Shaping a Digital Transformation Strategy for Smart Cities under the COVID-19 pandemic: Evidence from Greece

Planning and establishing digital transformation (DT) is a complex process for all the organizations. City's DT is another challenging and complex process, which demands both the leading and dedicated role of the local government, and the engagement and commitment of the local stakeholders on a commonly agreed vision and plan. European Commission launched its Digital (DCC) and Intelligent Cities Challenge (ICC) initiatives to provide cities with guidance and support to design and implement corresponding digital transformation strategies. Shaping this strategy became hard during the ICC due to the Covid-19 pandemic, which changed all the local priorities and affected the initial city planning. The aim of this work-in-progress paper is to present the strategic planning process for city's digital transformation that was followed by the municipality of Trikala in Greece, which regardless is a famous smart city it had to join the DCC and ICC initiatives in order to methodologically perform it. Useful evidence are depicted with regard to the different stakeholders’ perspectives and priorities within the city's digital transformation and especially whether and how the COVID-19 outbreak re-arranged or re-shaped them.