It is now 2014, and despite Asimov’s unrealized
predictions for “underwater luxury hotels” “moon colonies”
and “robot maids”, we live in a world, which has been
largely moulded by rapid accelerated advances in
technology over the past 50 years, where information,
communication and technology (ICT) pervades all facets of
modern society, industry and government. Concurrent to
advancements in ICT, “the acute crisis of economic
recession exacerbates the problems plaguing all cities,
including the quality of public education, gaps in health
care, crime rates, transportation, and preparation for a
globally competitive digital future” [2]. In addition, rapidly
increasing urban sprawl and population growth have only
served to compound these issues. The word urban
population is expected to increase by 72 percent by 2050,
from 3.6 billion in 2011 to 6.3 billion in 2050 [3]. City
services and infrastructure, which are already experiencing
excessive strain, will experience great difficulties when
attempting to provision the most rudimentary of services
[4]. However, [2] profess their vision for future smart cities in which world leaders combine technological capabilities and
social innovation to enable the development of a smarter,
sentient even, world comprising smarter communities that
sustain the eudemonia of all citizens. Cities however “can only
be smart if there are intelligence functions that are able to
integrate and synthesize data to some purpose, ways of
improving the efficiency, equity, sustainability and quality of
life in cities” [5]. This paper contributes to the e-government
literature because currently, to the best of our knowledge, no
research has specifically explored the role of cloud computing
in the development of smart cities. This research represents an
initial step in a series of planned future research aimed at
investigating how the nascent capabilities of the cloud
computing paradigm can be harnessed by governing
authorities. To this end, we first discuss the concept of a smart
city and explore the role ICT has played in the evolution of
smart cities. In Section III, we delineate cloud computing and
review the current state of art pertaining to a selection of
global e- government cloud initiatives currently being
operationalized. Section IV outlines a future roadmap for
smart city research and we also formulate a proposal detailing
how cloud technology initiatives can be mobilized by
governing authorities in order catalyze smart city
development. Finally, we conclude the paper in section V.