Designing for Participatory Governance: assessing capabilities and toolkits in public service...

Designing for Participatory Governance: assessing capabilities and toolkits in public service delivery

Author Details (please list these in the order they should appear in the published article) Shenja van der Graaf Senior researcher iMinds-SMIT Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) Brussels Belgium Carina Veeckman Researcher iMinds-SMIT Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) Brussels Belgium Corresponding author: Shenja van der Graaf Corresponding Author’s Email: [email protected]

Please check this box if you do not wish your email address to be published Acknowledgments (if applicable): This study is a joint effort, funded under CIP-ICT- PSP.2011.5.1- Open Innovation for Future Internet-enabled Services in ‘Smart’ Cities (no. 297188). Our gratitude goes to the entire Citadel... on the Move consortium. In particular, we would like to thank the pilot lead Thimo Thoeye (Ghent) for his continuous effort and support. We also like to thank the reviewers for their insightful comments on an earlier version of this work. Biographical Details (if applicable): Shenja van der Graaf (MA, Utrecht University; PhD, LSE) is a senior researcher at iMinds-SMIT, Vrije Universeit Brussel (Belgium). Also, she is a researcher at LSE (UK) and honorary fellow at MIT Media Lab ID³ Hub (USA). Her research is concerned with the management of technological innovation in firms and communities; (new) media users and ‘cultures of expertise’; mediation of social and economic life; software/code markets; trust, legitimate vulnerability, and institutional corruption. Carina Veeckman is a researcher at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel in Belgium, where she started working for the iMinds-SMIT research group in 2011. Until March 2013, she was responsible for the living lab methodology within the Flemish Living Lab Platform (FLELLAP), which included numerous projects within the smart grids, smart media, and smart cities domains with a test panel of 2,000 users. Her current research and interests are related to open data and the co-creation of mobile applications within a smart city context, and the willingness to share location information when using these applications. Structured Abstract:

• Purpose: This study is designed to yield insight into how cities can optimize citizen involvement in the co-development of citizen services, by providing the rights tools, knowledge and resources.

• Methodology: By conducting a case study analysis of the city of Ghent, this study investigates how users are engaged in the development of mobile applications on a city-hosted platform.

• Findings: Findings show that public service delivery, related to the urban space, can be co-designed between the city and its citizens, if different toolkits aligned with the specific capacities and skills of the citizens are provided.

• Research limitations (if applicable): Data was collected between August 2012 and December 2013. Some preliminary findings are presented on the (design of the) dynamic co-creation ecosystem and the citizens’ capacities to participate on the city-hosted platform. And, while the examination is still on-going some insights can be offered in the learning dynamics underpinning how the cities are setting up such a bottom-up process and how local participation for different citizen groups can be optimized in the context of design capabilities and the design space.

• Practical implications (if applicable) • Social implications (if applicable) • Originality/value: This study yields relevant insights for policy makers, city administrations as well as

living lab practitioners into how public service delivery supported by an inclusive participatory


governance by design framework at the local level, can be co-designed between the city and citizens, if different toolkits aligned with the specific capacities and skills of the users, are provided. By providing tailored tools even ordinary citizens can take a much more active role in the development and appropriation of their urban space and generate solutions from which both the city and citizens’ everyday life can possibly benefit.

Keywords: Participatory governance, open data, local knowledge, toolkits, application development, decentralized governance, (citizen) developers, co-design, smart city, public service delivery Article Classification: Case study Full Abstract In recent years, governmental entities can be seen to steadily move towards more openness and transparency, using ICTs, ranging from legislative mandates and public policy decisions to opening up public data on government websites. And while, a one-way interaction can still be detected between government and citizens, increasingly innovative government entities can be seen to tap into the creative potential of the public and encourage citizens to create new tools that transform government data and information into practical tools for use by the general public, offering a creative and empowering infrastructure of pervasive knowledge-intensive and information-rich user-created content activities. Following this line of thought, it makes sense for public sector stakeholders to develop public service-related solutions in conjunction with citizens. This paper, therefore, seeks to yield insight into how public service delivery can be co-designed between the city and citizens, and from which both the city and everyday urban life can possibly benefit. Through a case study approach, this paper investigates how citizens are engaged – via provided/generated toolkits - in the development of mobile applications on the city-hosted platform of Ghent (Belgium). By supporting the principles of citizen participation and opening up the city’s datasets, the city wants to deliver better services and gain better insights in how to improve the city’s transparency and communication towards their citizens and other governmental departments. The preliminary findings indicate that government entities should provide different toolkits based on the specific capacities and skills of the users, so that every citizen can be become involved and be heard, thereby highlighting ‘e-governance as good governance’. Based on our findings, the paper will eventually yield a more robust understanding of the development and organization of city-user relationships by offering a design space that underlie the structural integration of citizen participation into mainstream public service development and the implications for an inclusive participatory governance by design framework at the local level.

