. Among these factors, (smart) governance can be considered as the core and most important challenge of smart cities initiatives [8][12]. Governance refers to a new form of governing where a network of public and private actors share the responsibility of defining polices, and regulating and providing public services. Examples of these actors –commonly referred as stakeholders– are government agencies, citizens, markets, and organizations. In the late 80s, the concept of governance gained momentum, as a response to the citizens ۑdemand for transparency and good management in public administration, which had to face its crisis of legitimacy. Actors within the institutions realized the need for openness and considering new forms of governing and management. In 1992, in its ۔Governance and Development ە report 2 , the World Bank pioneered the introduction of governance in the field of economic development, by identifying four areas of governance, namely public sector management, accountability, the legal framework for development, and information and transparency. The report cites experiences and best practices in each area, aiming for a more transparent and efficient way of governing. Moreover, in 2001, the European 2 The World Bank. 1992. Governance and Development. Washington, DC, April 1992. http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/604951468739447676/Governance-and- development