190 ITU‐T's Technical Reports And Specifications Finally, municipalities can make alliances with others to share knowledge and good practices. Examples of this are the Covenant of Mayors and Energy Cities, the mainstream European movement involving local and regional authorities, voluntarily committing to increasing energy efficiency and use of renewable energy sources on their territories.30 Energy Cities is the European Association of local authorities in energy transition. It was created in 1990 and represents now more than 1,000 towns and cities in 30 countries.31 4.2 National and regional governments National and regional governments have remit on many issues and policies that affect cities and therefore are considered a SSC stakeholder. For instance, policies related to deployment of new infrastructure such as optic fibers or mobile connectivity, or related to subjects like health or education that without being specific to cities are also included in the SSC; usually belong to the national government. Similarly, much of the information that can be made available to the citizens through the open data platforms belongs to the central administration. In order to drive the transition to SSC, national governments should define legal frameworks that enable the implementation of many of the smart sustainable cities features. For example in China, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), designs the macro policies of national economic and social development. In order to build SSC, NDRC also leads the strategy planning for smart cities, coordinating with dozens of units of central government. Another clear example can be found in Spain, where the policies that regulate low‐voltage distribution in multi‐family blocks prevents the installation of electric vehicle charging points in communal parking areas. A modification to this policy that includes a solution to this issue will be essential to allow the widespread adoption of electric vehicles on a city level. Discussions have begun about on the application of the principles behind SSC to regions, either to analyse urban regions around a big city, or agglomerations of small towns. In the first case, it is about coordinating the urban area as a whole since usually many people from the surrounding areas work at the city centre and there is a lot of mobility around the entire urban area. In the second case, the idea is to generate efficiency by creating collaborations between the towns and villages in an area. For instance, if they want to provide a service that would not be cost‐effective for a town of their size, they can provide it together and benefit from economies of scale. In these cases, regional governments can have a leading role helping the mayors of the municipalities involved, and acting as coordinators of these clusters, and as promoters of the initiatives. As in the case of municipalities, it is also interesting to analyse the different units or ministries involved, as illustrated in Table 2. As in the case of city units, government units or ministries are not the same in all countries, so the names used in the examples may differ in some cases. Table 2 – Examples of the role of different national Ministries and units in SSCs Ministry of Infrastructure, Industry and Information Technology This is the ministry that has to fulfil the challenge of creating or modifying the policies related to infrastructure deployment and therefore can be decisive in the development of SSC. Issues regarding Electromagnetic Field (EMF) planning considerations on a national level must be transmitted by this unit to local governments and their particular units dealing with this issue. ____________________ 30 Covenant of Mayors. http://www.covenantofmayors.eu/index_ en.html 31 Energy Cities. http://www.energy‐cities.eu/