File:Engage.docx

Title

Raising awareness and engaging citizens in re-using PSI

Short Description

This best practice aims at presenting ways to enhance citizen participation and open data utilisation by the society and interested entreprises

Why?

Although PSI is a large market in Europe it is estimated that less than 50% of citizens at average are impacted by it. Loads of pre-existing investments in e-Government back-offices, in platforms and services are available across Europe and they are deploying a wide set of services, but in most cases efforts are duplicated, there’s little to no reuse of e-Government data, and obsolete technologies are still put in place.

Governments have been investing in publishing considerable amounts of data and in modernisation of administration through e-Government services for, in some cases, more than 5 years.

A legitimate question is “What is the impact on citizens, in reusing available electronic data and services and how we can engage them in the process and the respective systems ?”

Intended Outcome

This best practice aims at increasing citizen / entreprises awareness on existing PSI and engage them in its usage.

Relationship to PSI-Directive

Possible Approach

The approach consists of 10 ways to increase citizens / entreprises participation around PSI and open data:

Way #1: Give them a home

An open data portal has to offer the ability to citizens / users to create and maintain a profile

Way #2: Make them customers / Create an Open Data marketplace

When a citizen cannot find the dataset he is looking for, he can put a request that is channeled to the appropriate administration

Way #3: Make them opendata publishers

Allow for upload of datasets by users

Way #4: Allow working on datasets / make them curators

A dataset can be processed by a user and then republished as a new version. Datasets can be visualised, extended, linked by users

Way #5: Give them incentives

- Measure and publish popularity of the users, based on their activity.

- Give incentives for data usage / utilisation (e.g. free tickets to community events, free parking, to most prominent users)

- Organisation of competitions / datathons with prizes for the best applications

- Organisation of data journalism competitions for users

Way #6: Involve them upfront

Organise meetings of interest groups (e.g. finance, environment, etc) among interested citizens and entreprises. Use questionnaires, for initial screening of ideas and people.

Way #7: Provide specific support for entreprises

Companies have different viewpoint than citizens: they need data quality, availabiliity, support, etc. So, provide something like that for companies and utilisation will be higher.

Way #8: Promote the creation of journalism teams

People might want to “tell a story” acting like data journalists within the local communities, but they might not have the skills needed

So, make small groups among citizens to work around open data, generating small or larger stories.

Way #9: Provide training

Citizens without the proper knowledge cannot take advantage of incentives targeting more advanced people.

So, invest in training citizens on basic digital skills (make a web site, work with a dataset, write a story, etc)

How to Test

The positive results will be shown as:

- Increase of visitors in open data web sites / portals

- Increase of downloads of open datasets

- Increase in development and usage of opendata-based applications

- Increased overall satisfaction by the governmental services

Evidence

The majority of the proposed ways has been implemented and can be viewed at the ENGAGE project open data portal: www.engagedata.eu

Tags

citizen engagement, PSI reuse by citizens, PSI reuse by entreprises

Status

Stable

Intended Audience

Senior officials, strategy makers, marketing officials, application developers

Related Best Practice

Contact

Yannis Charalabidis