Smart heritage in local government strategic documents

Local governments are applying smart discourses to resolve challenges in their jurisdictions. Smart discourses like Smart Infrastructure and Smart Mobility result from convergences of smart city discipline and traditional disciplines to deliver novel computer-led decision-making and tailored services. Over the past decade, these smart discourses have become embedded within local government strategic documents through explicit references and operational initiatives. An emerging smart discourse that local governments can adopt is forming between the smart city discipline and the heritage discipline, subsequently producing the Smart Heritage discourse. This article chronicles an investigation into the strategic relationships between the smart city and heritage disciplines within three Australian local governments. In each local government, the researchers analysed strategic smart city and heritage documents to identify shared themes, distilling the data into generalised findings that identify the state of play for Smart Heritage in these organisations. These findings suggest that Smart Heritage is emerging in local government organisations and could soon materialise in their documents alongside established smart discourses. It also signals that the intersection of heritage and technology is advancing into the policy arena, beyond previous Digital Heritage applications. Planners and policy professionals may have to adjust their thinking to accommodate this new discourse.