I. Introduction

“We gave you some of our data (awesome), we want you to do stuff with it (nice, thank you), and hence we now have Open Government (not quite)’ […]. Open Government is not much about transparency in decision making than about legislation making. It is a philosophy allowing citizens to provide their Government the benefits of their knowledge and collective intelligence through participation” (Open Belgium, 2014).1

This illustration seems to echo what has been termed a ‘participatory turn’ (OECD 2007) reflected in debates about the claimed democratization of information and communication technologies (ICTs) such as Twitter and Wikipedia that actively involve people in their web services. From a diversity of perspectives, scholars draw attention to these digital avenues for user engagement and dissemination. And, which is said to involve some kind of novel configuration between amateurism and professionalism, between emerging and established structures, between the private and public domains, between the gift and the exchange economies (Mansell 2012). More specifically, these literatures tend to associate participation with a convergence of web-based production, distribution, and consumption practices; as well as a blending of user creativity, collaboration and sharing-enabled and sharing-assisted network technologies (cf. Web 2.0. in O’Reilly 2005). Such works all appear to be pointing to a shift from individuals as being mere ‘consumers’ to becoming ‘producers’ who are supporting the democratization of knowledge and information. The question that runs throughout the scholarly research is whether this digital participatory turn is having a detrimental effect on our culture, or whether it is empowering and represents a way forward for sustaining growth and innovation in society, including a way for benefitting democratic, cultural, legal, labour, and creative expression. For example, digital engagement advocacy is being supported by the development of terms, concepts, and models


such as ‘convergence culture’ (Jenkins 2006); ‘culture of connectivity’ (van Dijck 2013); ‘democratizing innovation’ (Von Hippel 2005); ‘like economy’ (Gerlitz and Helmond 2013); and ‘wikinomics’ (Tapscott and Williams 2006). While this blurring of ‘production and consumption’ practices is not a new phenomenon, it has become more salient in recent years because it prompts institutions to look at the implications for public services development and delivery and vis-à-vis people’s “right to the city” [Lefebvre 1968/1996]). In this regard, recent political commitments towards open government and open data can be detected where the public sector (via global, national, regional, local or thematic portals) increasingly makes open government data (OGD)2 available to its citizens (Janssen 2012). Examples include the ‘Open Government Partnership’ which is a multilateral initiative from 8 founding governments and now contains over 50 governments (2011);3 HM Government ‘Open Data Project’ (2012);4 and, Belgium’s Flemish Government initiative ‘Open Data Forum’ (2011).5 This opening up of government data enables and facilitates citizens to participate in the production of (local) information and services by freely using, repurposing, creating value and even co-producing content. Under the appropriate circumstances, digital co-creation practices between citizens and public institutions are claimed to turn public services and public organizations into more effective and transparent actors (UN 2012). Policy documents such as “Big Society” (UK 2010)6 and “Confidence in Citizens” (Netherlands 2013)7 appear to be encouraging this current direction which is underpinned by the mantra ‘e-governance equals good-governance’ (cf. Verma and Kumari 2010). This blending together of ‘collective citizens and creativity’ (associated with a shared trust in the grassroots powers of people) is understood as a new mode, or, capability to harness citizens’ knowledge and to innovate and generate value. And, with this promise of more efficient and effective usage of human skill, intellect, and originality, consulting with people has, in fact, become an important focal point for public sector institutions such as city governments; in particular with regard to opportunities for value creation to occur (van Duivenboden and Thaens 2008). Whereas institutions have tended to take on most, if not all, of the product or service development, in the citizens as ‘value creators or innovators’ model, people are invited to become part of the stages of idea generation and development (Von Hippel 2005). Often, this practice is enabled and supported by institutional-provided toolkits facilitating a more demand-orientation, more public participation, and an increasingly open and responsiveness of institutions. By inviting and, in many cases, facilitating participatory practices, service development becomes (relatively) open and distributed, challenging the more standard division of labour between institutions and users, urging institutions to adopt new, or, alternative models and ways of organization (such as collaborative consumption, Sundararajan 2013). And, which seemingly justifies the blurring boundaries between the private, public and people modes of production, and between proprietary and non-proprietary hardware and software platforms (van der Graaf 2012). In sum, we can detect a series of foregrounding migrations between institutions, citizens and ICTs, drawing attention to the increasing complexity of the division of knowledge and labour whereby understanding citizen needs is, arguably, an ever-before necessity for contemporary city governance in local development and maintenance practices. The idea of learning from and with citizens may not be new, yet less is known about the dynamics of how ‘work’ is accomplished and organized across institutional boundaries coinciding with a shift from citizen input as mere ‘collecting customer data’ to ‘integrating’ citizens in the development processes as co-designers or producers deploying toolkits (Leminen and Westerlund 2012; Verdegem and Verleye 2009). This study, therefore, investigates how a local city administration can facilitate and optimize citizen involvement in the context of the co-production of city services, leveraged as a core innovative process


