# Local Government Cybersecurity Landscape: A Systematic Review and Conceptual Framework
## 3 Research Design  
This study employs a systematic literature review approach, following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) protocol. This methodological approach is consistent with the methods used by [28, 29, 30, 31, 32]. The PRISMA protocol is a three-stage research process: planning, conducting a review, and reporting and dissemination. The planning phase sets the research aims, questions, and inclusion and exclusion criteria, while conducting the review phase involves identifying and reviewing relevant articles, and the reporting and dissemination stage analyzes and synthesizes the findings and reports them. As per the PRISMA protocol's initial stage, we framed our research aim and questions, as stated in the Introduction and Background, to obtain insights into the cybersecurity landscape of local governments. To set the scope and central focus of this study in the local governments and cybersecurity domain, we chose 'cybersecurity,' 'cyber-attacks,' local government,' 'local council,''municipality', and'smart city' as the keywords. We selected other keywords, excluding'smart city,' in accordance with this study's aim and research question. In recent years, many local governments around the world have embraced the smart city concept. Tech-giant International Business Machines (IBM) Corporation first put forward the smart city slogan in 2009 [33]. A smart city does not have any specific or universal definition, but the concept usually refers to an ecosystem that combines current and emerging technologies such as AI, sensors, the Internet of Things (IoT), robotics, web 3.0 technologies, digital twins, and smart grids to offer better and more seamless services to the citizen as well as increase the efficiency of the service providers [2, 34, 35, 36, 37]. In summary, [PERSON] et al. [38] defined the smart city as the convergence of technology and the city. Local governments' shift toward smart city initiatives exacerbates cybersecurity risks as it adds complexity to data management and interconnected systems [7, 33, 39, 40]. Therefore, we included'smart city' as a keyword in our study to signify the growing role of local governments in digitally integrated urban spaces. After finalizing the keywords, we set the primary inclusion and exclusion criteria, as illustrated in Table 1, to research relevant articles complying with the PRISMA protocol. We further discussed the inclusion and exclusion criteria in the following section. In the review phase (second stage) of the PRISMA protocol, we initially categorized the chosen keywords into terms related to cybersecurity and terms related to local governments. We performed this categorization to conduct a 'keyword search,' which aimed to select the articles most relevant to our research. We also included supplementary terms like 'information security' and 'data security' to broaden our search and find the relevant scholarly literature. Subsequently, we developed the following search query to identify relevant articles: ((\"cybersecurity\" OR \"cyberthreat\" OR \"cyber risk\" OR \"information security\" OR \"data security\") AND (\"smart city\" OR \"local government\" OR \"municipality\" OR \"council\")). Figure 2 shows a screenshot of this study's 'keyword search' process  
\begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c c} \hline \hline  & **Primary** & \multicolumn{2}{c}{**Secondary**} \\ \hline
**Inclusion Criteria** & **Exclusion Criteria** & **Inclusion Criteria** & **Exclusion Criteria** \\ \hline \multirow{3}{*}{Academic journal articles that were peer-reviewed, published in English, and available online in their full-text version} & Books, chapters, reports, editorials, conference proceedings, and publications other than those mentioned in other than those mentioned in the community in the smart city, with or without indicating the central or local governmental role & Articles that focus on subjects other than those mentioned in the community in following the PRISMA protocol.