Not accompanied by detailed circumstantial knowledge and information system: glorification of success in Indonesian regencies’ and municipals’ smart city development

Purpose This study aims to show Indonesia’s smart city development (SCD) projects, promising glorification for successful changes into a prosperous society. Meanwhile, it reveals the sudden emergence of SCD projects without circumstantial knowledge capital and standardised information system technology (IST) for the developers. The Indonesia Ministry of Information and Communication has declared 100 regions to innovate SCD projects. In the designed formulation, people should benefit by reducing their daily living costs. Design/methodology/approach This study uses a critical interpretive approach by designing propositions to demonstrate the critical reality of SCD built by Indonesian regencies and municipalities. It has designed the data collection, analysis and reporting of the results, considering reliability, validity and credibility, and ending in saturated data. Findings This study finds that public services continue to burden the community, which remains burdened with high costs for all life activities. It reveals that the glorification of success is true because smart cities cannot change and raise a new economic equilibrium. It signifies the SCD projects as a glorification of success supported by running them in an evangelistic public administration, like feminist objectification. Likewise, the performance measurement of the SCD’s success projects is anchored in the discipline of administrative budgeting schema. Originality/value This study raises critical novelties supported by critical reasonings. First, it believes SCD needs structuralised circumstantial knowledge because they are not only a physical investment in buildings, roads and bridges. Second, it underlines that SCD will glorify success but is not accompanied by internalisations of comprehensive knowledge in all developers’ collective cognition. Third, this study demonstrates that the SCD’s success must be signified by IST, making all developers more productive. However, it proves that some indications do not exist in every regency’s and municipal’s SCD.