currently being played out in city governance. For this purpose, it draws upon the city of Ghent (Belgium) that has been actively opening up public data providing citizens with opportunities to develop mobile applications that use local open data - emphasizing local deployment. The analytical framework focuses on the role of the (purposefully) city-provided toolkit and the citizens’ capacities to engage in the public domain guided by the Living Lab approach. The findings show that public service delivery supported by an inclusive participatory governance by design framework at the local level, can be co-designed between the city and citizens, if different toolkits aligned with the specific capacities and skills of the users, are provided. By providing tailored tools even ordinary citizens can take a much more active role in the development and appropriation of their urban space and generate solutions from which both the city and citizens’ everyday life can possibly benefit. II. Literature review Of citizen participation, toolkits and the city In recent years, the term ‘smart city’ can be heard, particularly in an European policy context. The term holds the promise of answering to societal challenges such as mobility and ageing populations, that cities are facing (Pallagst et al. 2009), and for which solutions are sought by investing in the necessary ICT infrastructure and human and social capital development. The smart city-concept is relatively new and evolving, and hence, is still ambiguous (cf. Caragliu et al. 2009; Hall et al. 2000). Yet, based on the various understandings, the term seems to carry ICT-deterministic connotations regarding the relationship between cities as social spaces and technology. Here, however, we understand cities as highly social, as axis of humanity, thereby stressing that ICT facilitate and empower citizens so they can become active in shaping their urban environment, establish relationships with the city and other citizens, and to collectively tackle shared urban issues and co-create solutions. More specifically, we subscribe to a forward-looking conception of the city that reconciles any exclusive top-down or bottom-up approach. In our view, the city can be understood as a local innovation platform where all relevant stakeholders from the private and public sphere, academia, civil society and so on can meet, thereby highlighting the urban space mediated by ICTs (such as social media, innovative wireless networks, mobile devices, cloud technology), and involving or engaging citizens in innovative experiences with the goal of increasing their quality of life in meaningful ways. With the proliferation of digital technologies in this context, a growing number of government entities can be seen to apply the ‘open government’ approach as a way to tap into the innovative potential of its citizens; makings the move towards an e-government even more prevalent. Thus, not only ICTs can be seen to improve the transparency and efficiency of government agencies, but increasingly they are also used to better facilitate democratic practices by guiding and improving interactions between government and citizens associated with voluntary knowledge sharing, the development of social relations, nurturing of new knowledge, stimulation of innovation, and sharing existing tacit knowledge within and between institutions and citizen (Meijer 2007; cf. Sutko and de Souza e Silva 2011). Consequently, attention has been given to the role of ICTs vis-à-vis organizational dynamics within and across institutional boundaries. In particular, a growing scholarly interest can be detected attesting to the notion of “goodness of governance” which has been associated with terms such as (citizen) participation, consensus-driven, accountable, transparent, responsive, effective and efficient, and inclusive (Verma and Kumari 2010). The concept relates social and economic action to smaller, community-driven, bottom-up systems of (work) organization (Bakker 2010). It emphasizes the role of ICTs in enabling and facilitating larger groups of citizens to influence and participate in practices that underpin, particularly, local development (Gurstein 2007; UN 2012). It offers a basis for certain urban behaviours, such as local environmental activism and political engagement in neighbourhoods, and people’s or the institution’s ability to know and learn, to occur as citizens become the foundations of the local city’s dynamic knowledge base (van der Graaf 2009; Foray 2004; Lave and Wenger 1991).


