Page 28 - Policy benchmarks for digital transformation of people-centred cities

APPENDIX I

I.1 UN Guidelines for Establishing a Benchmark

There are multiple approaches for establishing and facilitating policy benchmarks. These allow a
transfer of best practices or establish consensus on how adequate a policy is designed to develop
people-centric digitalization in smart and sustainable cities. The key implementation guidelines for
a policy evaluation should support the main objectives of:

• Avoiding contradictions

• Creating Consensus

• Allowing for measurements and impact analysis
• Allowing for trends in digitalization and future evolution of technology, impacts and scale of
adoption such as Metaverse

Existing benchmarking guidelines can be applied and contextualized to build a “stress test” for
digitalization in people-centric sustainable cities.

For examples, the UN has published a methodology (United Nations Practitioners´ Guide to
Benchmarking) framework of which can be utilized. In order to prepare for a benchmark, policy
leaders in cities need to identify data sources and other statistics and information to make an
assessment on capacity of the policy, strategy and conflict analysis. This also includes the potential
approach to conducting a benchmark, identifying objectives and core tasks of policy mechanisms,
and defining who will be included in the benchmark. How will benchmark conclusions to be utilized,
as outlined in the UN Results based management Handbook ?

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