Defining, Designing, and Implementing Rural Smartness

The adoption of urban smartness concept for the rural area is recently gaining attention, especially as a vehicle to improve the citizens' economic welfare. In this context, this paper presents ongoing research exploring the adoption effort through the development of e-government service platform that facilitates the entrepreneurial discovery as the key for rural area's economic growth. This research follows the design science research methodology (DSRM) as the guidance in defining, designing, and implementing the research artefacts. There are two main research artefacts will be delivered from this research that expected to fill in the gaps from the previous works. First, the theoretical model that describes the key features of urban smartness concept for the realisation of economic benefit for the citizens in a rural area. Second, the design of the e-government service platform customised to the rural context. These research artefacts will be demonstrated and validated using a case study in West Java province, Indonesia, as the region has a strong vision to improve the economic welfare of the people in their rural area through digital initiatives. As the preliminary result, this research proposes a conceptual framework that suggests the urban smartness technology, combined with the organisational and environmental capabilities, can lead to the improvement of the economic welfare of the citizens in rural area through a process that encourages innovation in the local communities.