Fiscal evaluation of smart city applications in local governments: Turkish experience

More than half of the world's population has been living in cities, especially since the beginning of the 21st century, and the urbanized population is increasing day by day. Local governments, faced with social and fiscal problems in the provision of many public goods and services such as transportation, education, health, security and infrastructure due to the acceleration of the urbanization phenomenon, are increasingly turning to competitive and innovative city initiatives in order to find solutions to these difficulties. The smart city approach, which is developed in this field and stands out with its inclusiveness of other city initiatives frequently used in the literature, shows that the problems encountered in public service provision in cities will be solved with effective, economical, efficient, transparent and waste-preventing local government services through the use of technology for the needs of the city and society. The smart city approach, which is based on the need to provide public goods and services by both local and central governments by prioritizing needs, is supported by policy texts such as strategy and action plans published by many central and local government administrations in all countries of the world and in Turkey today. Applications and projects in this area continue to be implemented and represent a dynamic socioeconomic process. Due to the high costs of smart city applications, it is necessary to plan, operate and maintain with sufficient budget resources, and this situation is necessary for the administrative, political and fiscal decentralization and the fiscal structure compositions of our country's local governments, including expenditure, income and debt levels. It is important in terms of evaluating the level of fiscal decentralization, whether the local administrations are fiscally ready for the relevant process or why these practices are necessary.