A Generic, Flexible Smart City Platform focused on Citizen Security and Privacy

eGovernment is still in its infancy, but it has the potential to flourish as technology progresses and people come to accept and trust Internet based services to greater extend. The provision of new, enhanced, and much more accessible eGovernment services can be realized based on our proposal for a generic Smart City platform, considering the current technological developments. The implementation of the proposed platform will, also, enhance the potential for eGovernance in European cities and bring it to a more advanced level by providing a clear, understandable, and continually accessible architecture of a shared civic space available on the Internet for all involved stakeholders, including officials, decision-makers, and other stakeholders in addition to citizens. A parallel goal of our proposal is to offer enhanced security and privacy preservation services upon which all other services can be built.


INTRODUCTION
The modern urban landscape, characterized by rapid growth and technological integration, necessitates the development of solutions that are both adaptable and sensitive to the needs and concerns of its citizens ( [1], [4], [9]).Smart cities, which are often seen as the embodiment of this merging of technology and urban development, are increasingly becoming the gold standard for efficient, sustainable, and responsive urban management.Central to the realization of this vision is the need for platforms that can not only facilitate a myriad of services and functions but also remain flexible enough to adapt to the evolving needs of cities and their inhabitants (see [2], [6]).
Yet, as cities become smarter and more connected, the intricate web of digital interactions brings with it inherent vulnerabilities and risks, particularly in the realm of data security and citizen privacy.The vast streams of data flowing through smart city infrastructures, ranging from traffic patterns to personal user information, present a double-edged sword.While they empower cities with data-driven insights, they also pose significant challenges in ensuring the data's security and the privacy of individual citizens.Recognizing this, the importance of a generic, flexible platform dedicated to smart city services, with an intrinsic focus on the security and privacy of its citizens, becomes paramount.Such a platform not only promises efficiency and adaptability but also enshrines the foundational values of trust and safety (see [10]) in the age of digital urbanization.In this Paper we analyse the city e-Governance domain in order to identify user requirements that must be fulfilled.

City e-Governance
Providing citizens with the choice of when and where they can access governmental services defines "e-Governance" -electronic Governance.The concept of City e-Governance is defined as "a system of organizational structures, functions, processes and policies for deploying ICTs in city administrations supportive and promoting effective and efficient interaction, cooperation, and urban decisionmaking based on partnerships and local alliances".This concept will change the relationship between citizens and governments, as well as among citizens and people living in the same city and will bring new concepts of citizenship in terms of rights and responsibilities.
The use of technology to achieve governance will have several impacts on the government organisation ([3], [7]): • Security is probably the most important.Providing government services through the Internet increases the number of potential vulnerable entry points in the government organisation.Protection means have to be well defined to address possible vulnerabilities and avoid any flaws.• Providing 24/7 service access is a direct impact of the use of ICT means.Citizens can access government services whenever they want.The communication between citizens and their government authority is increased.• Government human resources must be completed with IT skilled people in order to manage the services provided.Administrative employees must be trained to understand and use ICT means.• Managing private information on citizens requires highquality ICT means with a high-quality maintenance.Cities must be able to restrict access to private and or sensitive information.

Figure 1: e-Governance Maturity Model
The e-Governance has progressed through the years since early 90's to nowadays.The Gartner's group in 2000 has produced an e-Governance Maturity Model (MM) (see Figure 1).
This MM consists of four phases that show the progress of the service maturity: • Presence: the aim of this step is to provide the external public with relevant information in order to increase transparency (see [5]) about government processes and government decisions.This phase is a way to disseminate internal information to city servants through electronic means (early 90's).• Interaction: in this phase, citizens and business can interact with their government in order to ask questions, to download forms or to search in knowledge databases (mid 90's).
• Transaction: at this stage, complete transactions can be done without going to government offices to fill tax declarations, renew passports, vote online, etc.This phase increases the complexity because it requires security mechanisms and critical process management (present).• Transformation: in this phase, all electronic services provided are integrated and inter-operable.Rather than appearing as a rigid system, the service is adapted to users' needs.All services are accessible from one single access point (future).
According to Gartner, e-governance will mature according the four-phase e-governance maturity model.These phases have been defined based on experiences with e-commerce and e-governance in Europe and other Western regions.
The main stakeholders of ICTs for urban e-Governance are Government, Citizen, Business, other Government and Non-Government Organisation.A city, and in general government, uses e-Governance system to provide better services in areas like e-Participation and e-Inclusion by implementing IT systems to enhance active participation of citizens and to support the collaboration between actors for consultation and policy-and decisionmaking purposes.Citizens are the most beneficiaries by accessing and making use of IT e-Governance services provided to them by the city administration.Such services can include systems in a number of areas like: Registration, Payments, Citizen services providing financial benefit and Citizen services providing social benefits and e-Health.Business can benefit by making use of, and integrating their service delivery with, the proposed open interoperable e-Governance city infrastructure improving thus their interaction with government and non-governmental organizations.Moreover, Business, like user, can benefit using several city IT services.
Other Administrations can improve their communication and service provision with other administrations by making use of city e-Governance IT services like: Public Procurement, Communication Provision (conversation forums, scheduled e-meetings, Human Resources system, Department's Registration List), provision of Citizen's service and provision of companies' advice and services.

