Designing smart universities for partnerships: Governance, data and stakeholder indicators in public HEIs

Universities face growing pressure to deliver social and economic value through teaching, research and knowledge transfer. From a triple-helix perspective (university–industry–government), this article presents an empirical diagnosis aimed at proposing a smart-university model in a public Latin American institution and developing a transferable governance-and-data framework. Drawing on 25 in-depth interviews with internal and external stakeholders and a grounded theory approach, we identify cross-cutting constraints that limit U–I cooperation and data-informed decision-making: bureaucratic rigidity, fragmented information systems, limited-service capacity, and weak university–community–industry linkages. Priorities converge on data governance (centralization, interoperability and automation), purposeful ICT integration, institutional well-being and inclusion, and alignment with public policy. We propose a preliminary framework that links governance and decision-making with data infrastructures and sustainability, together with a cooperation-oriented governance playbook and a set of transferable indicators to guide implementation and evaluation. Taken together, the findings show that regulatory and resource constraints limit transformation in public HEIs; accordingly, this work suggests operational, institution-level recommendations to shorten timelines, standardize processes and improve coordination with firms, thereby strengthening university–industry cooperation within triple-helix ecosystems.