Smart Cities’ Hyper-Economies as the Reflection of Digital Governance Leadership

The chapter is devoted to the new role governments acquire when developing Smart Cities. The hypothesis of the research is that data-driven governance as the core management framework for Smart Cities leads to the new creative economic environment, which uses public data and converts it to marketable information. We refer to this phenomenon as hyper-economy—higher level of economic transactions based on data derived from traditional business activities. The state of hyper-economy is achievable solely in cities with deployed digital management systems. In order to retrieve documented evidence of the technological readiness level of data-management systems and evaluate the maturity of Russian hi-tech-based governance, we examine the Smart City solutions bank maintained by the Russian Ministry of Construction and Utilities. This study presents possible solutions to detected risks by re-focusing the consideration of this concept as a technological superstructure over the region to its presentation as a new yielding environment for innovative technologies and business strategies. The results will be useful for the work of metropolitan state bodies and municipal government, private firms involved in the development of software and R&D in the field of high technologies, as well as consulting companies in the environment of digital uncertainty.