Moreover, city administrations seem to struggle to meet the demands to improve public service delivery such as those associated with the quality of urban life, as they face ever-diminishing resources (van der Graaf and Vanobberghen 2013). In this respect, increasingly recognized by policy makers and the like, city administrations in particular, can be seen to facilitate and provide citizens with access to open and public data. In conjunction with the roll out of high bandwidth connectivity and the growing adoption rate of personal technologies such as smartphones and tablets, the public realm and the way people live and interact in urban areas are said to transform. Ranging from smart phones to sensors, smart meters and other instrumentation seem to sustain the ‘intelligence’ of the city. Data coming from sensors, or integrated networks, can provide citizens with real-time and location-based information. For example, sensors can monitor the air quality or detect patterns of movement of people in the city. These data, and information stemming from these datasets, can help governments to better understand their city (e.g., improving urban planning), and to eventually deliver better citizen services. Similarly, when government entities open up their data, additional opportunities are created to develop new services as they offer citizens access to real time information about the things and people that surround them; anytime, anywhere they want. These databases with information are made available at no costs for the public, so that e.g., (citizen) developers or start-ups can add relevance and value to the information and create applications. Thus, citizens are getting actively encouraged to see the city itself as something they can collectively tune, in the manner that it is efficient, interactive, adaptive and flexible by bringing in their personal knowledge, helping a collective (social) intelligence to develop (Foth et al 2008; Kolbitsch and Maurer 2006). So-called smart city applications seem, therefore, to shape a fundamental digital layer of the city, whereby citizens do not only participate in the collection of the data (e.g., crowd-sourced information), but are also enabled to co-create innovative applications or services based on these data, and to eventually use the services anywhere, anytime they want. In this view, these services are not only thought to make the city smarter, but also to address and serve both citizens and administrations in better ways (Hielkema and Hongisto 2013). A balance between bottom-up processes and the technology push is therefore desirable (Pallot et al. 2011); in fact, ‘people’ or the involvement of citizens is key (European Parliament, Policy Department, Economic and Scientific Policy 2014). Citizens should be ‘empowered’ to participate in the development of the city, thereby highlighting a shift from citizens as mere passive subjects into engaged actors (Schaffers et al. 2012). And, which promotes the view of a “participatory governance”, or also called “empowered participatory governance” (Abers et al. 2003). Sources of public service development can thus be internal to local administrations, acquired by them in the market, or increasingly co-developed with citizens, (or, which tends to be a mixture of all; van der Graaf 2009). As outlined earlier, stakeholders that are external to the administration are viewed as valuable participants (or, sometimes referred to as innovators) and which often can be evidenced in purposively designed and provided toolkits (cf. Arakji and Lang 2010; Von Hippel 1988). In other words, providing toolkits for (co-)design is a means of systematically outsourcing certain development - and innovation - tasks from the institution to citizens, assisting them in improving and developing new products and services (Von Hippel 2005). These may be incremental improvements, or solutions that are radically different in areas such as product and service innovation and conceptual innovation (van Duivenboden and Thaens 2008). A toolkit is a specialized software application and comes in a variety of forms. Specific within-organization toolkits exist used by employees in order to work. These tools may be internally designed but can also be third party developed like commercial-off-the-shelf graphics packages such as Photoshop. An end-user toolkit may be developed and provided by the institution, and which can vary from being completely identical to the tools used internally, to specifically designed end user tools. They may also be third party tools that come with the product/service. And, in some instances, if allowed and possible, users may develop their own tools. Generally, a toolkit tends to be custom-released by the institution for a specific purpose,


digital platform or service. A toolkit tends to lower the threshold by enabling and facilitating user participation in governance practices - repartitioned into sub-tasks between the administration and citizens -, supporting citizens to (co-)create products and services that correspond to their individual needs (van der Graaf 2009). As such a toolkit facilitates citizen participation in governance practices, co-locating problem solving tasks with need-related information, which draws attention to modularity as organizing principle (cf. ‘multi-sided market strategy’ and ‘mirroring hypothesis’; Colfer and Baldwin 2010). As a result, the institutional-hosted platform where both public agencies and users meet and contribute to, tends to operate as a gatekeeper of information and value flows between the different stakeholders from which they can possibly benefit (Ballon and Van Heesvelde 2011). More specifically, information relevant to – and, often created by - citizens or the community can be collected and which can inform and enrich the development and sustainability of public services, better addressing local needs. Against this backdrop, citizen participation in the city context - while perhaps not new - is not clear-cut (Fischer 2006); in particular, with the emphasis on the user-driven aspects of practice, the various lines of research have tended to pay less attention to the organization of dynamic relations that move across (institutional) boundaries (Bassoli 2010). Also, one another weakness is related to the apparent link between citizen participation and technological advancement. Too readily research tends to overestimate (or, ‘hype’) the creative capacities of users and their contributions to product development, while aspects of (such as variations in) the design and use of technologies (e.g., software routines, toolkits) tend to be under-exposed, or even absent from many discussions (van der Graaf 2009). Insufficient attention has also been given to the ways users may participate, what they may contribute, and how and with what frequency they may interact with others; thus, the capability or, a seeming lack of knowledge and skills that are needed to participate in processing, (co-)producing and using open data (services) - both on the citizen and institutional side. This so-called data literacy “encompasses the strategies, skills and knowledge needed to define information needs, and to locate, evaluate, synthesize, organize, present and/or communicate information as needed” (Williams and Coles, 2007:188). Yet, while available research has shown a need to support users in both the interpretation and the further use of the data, a lack thereof has often led to valuable information being neglected. Moreover, the importance of knowledge and skills becomes even more apparent by the impact of data literacy on the development and use process across boundaries (cf. Webber and Johnston 2000); for example, actual mastery of knowledge and skills versus one’s personal assessment of them. And, arguably, demanding a more complex and multi-levelled understanding of the organization of local public service design between institutions and citizens on institutional-hosted open data platforms, or hubs (cf. “participation as the new ideology”, Cooke and Kothari 2001). The remainder of this study, therefore, elaborates on a specific opportunity for citizen participation at the intersection of people, place and technology associated with the dynamics of co-development across boundaries by city administration and citizen members associated with an inclusive policy framework of citizen participation and innovation. It explores one important aspect underpinning ‘sound governance’ in this regard, that is the specific role and the optimization of the toolkit as a ‘co-development site’ in lowering (access) barriers to public places using open data vis-à-vis the design capabilities of citizens. III. Research approach This study investigates the open data initiative for the city of Ghent (Belgium).8 In the spring of 2011 the public administration of Ghent announced that it would make a start to open up its data through, among others, its data portal, data.gent.be (in Dutch). While there is an active developer community in the city – encompassing a number of innovative ICT companies and student communities, and so forth – the local authority is interested in making it more useful to a wider citizenry. In particular, it is interested in establishing a direct and interactive relationship with its citizens (e.g., new communication channels, data-


