IoT-based smart government enablers: An exploration of governments' experiments

Governments of world countries have gone through different types of transformations throughout history, with the aim to increase efficiency, build capacity and provide optimal services for citizens. This development was further induced with the development of novel technologies. Cloud Computing and the Internet of Things (IoT) are among those technologies that proved to be of great significance for human lives and productivity in different aspects of the modern world. The objective of the study was to explore government evolution; from traditional, followed by e-government, to a smart government, with a view on examining the technology that accompanied each phase. A literature survey was applied to compare between countries of developed e-governments and smart governments experiments, in terms of highest and lowest challenges faced. The results indicated that despite the benefits of a smart city, challenges of security, Funding & Maintenance, interoperability, among others, still constitute a problem that needs to be addressed and tackled, so as to avoid any hurdles in the way towards transforming into a smart government. Recommendations were then formed for an IoT based smart government in the State of Kuwait based on the findings, while taking into consideration the associated challenges.