While for a smart city there is no generally accepted definition, there exists a wide consensus of what a smart city (or country) should bring to its citizens. It is believed that it such smart environment, all required conditions are met for a quality of life of individuals and communities and for sustainable economic growth. In most circumstances, this is associated with the availability of health and social security, the ease of use of public services, efficient mobility, security, job and business opportunities etc. How to achieve that remains a challenge of the 21st century. In this paper, we describe a program of R&D projects that were launched in late 2016 within the Slovenian Smart Specialization initiative as a response to the aforementioned challenge.