Contibutors to Policy Failure

Regardless of the pervasive adoption of Smart City concept. There is no one size fit all solution that can be implemented in every city. Some policy initiatives may fail to achieve the goals that have been set. To better understand how cities can improve their Smart City Policy, Hudson et al., (2019) identified four broad contributors to policy failure that local municipalities usually did. 

1. Overly optimistic: Smart city policies and programs have high complexity that may have been underestimated by not only the local authorities, but also other related stakeholders involved. Due to the complexity, the policies may lack sufficient information in terms definition, deliverables, benefits, and risks that are not appropriately communicated to the stakeholders. The complexity also could lead to misunderstanding of roles or the objectives that were set. 
2. Implementation in dispersed governance: Having multiple stakeholders and agencies involved contribute to the challenge of ensuring some degree of consistency in implementation of the policies.
3. Inadequate collaborative policy making: Another indication that a policy can fail is when participating stakeholders ignore the process of establishing a common ground for public problem-solving through a constructive management.
4. Vagaries of the political cycle: this may lead to governments that aim for quick short-term results, pushing hrough of policies as quickly as possible, rather than getting involved in the messy, protracted and frustrating details of how things might work out in practice.

Reference:

Hudson, B., Hunter, D., & Peckham, S. (2019). Policy failure and the policy-implementation gap: can policy support programs help?. Policy design and practice, 2(1), 1-14.

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