Objectives
The two main objectives of e-Governance could be defined as follow: • Improve government processes; • Improve democracy.
Government processes will be improved with the use of ICT means.Using electronic interactions and transactions will increase the efficiency and speed in a transparent manner and will contribute to the simplification of administrative operations for citizens, businesses and civil servants.Furthermore, it will interconnect all three parties, and will save significant costs in existing government operations.
Democracy will be improved because citizens will have access to information and knowledge about the political process and choices in a transparent way.The e-Governance will also improve citizenship by providing means for citizens to participate in political decision-making processes.It will also have social impacts since it will provide means for citizens to communicate with each other's within a given city.
In order to achieve those goals, the analysis performed in this paper report of a general e-Governance legal and procedural framework complying with all the rules and regulations at a European level, has led to the definition of common policy principles (see, e.g.[8]): • Delivery of all the services 24 hours a day and seven days a week • Make city provided services accessible to all and do not wide the digital divide • Improve of online public service delivery for citizens and businesses by making it faster, more convenient, less constraining, more transparent and user-friendlier.• Listen to the users and organisation of service delivery around the users' needs and choices • Set-up of specific agencies and of cross-departmental coordination bodies for the implementation of e-Government and the development of IT • Enable full administrative procedures • Avoid requesting several times the same data from users • Simplification of administrative procedures and reduction of bureaucracy for citizen and business • Share and exchange of data and information across governmental sectors • Interoperability and cooperation between all public administrations to provide integrated services across organizational boundaries.Establishment of standards for interfaces between departments that permit efficient and transparent communication with the outside world • Back-office integration • Protection of personal data • Development of a coherent and flexible infrastructure • Encouraging the supply of and demand for online services • Implementing design for a more attractive content • Enabling complete transactions to be conducted through electronic channels Create a multiplicity of innovative access channels for accessing services (the Internet, call centres, cell phones, TV, interactive kiosks etc.).

PROPOSED CONCEPTUAL MODEL PLATFORM
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In this section, we first present the main constraints on the infrastructure and then the conceptual model proposed of the infrastructure.

Infrastructure Constraints
To establish "best practices" in the domain, in this paper we proposed a methodology to benchmark the status of a city e-Governance ICT capabilities and constraints by categorizing identified city IT legacy systems and infrastructures supporting e-Governance.Applying this methodology on several e-Governance real systems, several key constraints impacting the Intelcities infrastructure have been identified: • In addition, the infrastructure should also take into account the required services with the following scheduled tasks: • T1: e-Administration "Integrated one-stop city service infrastructure".This task will contribute to the specification, development and evaluation of the Intelcities platform from the point of view of the interaction between public administration and citizen in the delivery of public services.• T2a: e-Inclusion & e-Participation (wired platform).The objective of this task is to experiment a multimedia-integrated system, which enable consumers, firms, and professionals to access easily, and fast to individual and collective multimedia services.• T2b: e-Inclusion & e-Participation (mobile / wireless platform).The objective of this task is to develop, and experiment wired and wireless (m) information and technologies (ICT) and services that enable and enhance interaction between individual citizens, local authorities, and enterprises on different levels of decisions-making.• T3: e-Mobility and Transport (real time mobility interaction services).The objective of this task is to design an ICT-based system to improve citizens' quality of life by enhancing public and private mobility and by eliminating the information inconsistencies.• T4: e-Land Use Information (e-Broker land use information system).The main objective of this task is to provide a Geo-Portal.That is, Geo-data-integration tools such as Geo-data Warehouse technologies, Internet-based front-end application as well as comprehensive workflow tools that integrate Geo-data into e-Government processes.• T5: e-Regeneration (e-planning: Inclusive strategic planning and development control).A key aspect of this taskis the Based on those results and statements, an e-Governance Open Interoperable infrastructure has been proposed.

