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The purpose of this paper is to explain the evolution of the system of public governance in Hong Kong, the various public sector reforms undertaken over the past two to three decades, and the present quagmire in governance resulting in a looming crisis in public trust and governability.

The research for the paper is based on opinion polls conducted by the University of Hong Kong Public Opinion Programme, and the findings of government reports, international organizations, official documents of the Hong Kong government, surveys by international and domestic organizations, and media reports.

The paper shows that the present political configuration of governance in Hong Kong had largely thrived on the pre‐1997 colonial logic of administrative state and government by bureaucracy. Such a system has now become hard to sustain due to rising political distrust and cynicism caused partly by the democratic deficit and the absence of the politics of responsibility. Hong Kong was a pioneer of public sector reforms in the 1980s and 1990s, but such reforms – grounded in the NPM (new public management) logic of management efficiency – no longer suffice to cope with the growing crisis of governability. It is argued that rebuilding trust and governability should be put at the forefront of the governance reform agenda.

The value of the paper is to show that despite good external ratings, the domestic perceptions of the performance of governance might be very different due to internal social and political problems. Administrative and management reforms merely copying external models, without touching on the fundamental and structural issues, are unlikely to forge a common sense of purpose and identity that is needed for sustainable governance.

This position chapter explains the importance of designing policies for smart cities. This chapter aims to provoke discussions that will allow further understanding of the smart cities policy agenda. It is inevitable for various smart cities actors to agree on ways to implement change in smartness. This is because of the different views on developing smart cities (or smart cities initiatives) that will ensure shared benefits for everyone. To achieve a wider understanding of how this might be achieved, the chapter raises the points of designing policy for smartness and the influence of governance on policy design. It explains what we mean by policy and governance and the link between them. Overall, the policy needs to be supported by a governance system, which is widely accepted – for example for truly smart cities, a governance system needs to evaluate the benefits through liveability; these are the environmental, societal, governance, and economic lenses. A liveability approach to the governance system can promote open and democratic processes to smartness.

The participation of society is a valuable aspect of the governability of cities, for it strengthens the citizens’ collaborative component. Such participation, which is seen as social, is considered an essential element for the design of a smart city. This study aims to identify the factors that contribute to social participation in the definition of budgetary instruments’ planning.

Concerning the methodological instruments, this study is characterised by a quantitative and descriptive approach and uses a multivariate data analysis with a sample of 235 respondents.

The study’s findings identified a framework that portrays elements that collaborate with the social participation in the definition of the public administration’s budgetary instruments, which are considered as elements that are able to develop the role of the popular participation and are characterised by the definition of a smart city by enabling more assertiveness in society’s needs.

Identification of a framework that brings out elements that are able to develop the popular participation in the definition of budgetary instruments. Then, one scale of elements that contribute to social participation in the definition of the public administration’s budgetary instruments theoretically represented and statistically validated, thus contributing to the continuity of studies on social participation.

Through studies on social participation in budgetary planning, it is possible to guarantee a better allocation of public resources through intelligent governability.

The research can bring theoretical elements about social participation in the definition of budget instruments for a statistical convergence through the perception of the sample.

The rapidly increasing complexity of modern society has given rise to a host of societal crises and problems. Efforts to solve such problems have, more often than not, demonstrated the non‐governability of the social processes concerned: Inflation, the arms race, etc. Cybernetics and GST have recently claimed that they can contribute to the analysis and solution of large‐scale social problems—as demonstrated by the often ambitious themes of conferences in these fields. In the following, “social cybernetics” is the general term that will be used for applications of general systems theory and cybernetics to the analysis of social processes, problems and structures. One should, however, realize that these applications have, over the past decade, had a feedback effect on GST and cybernetics themselves, and have caused the emergence of what is now often called the new cybernetics. “Sociocybernetics” is the term that will be specifically reserved for the applications of this new cybernetics to the above mentioned analysis.