centric need-related discussions) and to increase awareness of open data among their developer community, students and SMEs (Ghent Web Valley). Also, the city has an interest in creating and delivering better services through citizen participation in local public service design (which may, for example, provide richer information about local needs and issues in the context of navigating neighbourhoods or planning). In particular, it is interested in gaining a better insight through crowd-sourced data and developing the citizen-generated applications such as parking issues and traffic reduction in the inner city, collecting crowd sourced geographical information, providing targeted information about point of interests, providing targeted information about local events, gaining insight into the quality of life ‘on the street’, and encourage competition to improve local community. Furthermore, a focus can be detected in improving internal data-management through engaging citizens in the quality assurance and to increase awareness of Open Data among citizen groups, for example, a demand-driven approach for opening up data associated with a crowd-sourced data pool. Thus, building a closer relationship between administration and citizens, and increasing the involvement of citizens in local public service development and delivery are the city’s main objectives. Consequently, the administration is facilitating the open access approach for publishing government data (that enables its subsequent re-use by the public), and engages citizens and other stakeholders in the living lab experiments. In this case, Ghent is the owner of the living lab network, enabling cooperation and coordinating the activities. According to the typology of Leminen and Westerlund (2012), Ghent plays the role of enabler as they provide the necessary resources in the network and provide a creative space to collaborate. In this view, the city administration sought to invite its citizens to participate in public service development practices guided by a purposefully designed toolkit provided on a city-hosted platform (or, Web-based ‘Hub’), while opening up more datasets and transform them into a publicly usable format that can be used by anyone interested to (freely) develop mobile applications. Citizens have been engaged from the ideation phase in developing thematic toolkits and to making datasets of interest available. This study used a mixture of quantitative and qualitative data and methods. Here, we report on data gathered between August 2012 and December 2013.9 During the testing period, citizen input was collected in three iteration cycles guided by a multi-methodological approach associated with a Living Lab framework (Pierson and Lievens, 2005). The first two cycles focused learning about citizen’s local interests and needs in co-developing toolkits vis-à-vis the city’s open data strategy and so to navigate the city better. A workshop with citizens (N=12) resulted in five suggestions for which to develop thematic toolkits, relating to (1) environmental data; (2) parking; (3) events; (4) points of interest; and, (5) crowd-sourced information. Mock-ups were created to describe the key functions and features of the toolkit, so-called ‘templates’, and how these could be used to facilitate mobile application development in the city. The third cycle focused on ideation and initial co-design/creation. A design workshop facilitated ideation about new mobile applications that would improve city life. Participants (N=17) were guided to think about what they feel would be ‘the perfect app’ and these ideas were gradually refined into concrete and tangible wireframes. The workshop consisted of a role-playing exercise (using scenarios that adhere to the Ghent’s key service area(s), common elements of good working mobile applications are identified), ideation (clustering of these elements and ideation on how to solve real-world problems that occur in the city, using the elements identified before), and wireframing (the elements of each cluster are translated into functionalities of an application prototype, which is made tangible using wireframes). Also, an exploratory survey (N=25) was conducted in order to gain in-depth insights into the way end-users or ordinary citizens (without specific technical knowledge), citizen developers (with limited technical knowledge) and professional developers (excellent technical knowledge) can interact with these mobile application templates. The survey contained a number of tasks and a ‘walkthrough’ that had to be completed by the respondents, in order to indicate possible problems they experienced (e.g., installation, configuration, modify the application template), make recommendations, and so forth.


The next section presents some preliminary findings on the (design of the) dynamic co-creation ecosystem and the citizens’ capacities to participate on the city-hosted platform. And, while the examination is still on-going some insights can be offered in the learning dynamics underpinning how the cities are setting up such a bottom-up process and how local participation for different citizen groups can be optimized in the context of design capabilities and the design space. IV. Findings From template ideation to application A first workshop facilitating the interaction between the various stakeholders - developers, public authorities as open data providers, employees of different ICT industries, citizens – was organized to assess the interest of citizens to participate in toolkit co-development to unlock Ghent’s open data initiatives, in particular, and its wider objectives, more generally. Here, initial needs and user requirements were gathered to make sure that the application initiatives would meet real user interests, as opposed to simply meeting mere policy or technical specifications. This resulted in five suggestions for thematic toolkits and which were drawn out in mock-ups:

