The general aim of the Smart Cities project is to create an innovation network between governments and academic partners leading to excellence in the domain of the development and take-up of e-services, setting a new baseline for e-service delivery in the whole North Sea region.Smart Cities will create:

1. a network of North Sea e-Government leaders with ambitious transformational e-Government Strategies aiming to deliver innovative and excellent public services with documented improved quality of life and enhanced competitiveness;
2. an academic and research network which will support and help local and national authorities in realising and focusing their ambitions;
3. a unique approach of developing e-services by combining the academic approach, the government view and proven practices and knowledge in a powerful process of co-design. This will result in a transferable methodology useful for EU innovation networks and authorities and a model for the NSR;
4. a new baseline of customer-centred, personalised, information-rich and geolocated services in the North Sea Region combining existing solutions already developed by the partners and co-designing new customer services, wireless applications and strategies for take-up and multi-channelling

The project aims to understand which e-services services work best and why; it will facilitate transfer of e-Government successes across national borders; it will identify and support the real transformational impacts of such transfer of good practices on local government; it will equip decision makers with the knowledge and ambition to achieve further innovation in the delivery of e-enabled public services; and will engage national authorities in this ambition. At the European level, the project will support the creation and growth of communities of practice across the NSR building organisational commitment to and capacity for inter-regional government service sharing. Smart Cities will raise the bar in many aspects.