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 Riga

EUCROWD Riga conference

The seventh EUCROWD public event took place in Riga on 23th November 2017. The international conference and discussion “From Crowd to Action – the future of digitalised democracy in Europe?” organized by Sabiedrības Līdzdalības Fonds (Manabalss.lv) brought together 51 citizens from 12 different countries. International and local experts in the field of digital democracy, as well as activists, political scientists and students learned from the best digital participation examples in the Baltic region. The event encouraged discussions on the power of crowdsourcing tools that can influence decisions and policies which are essential for citizens.

Continue reading “Report from EUCROWD event in Riga”