smart services for calculated impact assessment in open governance

Project Information

smarticipate

Grant agreement ID: 693729

DOI

10.3030/693729

Project closed

EC signature date 25 January 2016

Start date 1 February 2016

End date 31 January 2019

Funded under

• SOCIETAL CHALLENGES - Europe In A Changing World - Inclusive, Innovative And Reflective Societies

Total cost

€ 3 297 734,28

EU contribution

€ 2 997 259,38

Coordinated by

FRAUNHOFER GESELLSCHAFT ZUR FORDERUNG DER ANGEWANDTEN FORSCHUNG EV
Germany

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - smarticipate (smart services for calculated impact assessment in open governance)

Reporting period: 2017-02-01 to 2019-01-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Publishing data on city portals as Open Data is a growing trend, also promoted by the EC. However, in most cases it is only raw dump of data. It is hard for laymen to interpret the data sets, yet even impossible to determine if the content is useable as mostly no meta-information is given. These challenges were addressed by the smarticipate consortium and its solutions developed.
The smarticipate project developed ICT tools for participatory applications, using Open Data and other datasets. These applications enable citizens to co-create, to co-design and to take informed decisions by getting feedback on their innovative participatory applications. Furthermore, citizens can share their ideas and opinions and thus enrich existing Open Data.
In this respect, smarticipate’s three pilot cities Rome, Hamburg and London (Royal Boroughs of Kensington and Chelsea) actively contributed to smarticipate’s applications and data acquisition.
The overall objectives were:
• To enable structured interaction between authorities and citizens/businesses via the smarticipate communication platform
• To improve the information flow in the cities
• To create smarticipate applications, implementing automatic feedback technology
• To generate conditions for innovative authorities’ service provision
• To ensure the usefulness and market relevance for the targeted audience through piloting
• To establish pan-European dissemination and feedback loops
• To assist stakeholders in impact assessment for planned actions and analysis

The project followed a rigorous development process which began with the identification of the cities’ needs, gathering of their requirements and the definition of Urban Stories.
The commercialization partner are jointly exploiting the opportunity to establish a spin-off based on the project results, in order to provide the platform and the services to other cities.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

In the final smarticipate project year, all services necessary for platform operation were implemented and tested in various setups involving target end-users.
An App Making Session (June 2018) was organized as a training and knowledge transfer session on how to manage requirements for the creation of new topics. The combination of an accomplished platform and the manual ‘How to create a new app’ boosts the business exploitation. This deliverable was finalized and brought to a more mature phase, reflecting the common business development vision among the participating partners for the period after the project end.
Various project dissemination activities were set up during the last project year. Five Stakeholder Dialogue Events (the last one took place in May 2018). The current urban planning governance model was examined and challenges were considered, faced in the transition to a more common, participatory and integrated future urban planning governance model.
The final conference of the smarticipate project was organized in November 2018 in Vienna. The event was designed not only to share lessons learned from the project but also build a community to take smarticipate platform and the solutions it offers into the future.
Furthermore, ICLEI has published “Open governance in the smart city” report with almost 4000 downloads by the end of 2018.
To capture the learning process of all project partners and in particular the three smarticipate cities, a series of 21 interviews were conducted and published throughout the course of the project. Designed as living case studies, these interviews provide a diversity of perspectives, capturing early expectations, shifts during the project itself and plans for the future.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

smarticipate addressed the challenges related to the participatory user experience patterns and the context-aware communication platform. The participatory user experience patterns provide a methodology for cities to create a sound e-participation front-end. The feedback mechanisms include visualizations of conflict alerts when user demands and feasibility/regulations do not match, and offers the potential to estimate the costs and alternatives for achieving user demands. It provides advanced interaction experience modules, such as for 3D spatial graphics. The context-aware communication platform enables the structured interaction with users and communities. Furthermore, an Open Data retrieval system, based on semantic annotation and impact assessment component, enablse access to appropriate data matching the requirements of the users.
smarticipate enables co-creation by citizens and communities. The following further impacts were addressed:
1. Improve the city’s information flow by making Open Data usable
2. Involve citizens in shaping the future of their neighbourhood by co-production of data through developing and applying own services, enabling participatory sensing of perceptions and opinions
3. Increase transparency of urban governance and planning activities through ICT assisted impact assessment
4. Transform democracy with open governance by improving administrative duties and processes with early participation, feedback and dedication from citizens
5. Create new business opportunities and ideas

Project Logo

Discussion at the smartathon in Rome

Impression from the smartathon in Rome