Digital innovation and new technologies have become a potential game changer in the relationship between citizens and government. It is now the time where e-Government should be undergoing its first major transformation from viewing citizens as mere customers of public services towards ‘We-Government’, considering citizens as partners.

WeGowNow – the result of a European project (Horizon 2020)- supports this transformation through a digital platform engaging local civil society in the coproduction of citizen-centred services and in the co-development of strategic approaches to community development.

On 25th January 2019 WeGovNow in collaboration with the University of Padua will be presented in an exploitation international workshop to show how it enables a new type of interaction in which citizens become partners of their municipality and actors of local development and to stimulate further research around lessons learned and/or in terms of further uptake of the WeGovNow pilot platform.

PROGRAMME:

Venue: Palazzo della Salute, Sala Elettra

9.00 – 9.30: Registration and welcome coffee

9.30 – 9.45: Welcome and greetings

The opening session will introduce the objectives for the event and the agenda.

Chairperson: Lorenzo Liguoro, Sherpa Spin off University of Padua

FIRST SESSION (09.45 – 10.15)

09.45 – 10.15: Welcome and introduction to the WeGovNow initative

WeGovNow is a so called Research and Innovation Action funded under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 program. Over the last three years, twelve partners from six countries have joined forces to explore the potentials generally provided by online technologies for supporting participatory policy development and co-production of public services at municipal level. In particular a new type of civic engagement platform has been developed and piloted under day-to-day conditions in three European municipalities. This session will set the scene for the reminder of the workshop in terms of presenting a brief overview of the WeGovNow initiative’s aims and the approach adopted towards achieving these.

Welcome note: Lorenzo Liguoro, Sherpa Spin off University of Padua

Speaker: Lutz Kubitschke, empirica

SECOND SESSION (10.15 – 12.15)

Other than commonly available eGovernment services, the WeGovNow pilot platform represents a flexible “tool box” enabling the support of diverse utilisation patterns rather than a single “service work flow”. Generally, the pilot users are free to utilize the pilot service as they wish. Moreover, the three pilot municipalities have however developed a number of use case scenarios to explore how WeGovNow can help in addressing local policy challenges. Beyond mere technology innovation, all WeGovNow pilot municipalities have therefore explored innovative ways of collaboration internal and external to the public administration.

By example of selected use cases from the pilot municipalities it will be demonstrated how the pilot platforms works and in what way it is utilized to address local policy challenges in a participatory manner.

The purpose is stimulating further research around lessons learned and/or in terms of further uptake of the WeGovNow pilot platform

Chairperson: Lutz Kubitschke, empirica

10.15 -10.45: Introduction to the WeGoNow platform and scenarios presentation

The session starts with a short life demonstration of the WeGovNow platform, to show how it looks, what are the key components and how they work.

Speaker: Guido Boella, University of Turin

10.45 – 11.30 WeGovNow uses cases presentation

The session continues with a presentation of two selected use cases scenarios by the municipalities. The municipality will describe the policies challenge addressed and what was required internal to the public administration to make it happen, the stakeholders they collaborated with and so on. The presentation would then demonstrate how the particular component was utilized in the context of the use case scenario, and thereby also explaining the potentials it generally offers even beyond the particular use case in question.

The Energy Efficiency use case – Engaging local communities in developing sustainable mobility solutions in San Donà

Speakers: Giulio Antonini, Municipality of San Donà