This Published Document (PD) provides guidance for city leadership on the applicability of smart city approaches to their city. City leadership includes everyone in a strategic position within a city whose decisions have a significant impact on the way the city functions and develops, whether they be from the public, private or community sectors.

This PD aims to provide a balanced picture of the potential benefits of smart city strategies, and provides recommendations on how to identify first steps towards making a city smarter.

It covers the role of technology and data in providing tools in this process.

It also covers the role of standards, based on good practice from successful smart city initiatives, in providing building blocks that a city can use to develop and implement its own effective smart city strategies.