Overview of the infrastructure
As explained above, a common infrastructure is required in Europe to support e-Governance that could link all the government, business companies, non-governmental organisations, and citizens.
Then, systems and architectures developed in this domain must be able to communicate together at all levels and to interconnect legacy systems already developed from huge economic investments.Consequently, the following conceptual model aims to propose an infrastructure able to support the integration and the interoperability of all those systems.This will fulfil the major need of e-Governance for intercommunication (G2G, G2B and G2C).

Front-end
The front-end part represents the "Presentation tier" of the system, which provides the user access interface.It communicates with the middleware part for exchanging multi-purpose data or computations with the back-end part.The front-end is composed of the following elements: • Presentation logic: represent the logic required to present information to the user depending of the device and his/her concerns.It also represents the elements needed to request information from the user.• Multi-device: represent the various devices supported by the infrastructure to access back-end services (mobile phones, PDA, PC, etc.).• Multi-service access: represent the user access to the platform.
It allows users to access any back-end service with a single authentication account.
• Multi-channel: represent the various channels supported by the infrastructure to access back-end services (web, wap, desktop etc.).This component consists of the elements that will request back-end services and present information depending on the different characteristics of each channel.• User customisation: represent user concerns used to customise the front-end depending on the native language, the age etc.

Back-end
The back-end part represents the "Business and Data tier" of the system.It is composed of different kind of services: • Domain-specific facilities: represent a tool kit, which provides computations in a specific domain (Virtual reality, GIS etc.).Thanks to the middleware, other services can use this tool kit.Then, it makes easier the development of new services.• Internal services: represent e-Government services developed for the given infrastructure.It provides computations and multi-purpose data required in the domain of e-Administration, e-Business and e-Citizen.• External services: represent legacy systems, external business parties or non-governmental to be attached to the infrastructure.It uses an "External integration" layer for integrating the system.The back-end is composed of the following elements: • Access control: control access to the back-end service.
• Business logic: represent the logic required to provide data processing, computations.• Data logic: represent the logic required to manage data of a back-end service (e.g., user information associated with the use of the service).• External integration: represent a bridge between the platform and the external third parties (business companies, nongovernment organisations, legacy systems etc.).
MiddlewareThe middleware part interconnects the front-end and the back-end parts of the system.The main idea of the concept is to consider the middleware as a "container" of "service proxies".A "service proxy" wraps the interface (API) of a back-end service and represents the back-end service from the front-end point of view.The "container" contains all "service proxies" and provides low-level and transversal services.
By this way, it can integrate heterogeneous back-end services and provide them low-level and transversal features (security, transactions and workflow managements etc.).Back-end services can concentrate their effort on their business logic.Three groups of elements have been identified inside the middleware: • Platform Management: handle monitoring and configuration of the middleware.It also handles deployment of back-end services.• Certification: manage certificates to validate data integrity and to guarantee data sources.Workflow Management: provide automatic routing of documents regarding particular services assigned to a user.A workflow combines rules, which govern the tasks performed by the user, and coordinates the transfer of the information required to support these tasks.Transaction Management: provide transaction management to backend services.A transaction is a record of actions that can be cancelled or validated in order to apply modifications or not.

CONCLUSION
In the rapidly evolving landscape of urban development, the adoption of smart city services is imperative for enhancing operational efficiencies and ensuring the well-being of inhabitants.Our proposed generic and flexible platform stands as a testament to the confluence of cutting-edge technologies, modular design, and an unwavering commitment to security and privacy.By centering the concerns of citizens and their right to data protection, our platform not only ensures the safety of personal information but also fosters trust -a pivotal element for the successful adoption and sustainability of smart city initiatives.The adaptability and scalability embedded within our platform's architecture guarantee its applicability to diverse urban scenarios, from burgeoning metropolises to nascent townships.As cities continue to evolve and face unprecedented challenges, our platform equips them with the technological arsenal needed to navigate the future confidently, ensuring that the digital transformation of urban areas remains both secure and citizen centric.

Figure 2 :
Figure 2: Conceptual model of the infrastructure supportive of city e-Governance • Service Invocation: contain elements required for finding and requesting back-end services.•Low-levelServices: gather common transversal services specific to ICT systems.•The middleware is composed of the following elements:• Access control: give access to the platform after validating security authorisation with the Security Management component.• Service Proxy: wrap the interface of a back-end service to add low-level functionalities (e.g., validation of security privileges for data access).