Bozkurt, Rossmann, Pervez and Ramzan reposition smart-city data as a problem of governance rather than technological abundance. The iconic idea is that urban data potential remains underexploited when cities lack actionable governance structures: standards, access rules, role clarity, cross-departmental collaboration and public-value alignment. The article’s theoretical contribution is to translate smart urbanism into the language of data governance, showing that sensors, platforms and administrative systems only become civic infrastructure when institutional arrangements make data reliable, interoperable, accountable and usable across urban domains. Methodologically, the study derives requirements from expert interviews with representatives of twenty-seven European cities and benchmarks existing academic governance models against those requirements. Its conceptual operation is institutional benchmarking: abstract governance models are tested against the messy operational conditions of municipalities. Its bridge to the wider field connects smart-city studies, digital government, public administration, data ethics, urban informatics and sustainable urban development.