FABS: A Framework for Addressing the Business Process Change Challenges for Smart City Development

Over the past decade, extensive research has focused on the conceptualization and implementation of smart cities, considering aspects such as “City as a system of systems,” “city as an enterprise,” and “city systems integration” as necessary for Smart City Development (SCD). However, despite these considerations, including our existing works, numerous challenges remain in the design and implementation of SCD roadmaps. One critical element for successful SCD is city systems integration, which necessitates cross-sectoral Business Process Change (BPC). However, limited attention has been given to addressing these challenges. To address this gap, our research builds upon and extends our prior works, utilising established principles and research findings to develop and validate a Framework for Addressing the BPC challenges for SCD (FABS). By undertaking a rigorous theoretical adaptation process and incorporating success factors, tools, techniques, and approaches from diverse domains, including enterprise systems, as well as conducting interviews and document analysis, our study contributes to the development of FABS. This empirically supported framework offers a systematic approach to effectively tackle BPC challenges in SCD, enabling smart city developers to assess their current SCD status and readiness for BPC, formulate their SCD roadmap, and assist solution providers in devising specialized tools and techniques tailored for SCD. Thus, our previous works have played a pivotal role in building the foundational components of this research’s outcome, namely the FABS framework, which has the potential to advance the field of smart city development.