• Template 1: Environmental, traffic and transportation data, urban planning (e.g., weather conditions) • Template 2: Real-time availability of parking facilities near public places (e.g., costs, access for

people with disabilities) • Template 3: Points of interest (PoIs) or interesting routes in the city (e.g., parks, hospitals, metro) • Template 4: User-generated PoIs (i.e. citizens generate their own information about PoIs in the city) • Template 5: Events in the city (e.g., theatres, cinema, concerts)

The next step was to learn about the kinds of mobile applications that could be of interest in this context, while solving a number of issues pertaining to city life and could be useful in various situations. When the ideas for apps were forming, participants were asked to draw up a number of wireframes, describing not only what the application could look like, but also how it would work and which data it would consume, produce and visualize. They were asked to indicate the target audience, the application’s purpose and what makes it unique with regard to other, existing, applications. For example, a suggested application was called ‘Make my day’, which would be a trip planner that automatically composed the perfect evening based on one’s mood and availability. Its functionalities should focus on asking users to complete a moodboard indicating her/his interests and personality. Special care should be taken into account to make this process as quick and painless as possible. For example, a list of moods could be displayed and the user just has to swipe the ones that are not to his or her liking away. Also, when one would tap ‘make my day’ the app would schedule a number of events and activities that can be reordered and replaced. And, in case one experiences a ‘moodswing’ a button can be tapped to automatically changes one’s schedule and social suggestions in the local neighbourhood. Based on these insights a first basic version of the ‘application templates’ was developed. These templates should be seen as working mobile web applications, based on HTML5 and PHP. JavaScript and JSON are also used to enhance the user experience and allow the communication with the application’s back-end and data respectively. By providing these templates, the city can facilitate mobile application development, as people should be able to download the source code from the city-hosted platform. In this way, citizens are enabled to personalize the application templates in order to meet their personal or more socially driven needs (e.g., to leave comments for others to see when navigating a street). For example, citizens are able to combine multiple templates, add or remove parts, and so forth. Through these standard templates, Ghent has sought to provide a systematic way for citizens (and SMEs) to start creating their own (co-created) public


services, as it makes the development processes less time-consuming and more cost-effective. Furthermore, the city hopes that when citizens can easily access open data, the innovative potential of citizens gets stimulated as citizens themselves can determine the mobile applications they would want or need to navigate (parts of) the city. In order to iterate the co-development, the application templates were launched in Ghent’s living lab and involved 25 participants. The group was near-gender balanced and, among those who chose to disclose their age, most were in their thirties. Also, based on their own assessment about their experience using the Internet and in software development, a diverse range of (basic to professional) experience and interest could be detected. And, with one exception, all participants owned a smartphone and used their phone to connect to the Internet. Furthermore, for each of the interviewees, a ‘Smart City profile’ was constructed, based on their stance towards their local government and associated initiatives. Most felt an ‘above average’ commitment towards their city, and several said to be keen to learn more about ways to become more engaged. The findings across two testing cycles showed that 1 in 2 participants were intensively adapting the templates and spent 1 to 2 days working on it. The parking application and the crowd-sourcing template were perceived as the most interesting ones, whereas the urban planning template was perceived as rather useless through the lack of data. In general, the participants found the application templates easy accessible. Since the templates have been developed using cross-browser HTML5 technology, there was no problem in using these templates on different types of mobile devices or running different operating systems. Yet, despite this positive feedback, none of the citizen developers actually started developing their own applications based on the templates. In addition, it became clear that - depending on the participant’s skill level – the findings varied. Some perceived the download and installation processes as rather easy: “I found and downloaded the app files fairly easily and had to make some changes to the config. file, which I am used to doing” (participant, G3).10 However, it seemed that most ‘citizen developers’ were not familiar with these processes and stopped using the templates after downloading it from the Hub (guided by instructions): “We should have something very basic, like for example the framework of Wordpress, where you find some boxes to fill in, some drag and drop elements. This is clearly what I expected to see, not some coding lines” (participant, G7). More specifically, after downloading the toolkit, more than half of the participants experienced some difficulties to get the template up and running. And, which was mostly related to the configuration file that had to be adapted to get the template running. The more experienced participants (professional developers) were familiar with such a procedure and found it simple, while pointing out that this may not be something easily executed by an average or inexperienced citizen - despite the accompanying documentation. Also, what concerns the reusability of the toolkit template only the more experienced participants found it feasible to extend these templates, or to use them as a reference implementation. Some also suggested to connect and combine multiple (thematic) toolkit templates so as to facilitate the creation of more complex, albeit more useful applications. In practice this meant that less experienced citizen developers did not succeed in installing the templates, even with the help of others or when consulting the documentation. Instead, they evaluated the templates through the online demo website and stopped using the templates. In contrast, more experienced citizen developers were capable of installing and customizing the templates, even without reading the documentation. However, this latter group often lacked the intrinsic motivation to customize the templates. The offered basic toolkit solution seemed to lack in ways to stimulate motivational drivers as problem solving and creativity, mostly due to the mature nature of the templates. Therefore, the city administration decided to implement a different approach based on varying skill sets so as to encourage the likelihood of multiple citizen participations.


