The Governance of Digital Town Initiatives

AbstractRealising the potential of digital technologies in smaller and rural towns is a significant organisational and management challenge involving a diverse range of stakeholders, who may have conflicting motivations. It requires substantial horizontal integration at a local level to leverage local contextual knowledge and relationships to increase participation in initiatives, while at the same time requiring vertical integration with political, social, and economic institutions and agencies, to facilitate the flow of resources. This chapter explores some of the governance challenges and mechanisms for building rural community resilience to digital technology evolution. It concludes with a discussion of how the governance of digital initiatives are measured by intergovernmental and international organisations, to the limited extent that they are at all.