Methodology of development of information support to urban sustainability on a local government level in transitional countries – Experiences of Serbia

Abstract

The experiences of cities around the world underline the fact that the GIS based information systems to support sustainable urban development represent a complex problem for local government, because it tackles not only the issues of technology, but also of institutional, organizational, regulatory and normative framework of information activities at the local level. The experiences of some local governments in Serbia underline as a problem the gap between local/national information culture and globally available technology solutions. Lack of understanding, knowledge and skills to plan and manage the development of information system activities generates misbalance between investment, real needs and cognitive capacities of the community. For this kind of unstructured management problem organizational studies researchers recommend the Soft systems methodology (SSM) that treats the notion of information support as an epistemological rather than ontological entity. This article provides an overview of the experimental results in the application of the SSM in the development of pilot Territorial Information Systems (TIS) in six municipalities in Serbia. The results show that this methodology enables proactive efforts of local government structures, foster achievement of concrete practical results and ensures sustainability and long term progress of the process of social transformation of information activities at the local level.