The review of evaluation practices, focusing on challenges in the Hungarian small and medium cities

Abstract

There is an emphasized attention in the policies of the Hungarian Government on the smart city developments. Ten cities, including Tata, are selected as host settlements for smart city pilot developmental projects. The international evaluation systems can provide a good basis for comparative analysis however there is a need for a well-structured efficient local evaluation system on smart intervention. Smart governance needs to be put through for achieving the best available citizen-centred results. It is desired from the local and central governmental institutions to provide enabling environment which can function as an intermediate engine of digital developments for the social and smart interventions.

As a complex digitization developmental program focusing not just on the infrastructural development but also on the improvement of the human abilities, the Hungarian Government launched the comprehensive Digital Welfare Program. The monitoring of the executed programs and the reasonable, effective measurement of the impacts of the developmental programs are inadequate for policy and decision makers to evaluate the results and to disclose the basis of the required further interventions. We intend to reveal the relevant literature review of the international practices, the convenient possibilities of social and economic evaluation and reporting. We analyse these processes in detail in Hungarian context based on a case study about the Hungarian city of Tata, however these smart city strategies – programmes - projects are in the preparation phases or at the beginning of implementations. Following these, we formulate the possible future sequences of the research.