Towards a Crowdsourcing Pilot for EU Citizens: Recommendations

Based on seven conference type workshops organized for citizens, experts and government officials interesting in crowdsourcing in Ljubljana, London, Amsterdam, Athens, Paris, Helsinki and Riga, the following recommendations for the crowdsourcing pilot for EU citizens were created to support debate on the Future of Europe:

1. Recommended EU policy fields / topics that could be crowdsourced: Environment and Healthcare (e.g. air quality). Both are affecting daily life of EU citizens and are representing shared competences of the EU.

2. Recommended tools / platforms to be used: a single platform at the EU level which should be transparent and open-source, multilingual, include multiple ways of participation and contributions, scalable and user-friendly.

3. Recommended time frame / democratic policy cycle phases: “issue identification” by collecting ideas and “policy formulation” through solutions identified by citizens.

The document Towards a Crowdsourcing Pilot for EU Citizens: Recommendations from the EUCROWD Project (pdf) was presented and discussed with relevant EU decision-makers and interested stakeholders at the concluding EUCROWD conference in Brussels.

A list of citizens crowdsourcing cases and platforms relevant for the EU pilot

Picture: https://e-dem.nl

Several citizens crowdsourcing cases and platforms at the national level relevant for a crowdsourcing pilot at the EU level were identified, presented and discussed during EUCROWD events.

The list of 12 cases from 7 EU countries is available at http://www.inepa.si/eucrowd/results/#Cases.

The following shared expectations relating to the EU level pilot crowdsourcing platform were identified by citizens, experts and government officials during EUCROWD workshops:

  • engage citizens in crowdsorcing of policy areas affecting daily life;
  • be transparent about the process and use open standards;
  • policymakers must take into consideration citizens’ contributions;
  • enable deliberation and co-creation;
  • follow user-friendly design and web accessibility standards;
  • protect the privacy of its users and deal with security issues;
  • disseminate widely and provide multilingual communication.

Report from EUCROWD event in Brussels

EUCROWD Brussels concluding conference

The eight EUCROWD public event took place in Brussels on 27th February 2018. The concluding conference of the EUCROWD project “Crowdsourcing EU legislation: Taking decisions with citizens and not for them!” organized by European Citizen Action Service brought together 71 citizens from 20 different countries. The first part of the conference gave an overview of insightful national crowdsourcing practices from the project partners and conclusions from EUCROWD conferences in member states relevant for the EU decision-making process. The second part provided recommendations on the most suitable policies to be crowdsourced at EU level and relevant policy-cycle phases and democratic debate steps for piloting the EU level crowdsourcing on the future of Europe.

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Report from EUCROWD event in Helsinki

EUCROWD Helsinki conference-type workshop

The seventh EUCROWD public event took place in Helsinki on 11th October 2017. The international conference-type workshop “Open Democracy in Practice: Crowdsourcing” organized by Avoin Ministeriö brought together 47 citizens from 7 different countries. The workshop presented cases and experiences of crowdsourcing in Finland and discussed possibilities and challenges for crowdsourcing in European, national and local levels. Learning from these cases contributed to drafting a crowdsourcing pilot at the EU level.

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