Developing sustainable digital public services: establishing and maintaining cultures of co-creation

The H2020 project "Inclusive Governance Models and ICT Tools for Integrated Public Service Co-Creation and Provision" (inGov) aims to provide innovative ICT-supported governance models as well as mobile apps including chatbots, which will enable stakeholders' collaboration in co-producing inclusive and accessible Integrated Public Services (IPS) thus increasing trust and satisfaction.

In this workshop, we aim to present the key elements of the project (IPS, co-creation, pilot trials) but focus in particular on the issue of sustainability. With the experts invited and the workshop participants, we would like to discuss the concept of sustainability in the public sector, the sustainability of digital services, the sustainable impact of co-creation, and co-created services on policy.

OBJECTIVES

The workshop aims to briefly present the 3 topics below and discuss these in depth with the participants.

1. Understanding sustainability within the context of digital public services.

• How to define the concept of sustainability in the public sector context?
• What is the impact of sustainability on the development/delivery of digital public services?
• What factors contribute to long & short-term sustainability in the public sector?

2. Investigating the impact of co-creation on sustainable public services: participants’ experiences.

• What are good and bad examples of (digital) co-creation in the public sector?
• Lessons learned from digital co-creation: what are the best practices and barriers?
• What are the incentives to co-create?

3. Sustainable implementation of co-created results.

• How sustainable are the results achieved?
• How can results be best implemented?
• How should recommendations for policy be formulated?

The discussions will be summarised by the workshop organizers and participants will be given the opportunity to contribute/edit the summary in an open document. Participants will also be invited to further develop any of the discussion points in a further format (e.g. blog post, book chapter, etc.) with the workshop organisers shortly after the workshop.

FORMAT

The presentation will be split into 3 parts, each addressing one of the 3 workshop objectives.

Each part of the workshop will begin with a short presentation (10 minutes) by a different speaker on one of the objectives. After the short input 2-3 relevant questions are to be discussed with the participants, any additional questions raised by the participants will also be discussed. All the input collected will be summarised in the form of a report by the workshop organisers and any participants who wish to contribute further.

Part I: presentation of the H2020 inGov project and the pilots (Themis Tambouris, University of Macedonia & Evangelos Kalampokis, CERTH)

• What are the central elements of Integrated Public Services (IPS)?
• How can inclusive and accessible Integrated Public Services (IPS) increase trust and satisfaction?
• What are the experiences made with Integrated Public Services (IPS)?

Part II: Sustainability in the context of the public sector and digital public services (Noella Edelmann, DUK & Shefali Virkar, DUK)

• How to define the concept of sustainability in the public sector context?
• What is the impact of sustainability on the development/delivery of digital public services?
• What factors to contribute long & short-term sustainability in the public sector?

Part III: sustainability of co-creation (Trui Steen, KU Leuven)

• How can we ensure that the co-created outcomes and capacity building are sustained beyond a specific project and can even have multiplier effects?
• What factors facilitate (or inhibit) sustained OUTCOMES of co-creation initiatives?
• What processes can support sustainability or the prolonged USE of co-creation as a means to co-design, co-deliver and co-monitor public services?