Tailoring tools To increase usage and improve the abilities to participate (regardless of the level of skills), other tools were developed. The application templates would still remain available to the more skilled citizen developers and professional developers, while a new tool, called the ‘App Generator Tool’ (AGT) was made available to ordinary users. With this tool, citizens with limited to no technical knowledge can participate more easily in the application development processes. This way, the city aims to guarantee that every citizen, also those who lack specific capacities, is able to become involved and be heard. The next Figure gives a first impression of the AGT:

The role of the App Generator tool is to allow users to combine various datasets for a city and build an application online without having to use a single line of code. In order to generate a new application, users need to fill in a form. Several fields should be filled in, i.e. selecting a city and (one or more) dataset(s), defining the theme colour and filling in a title for the application. When the application is created, a unique identification number is assigned and the application can also be shared with others.

In addition, even though the city has opened up a lot of data, it has remained for ordinary citizens also quite troublesome to easily use a dataset in conjunction with the template applications. (In facts, given the technical and unpolished nature of this tool, only technically skilled people were able to use it, often excluding the civil servants that own and manage the datasets). Therefore, a Web-based ‘converter tool’ has been created, and which will be available as a part of the Hub. This has created an additional opportunity for ordinary citizens to get involved and enables them to include datasets that are crowd-sourced or privately managed into the open data converter, and visualize them using the template applications. Currently, a separate evaluation track based on different skill levels among different citizen groups has been set up. Future work will then involve ‘application development workshops’ involving a broader stakeholder group with different profiles, in order to co-create simple to more advanced applications that can later be tested ‘in the field’ guided by participant observation. It allows evaluating how users interact with the applications in a real-life setting while moving through the city. Participants will be asked to realize a number of pre-defined tasks using the applications; their results and reactions will be captured and evaluated using task analysis techniques. Lastly, the complete end-to-end process of collecting data, opening it up, converting it to a usable format, including it in a template and customizing this template to develop a real, working app (i.e. use the same app but containing local data) for multiple European cities will be tested. In doing so, also seeking to extend and validate the potential applicability of this case study beyond Belgium.


Discussion The findings presented here have demonstrated how to actively enable and facilitate and optimize citizen participation in a co-production setting with the local administration in order to better address citizens needs in understanding and navigating the city. Attention was drawn to collaboration across institutional boundaries guided by toolkit approach yielding insight into citizens’ and the administration’s ability to ‘know and learn’ in shaping the local urban’s dynamic knowledge base. And, while this tends to be seen as a practice of ‘good governance’, it is just one possible driver of sound governance and the, initial, limited scope of the kinds of available data and (rather mundane) applications may also call into the question the extent of citizen participation and empowerment vis-à-vis a sense of belonging to the city. However, for the city of Ghent, citizen engagement is an important step to learn and harvest the full potential of citizen-based resources by putting mechanisms in place that informs and organizes (knowledge) contributions associated with the ‘work’ involved in toolkit/application development facilitated by the city-hosted hub.

In this view, the co-development of mobile applications underpinning the interaction with the urban space, and, in the next stages, with other citizens, served as a site at which the local administration can be seen to learn guided by interdependent dynamics of the organization of people, knowledge, and resources across boundaries. The toolkit template offers the promise of (modular) collaboration between various stakeholders in the adoption of a common system and locale, easing the task of participation, coordination and collaboration of open data and locative media. Within-administration this means that employees can work on all the various (development and maintenance) tasks, upgrade per module, outside-the-administration, it can mean that different stakeholder groups such as citizen developers can develop or contribute updates, variants/extensions, or completely new datasets and toolkit templates, and, in the future, mobile applications; adding to the ‘value alternation/amplification’ premise of urban living, as well as offering a more nuanced potential of ‘smart city’ applications within and across institutional boundaries.

The preliminary results in this context, have pointed to the knowledge-intensive and information-rich co-development of the template applications and which are associated with certain, more nuanced, participatory and empowering modalities of civic engagement guided by design capabilities and design space.

The findings highlighted the set-up of a collaborative environment from the early stages of development, involving different stakeholders that together create new services. Yet, the findings showed that facilitating co-ideation and creation processes between citizens and administration entities seemed to include some while excluding others (cf. Turnhout et al. 2010). Thus, at first, the less skilled users were excluded from the development processes as they did not have the proper skills to do so. Therefore, the city decided to come with different tools and evaluation tracks to optimize the citizen involvement. By taking this input into account, the solution was made even more user-centric, increasing the chances to make the tools and city-perspective on co-development sustainable. And, perhaps more importantly, listening to the user feedback and taking the users’ abilities and motivations into account, overcame possible failures or low usage intention of the technical provided solutions. This approach seemed to be successful, as both target groups used the tools to create new applications. It also meant that technical skilled users could no longer dominate the development processes. Moreover, community interaction has also been vital in the support of less skilled citizens. On the hub the more skilled users, helped the less experienced ones possibly indicating a centrifugal learning effect (where different capability-levels may meet and support/help each other). Catering to this mutual support and connecting people with different perspectives – creating a ‘common language’ - seem thus to strengthen citizen engagement, and the possibilities to create and share mobile solutions for their city from which the city and everyday urban life can be seen to learn and benefit.

