Digital transformation and global trends in Smart City development have brought on serious security challenges in governing smart data assets. The implementation of two-way communication between cities and citizens requires secure communication channels and efficient data management. Fast development of information communication technologies (ICT) demands for continues investments in new security options. In this paper, the author examined the efficiency of implemented security levels in local government units (LGUs) through Data Envelopment Analysis. The Data Envelopment Analysis enables benchmarking LGUs according to obtained results. The efficient LG units were further examined and were ranked using super-efficiency analysis. The inefficient LGUs can use the obtained results to improve their performance using projections and thus reach the efficiency frontier.
Purpose: The paper discusses the role and importance of smart governance as a modern form of urban development, identifies the key determinants of smart governance, analyzes models, evaluation and measurement indicators in smart and sustainable cities, and ranks 127 Croatian cities, regardless of city size. Methodology: A comprehensive database was prepared for the preparation of the study, including ten indicators of key smart governance determinants related to political participation of citizens, delivery of quality services to citizens, and sustainable functioning of city administration, in line with a review of models and indicators from previous studies. Results: The main goal of this research is to determine a correlation between the size of the city according to the number of inhabitants and statistically significant indicators of smart governance and, based on the value of the correlation coefficients, to determine the weights for the indicators in the process of city ranking. By aggregating the weighted z-scores, the Smart Governance Index was created for all Croatian cities and that index is not related to the size of a city. Conclusion: Statistically significant indicators for the formation of the Smart Governance Index for 127 cities in Croatia are the indicators of political participation and sustainable functioning of city administration. It is necessary to include as many indicators as possible in the future period so that the ranking results are as relevant as possible.
Local government, as administrative units, performs a broad range of services that require to establish relations with outside partners, including those belonging to the private sector. Public procurement, due to the size of the involved financial flows, is government activity especially exposed to inefficiencies, corruption and dishonesty. There is an everlasting discussion on the ideal size and the range of services to be kept 'in-house' of local government units (LGUs).Transaction Costs Economics (TCE) represents a theoretical paradigm specially designed to interpret the issue of efficiency in inter-institutional relations. However, even though TCE might be envisaged as a tool for building better systems and institutions, practical experience suggests that efficient organization of complex multi-institutional systems is still a goal to be met. Therefore, public procurement procedures at LGU level are suitable to analyze the transaction costs. In an attempt to determine the main organizational features of the existing scope of institutions/entities involved in delivering services to citizens, we provided an overview of the complexity of inter-organizational relations at LGU level. In this paper, we present results of an empirical research of public procurement procedures from the perspective of LGUs in Croatia. Picking up on questionnaire responses from 200 LGUs that reported having held over 350 cases of providing services through contract agreements with 'independent' service providers, we formed an opinion of what could be the consequences of developing more structured public procurement procedures.
The main objective of this research is to determine whether the size of the city by population is a prerequisite for better economic development and ranking of Croatian cities based on the weighted average z-score of smart economy indicators related to entrepreneurial potential, tourism, information comunication technology [ICT] and research and development [R&D] sector. The sample for this research consists of 127 Croatian cities and ten smart economy indicators. The Hellwig's information capacity method uses only statistically significant indicators, on the basis of which the weights are determined when creating the Smart Economy Indeks. The results of the analyses suggest that the number of positively ranked cities decreases as the city population size decreases: 100 % large cities are positively rated, 48 % medium cities and 6 % small cities.
Introduction. High-category hotels are considered to be one of the most important elements of every tourist destination’s supply. Recently, the lack of highly rated hotels in the Republic of Croatia has often been criticized by the public because they are believed to be a prerequisite in the creation of a competitive tourist offer.Material and methods. The authors have performed a multi-criteria decision analysis of eight companies owning five-star hotels in Primorsko-Goranska County using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) method. Their business performance was evaluated based on both financial and market criteria. The financial criteria encompassed indicators of liquidity, indebtedness, activity and profitability. Data regarding the market indicators were collected using a questionnaire.Results. The importance of market criteria in the tourism industry is visible in tourist demand, which is founded on the perception of potential hotel guests, their recognition of the brand and thus the market potential of the hotels themselves. Therefore, both the financial and market aspect have been included in the Analytic Hierarchy Process analysis and synthesized to estimate the overall priority based on which the hotels were ranked. According to all criteria and sub-criteria, the best ranked hotel company is Eles Turizam j.d.o.o with its five-star hotel Mozart (0.2540), followed by Milenij hotels d.o.o. with its Milenij and Milenij Sveti Jakov. The third place has been assigned to Liburnija Rivijera Hoteli d.o.o. and its Ambasador.Conclusions. All but one of the analyzed five-star hotels are under the ownership of the biggest hotel companies in PGŽ with a long presence in the tourism industry. Therefore, it was expected that, due to their market recognizability and, consequently, their good financial performance, they would rank first. However, the research has shown that market potential does not necessarily imply best practices. Eles Turizam and its hotel Mozart were ranked the highest according to financial and overall priority scores. It may thus be concluded that even a small family hotel company with reduced marketing costs, especially one with an elite tourist offer, can compete with big hotel companies if it continuously assures the quality of its services.
Nowadays, many discussions revolve around the topic of smart, technology-based cities. Local self-governments need to consider smart city factors if they want to provide quality services to their citizens and implement policies effectively. Therefore, in this paper, we focus on smart cities, but look at them from a different perspective - from the citizens' point of view. In each of the 25 largest cities in Croatia, we asked citizens to rate their satisfaction with the dimensions of smart cities and rank them in terms of importance. We used the results in the AHP analysis to rank the cities according to their smart city performance from the citizens' perspective. In addition, we use DEA, to study the efficiency of the use of the city budget for projects related to the development of a smart city. While we present the high-ranking Croatian cities as examples of good practices, we also emphasize the efficient use of budgets by the not so high-ranking cities and their realization of investment needs in this area. Our study contributes to the understanding of smart cities from the citizens' perspective and expands the knowledge base on the development of smart cities in Croatia.
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