1. When people meet data:
Collaborative approaches to
public sector innovation
katarzyna.szkuta@tech4i2.com
david.osimo@tech4i2.com
Roberto Pizzicannella (Tech4i2, Autonomous Province of Trento)
EISBUR TAIPS conference, Urbino, 19 April 2012 1

2. Sluggish growth
of eGovernment take-up

4. Is collaborative production of eGovernment services
the answer to the problem of low usage?

5. Our research questions
• What does it mean to collaboratively deliver
public services?
• What are the success factors?
• What are the incentives for:
– innovators and third-party players? for citizens?
public administration?

6. Conceptual model of Collaborative
eGovernment
SERVICE PROVISION
DATA
PRODUCTION

7. ISTAT widget
Our case studies
OpenlyLocal
Digitalkoot
SeeClickFix
Google
Transit
ActivMobs

8. Well-defined needs hence greater
uptake
• Digitalkoot managed to
engage 8 000 citizens during
first four months of the
service - equivalent of three
person year work!
• SeeClickFix - over 100,000
issues reports (2011), results
doubled every year

9. What’s in for me?
Implications of collaborative
eGovernment
• For innovators and third-party players
• For citizens
• For public administration

10. What brings in the innovators?
• Desire to make a difference
• Opportunities for visibility
• Possible financial gain
• Low cost of setup
– SeeClickFix - first version was created over a weekend
by friends
– Chris Taggart set up the OpenlyLocal website a proof
of concept
– G-Transit invented as one of the Google Labs
initiatives
• Fail small, fast and forward

11. What drives the citizens to
participate?
• New incentives to participate – benefits are tangible
– ActivMobs builds a self-help network
• Attracting citizens who are not policy-savvy
– No service demands prerequisite knowledge or interest in
policy-making (with exception of OpenlyLocal)
• Gamification
– Digitalkoot makes it fun to correct scans of 19th century
journals
• more social & more local
– SeeClickFix shows the most active contributors
• “allowing citizens to demonstrate citizenship in diverse
ways” (Chadwick, 2009)

12. What is unique contribution that citizens
can make to public service delivery?
• IT skills: Openly Local is a far more usable and sophisticated service that
government have implemented, ISTAT widget was developed by a civil
servant in his free time
• specific thematic knowledge: Openly Local links to hyperlocal bloggers
which use the local data to explain the local issues
• experience as users of public services: it is costly and difficult for
government to understand the perspective of users. SeeClickFix shows
what’s important for citizens in their neighbourhood.
• pervasive geographic coverage: SeeClickFix is more efficient than
intermittent controls of civil servants
• trust: ActiveMobs based its success on the power of imitation and influence
of networks
• many eyes and many hands: large collaborative endeavors such as in the
case of DigitalKoot are less expensive and easier to coordinate

13. Increase in uptake results in better
quality of the service
“Hands-on care by
health professionals
can't scale.One-on-one
advice from
professional
intermediaries, like
librarians, can't scale.
Networked peer
support, research, and
advice can scale. In
other words: Altruism
scales.”
Susannah Fox

14. Additive not substitutive services
• A niche that exists – all of the services (with
the exception of G-transit) tend to replace a
government service
• Therefore there is no need for permission
(OpenlyLocal founder expected the service to be
out in couple of days)

15. Conclusions
Not a magic solution but an opportunity for:
• Job creation
• Democracy enhancement
• More efficient public service delivery: not a direct
saving but a new way to innovate public services
• Still requires change in governance and institutional
culture
• Conditions for success: relevant topic, appealing
design, transparent impact