In sum, the findings indicate gradations of citizen participation in development activities, highlighting


differences in creative capacities and the contributions they can or are willing to make guided by the provided design hub. Rather than understanding this normatively, the findings seem to contribute a multimodal perspective on participation in this context, and more research is needed to bring forward a systematic understanding of the various elements, including possible downsided, that underpin participation qualities – e.g., datamining/literacy, privacy, discrimination (Fischer 2006; Sutko and de Souza e Silva 2011) - than previous user/citizen participation studies, and, to a lesser extent, in an inclusive policy approach, have accounted for.

Conclusion A combination of urban ICT infrastructure and citizen participation may point to what has been termed good governance, yet is not a guarantee of being a smart(er) city. It can be argued that cities have always been (somewhat) smart as a result of the collaboration of individual and collective intelligence of those people who live there (cf. Campkin and Ross 2013). Also, ICTs are not per se the most critical factor for constructing truly smart cities, yet they do present opportunities as enablers, thereby highlighting that the availability of ICTs does not automatically lead to take up by citizens (Sassen 2012). In this view, this study has sought to empirically support Ghent’s inclusive policy framework enabling various stakeholders’ “Right to the City” underpinning an attempt of collective co-design and co-production by people, place and technology. Being ‘smart/er’ thus fundamentally depends upon citizens vis-à-vis participatory qualities, design capacities and design space. As we have shown, a city can provide the enabling framework to foster and to promote the needs of citizens and from which both the city as citizens are likely to learn and benefit. Yet, local government need to establish appropriate conditions for people to get involved, constituting a shift from enablement of the market to enablement of local communities. This means in many, if not all, cases that local governments need to take a close look at their institutional design and move towards open, inclusive and transparent governance that is more relatable and accessible. That is, a people-centred approach based on participatory facilitation, and hopefully on empowerment. In enabling and elaborating such a citizen-led approach a sense of place in a community, a sense of belonging and identity are likely to become more apparent. This is important as citizens who do not feel they belong to their neighbourhood or city at large, are not likely to participate in creating or contributing to any kinds of place-based urban improvements. Yet, this approach is likely to reduce common distrust in the public sphere which is associated with neoliberal logics that are said to create inequalities and inequities by primarily striving for economic growth instead of citizen well-being. Thus, a “Right to the City” is essentially about the city as a process of collective co-production and co-design, and which is, arguably, a most powerful means to reflect local needs and may have the potential to readjust societal structures towards more sustainable ones. More empirical research, however, is needed that also takes into account, a more nuanced and reflective stance, for example, how data concerning the urban space is conceptualized within the framework of coding, implications for citizen (data) privacy and discrimination, how to develop human skills or capital, and so forth. Eventually, a more robust and inclusive approach of the development and organization of city-user relationships that underlie the structural integration of citizen participation into mainstream public service design, can deepen our understanding of the sociospatial-policy dynamic of life in the city. References Abers, R.N., Fung, A., Wright, E.O., 2003. Deepening democracy: Institutional innovations in empowered participatory governance. Verso.


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Designing for Participatory Governance: assessing capabilities and toolkits in public service delivery 4 See http://data.gov.uk/ and http://data.gov.uk/sites/default/files/Open_data_White_Paper.pdf Retrieved 23 April 2014.: 5 See http://data.gov.be/ and http://www.opendataforum.info/ Retrieved 22 April 2014. 6 See https://www.gov.uk/...data/.../building-big-society_0.pdf and http://www.thebigsociety.co.uk/ Retrieved 2 September 2013. 7 See http://www.wrr.nl/fileadmin/en/publicaties/PDF.../Confidence_in_Citizens.pdf Retrieved 15 October 2013. 8 This study is conducted for the Citadel… on the move project (funded by the European Commission, CIP-ICT-PSP.2011.5.1). There are four cities involved, Ghent (Belgium), Athens (Greece), Issy-les-Moulineaux (France) and Manchester (UK). However, due to availability of results only the preliminary results for Ghent and Athens could be presented here. See: http://www.citadelonthemove.eu/ See for rationale and operationalization of research for the four cities http://www.citadelonthemove.eu/Portals/0/Images/Deliverables/CITADEL%20D5.1%20Pilot%20Operations%20Plan.pdf 9 Data collection continues to the end of 2014. 10 For privacy reasons the participant names are anonymized.

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