# Managing a Smart City Integrated Model through Smart Program Management
## 9 Discussion of the Results and Answers to the Research Questions  
The results obtained, as preliminarily discussed in a previous work [13], are interesting and confirmed the research hypothesis that the use of Smart program management can turn into a success factor in managing Smart city projects. On a sample of 378 projects, only 304 made use of ICT technologies and thus can be considered \"Smart\". The remaining 74 projects were \"smartless\" projects:  
Figure 13: Box plot of project interdependencies.  
building heritage sites; realization of hanging gardens; building renovation project of an old abandoned military base; construction of a road bridge; construction of a bus station.  
In the rest of the section each of the research questions defined are answered according to the data analysis performed.  
**RQ1**: What is the transversality of smart projects?  
Overall, 35% of the analyzed projects appear to be transversal to several application domains. Considering that they were carried out in the complete absence of any strategic planning and analysis of the potential reuse and integration, the result is even more meaningful. At the same time, it can be observed that the remaining 65% represents a large area of possible improvements.  
Smart program management would allow a Smart city to be better structured, as the potential areas of reuse could be exploited to create more (and better) with less, according to an overall strategic vision and targeted local policies. Another key point is that the lack of transversality means low interoperation and thus, as a result, fragmentation of services delivered to the citizens with a negative impact on their user experience.  
In some cities, such as Lecce and Florence, the transversality appears to be modest and therefore the improvements achievable with the adoption of an intelligent management of the projects would be even more relevant.  
**RQ2**: What is the technological depth of smart projects?  
The results show that each project of a Smart city actually consists of a self-consistent technological silo, leaving aside any integration both at the strategic and technical operation level. Consequently, the same considerations as for transversality generally apply here as well. Overall, 60% of the projects were developed on a single layer, 19% comprised three layers, and only 15% included four layers. Bologna is the highest performing city that was able to design applications and services by exploiting four architectural layers in four different projects, over a total of eight. Therefore, the need to create enabling platforms for each of the layers, to be used and reused, in each new project emerges. This would eliminate the probability of having to carry out each new project from scratch and having to develop the components for each of the technological layers each time.  
**RQ3**: How many potential interdependences are there between the projects?  
The interdependencies analysis corroborates the research hypothesis underlying this work, namely that each project could benefit from what has already been achieved in other projects. The average value of PI for all the cities analyzed is 16% and, on average, one project shares artifacts with 16 other projects.  
Interdependent means potential reuse, interoperation opportunities, and more focused services. Exploiting interdependencies results in an integrated vision and better resources management, financial resources, workload, and human capital needed for application and service development and delivery.  
Consequently, the adoption of Smart program management for planning and implementing Smart city projects is an effective means to do such. Continuing to invest in the growth of a Smart city requires the adoption of enabling platforms for each of the four technological levels of the architecture, so that each new smart project can take advantage of what has already been achieved.