Trust but verify: a Verification-as-a-Service framework for sustainable infrastructure governance—An integrative conceptual review

Abstract

Decentralized operations across mission-critical industries and smart city public infrastructure increasingly rely on distributed third-party contractors to execute complex infrastructure projects. However, existing literature indicates that managing this workforce through traditional oversight models, relying on periodic inspections, manual documentation, and subjective verification, creates a persistent “trust deficit,” driven by underlying principal-agent information asymmetries. This condition leads to operational inefficiencies, costly rework, payment delays, excessive Scope 3 transport emissions from physical inspection transit (“truck rolls”), and increased compliance risks, driven by subjective or missing documentation. To resolve these systemic bottlenecks, this conceptual paper introduces the Verification-as-a-Service (VaaS) framework, proposing a fundamental shift from reactive manual inspections to proactive, remote, and digitized quality control. Methodologically grounded in Tarraco's integrative conceptual review framework, this study synthesizes multidisciplinary literature across the built environment, public governance, and information systems. We outline a five-phase VaaS lifecycle that standardizes digital verification from task definition through payment readiness and performance analytics, and urban ESG impact evaluation. Demonstrating cross-industry adaptability and implementation governance, addressing spatial privacy regulations (e.g., GDPR/CCPA) and worker surveillance concerns, the proposed framework addresses common quality-control challenges across public works and smart cities, utilities, telecommunications, and construction. The cumulative impacts of this framework are theoretically modeled via a Value Proposition Pyramid and a formal Theory of Change with testable research hypotheses. Crucially, VaaS is logically distinguished as an overarching governance framework from underlying enabling technologies such as Building Information Modeling (BIM), digital twins, and blockchain. By grounding field oversight in verifiable, integrity-secured data, VaaS establishes the conceptual conditions for evidence-based procurement, regulatory standardization, and decarbonized urban asset governance. The primary limitations of this study stem from its unvalidated conceptual nature, necessitating future empirical field testing while addressing the data-entry, software infrastructure overhead, urban spatial privacy mandates (e.g., GDPR/CCPA), and worker-surveillance concerns.