Recommender systems in the public administration: methodological overview and conceptualization

Introduction. The article discusses approaches to describing recommender systems in public administration in the context of digital transformation of smart cities. Recommender systems are information filtering and recommendation mechanisms designed to facilitate and increase the speed of decision making. The effectiveness of public administration depends on the ability of state bodies not only to promptly respond to emerging challenges, but also on the ability to foresee such situations, to develop possible scenarios for future developments based on a retrospective analysis of available data, which will become possible due to the implementation of recommendation systems in the general canvas of the state digital platforms. Despite the lack of unambiguity in understanding the concept of a smart city, the scientific community emphasizes the importance of technological infrastructures not only for the life of the urban area, but also for the process of making management decisions. The scientific corps crystallizes the idea of a smart city as a functional urban area created by means of information and communication technologies, without which it becomes impossible to manage the city in an efficient and sustainable way. Over the past 20 years, the original concept of a smart city, conceived as a way to achieve more sustainable urban development, has gradually evolved to address the problems of ineffective governance. In this context, striving to improve such aspects as the quality of life of citizens, as well as the empowerment of their rights and opportunities, the smart city becomes a kind of environment in which the citizen is the center of all services and initiatives taking place in a given territory, where the use of technology plays the most important role. Materials and methods. The methodological basis of the research is characterized by the following general scientific methods: analysis, synthesis, systemic and functional approaches. Discussion and conclusion. As a result of the study, it was revealed that recommender systems should become part of the decision-making process in the field of public administration. The question of the quality of the recommendations provided remains unresolved, since the effectiveness of the recommendation systems depends on factors that go beyond the quality of the forecasting algorithm.