Engaging Citizens in Public Service & Policy Future of ePublic Services in the Atlantic Area 23/01/2014

A citizen is... a)a passive user of public services b)an active stakeholder in the design and usage of public services

Citizens discuss issues… Racism against immigrants is worsening in the economic crisis There is no official list of local intercultural mediators My community is culturally divided …but feel disengaged from actual policy-making

Policy-makers make policy… Immigration for employment purposes Immigration for studying purposes Irregular immigration Family reunification Integration and citizenship … but is it representative and will it be effective?

Citizen engagement leads to more participatory and effective policy-making

Citizens have low levels of trust in policy-makers

Policy-makers are unprepared for high levels of direct citizen engagement

Key Elements of Successful Engagement Involvement since beginning of process

Can Technologies Help?

Puzzled by Policy Approach Online Participation Accessible Open Trace Viral Data analysis Offline Participation Accessible – (Digital Divide) Builds trust Elaborate discussion

Online Participation eParticipation platforms Social media Open Data

Government-led vs. Citizen-led Porwol, L., Ojo, A. & Breslin, J., On The Duality of E-Participation – Towards a foundation for Citizen-Led Participation. In 2nd Joint International Conference on Electronic Government and the Information Systems Perspective and International Conference on Electronic Democracy. p. 15. Integrated model for participation

Puzzled by Policy Platform

Weaknesses of eParticipation Projects Usage Impact Sustainability

Usage of Puzzled Pilots – Torino, Italy – Tenerife, Spain – Budapest, Hungary – Athens, Greece ~7,000 end-users – Hard-to-reach users ~10 Decision-makers ~100 NGOs

Impact Improved integration and social cohesion in Tenerife – Interfaith Prayer for peace, respect and integration – School of Social Participation Kick-started process to introduce Register of Intercultural Mediators in Turin Submission on female genital mutilation from the EU immigration perspective as part to EC DG JUST consultation

Testimonials  ‘It is essential to convey the message that each and every person living in the neighbourhood has a crucial role to play to enrich, build and design a place for living together. We need to rely on citizen involvement and participation to build more cohesive and sustainable cities.’ Ms Eva Luz Cabrera from the Municipal Council for Citizen Participation in Tenerife  ‘It is very important to have a platform like PbP in place which gives a voice to citizens in general but more importantly to immigrants.’ Maria Kouveli, President, Local Council for Immigrants Integration, Greece  ‘The division between institutions and politics on one hand and citizens on another is deepening. Opportunities like PbP for us as members of the European Parliament to communicate through social media and other electronic tools are very useful.’ Tanja Fajon, Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats, European Parliament

eParticipation Tools Loomio (collaborative decision-making) CiviQ (making opinions count) OurSpace Immigration Policy 2.0

Government use of Social Media Dissemination of news, reporting on events, promotion of projects, some citizen engagement

Data Analysis Pipeline Extract relevant data Linked Data Analysis Trends, opinions, ideas Open Data

eParticipation data model

Puzzled by Policy & social media content

Social-media Analysis Hootsuite SproutSocial ViralHeat Linked2Media

Puzzled by Policy Sustainability Toolkit

To enable public-sector organisations to harness the power of data: improving insight, efficiency, and compliance.

Key Elements of Successful Engagement Involvement since beginning of process