Revisit the drivers and barriers to e-governance in the mobile age: A case study on the adoption of city management mobile apps for smart urban governance

This article presents an explorative case study to understand the drivers and barriers that influence the adoption of smartphone-based city management apps as e-governance tools in U.S. cities. Using interviews with government officials and citizen focus groups in a southeastern city, we systematically examine the facilitators and barriers from the perspectives of the government and citizens. Our findings suggest that the city management app system was primarily adopted by the government to improve service efficiency through information integration and workflow automation on the backend. It is viewed by both the government and citizens as an innovative two-way communication tool that encourages citizens to report service problems and facilitates service improvement. However, the app’s potential of being an open dialogic and social space to engage citizens in a full range of co-production activities has not yet been sufficiently realized. Strategies for local governments and city management app developers to address e-governance challenges are discussed.