Innovation Tag: Citizen Engagement

In Hungary, navigating government services meant deciphering bureaucratic language across dozens of unconnected portals; most people queued at a government window instead. The Digital Citizenship Programme (DÁP) reorganised this from the citizen's perspective: one mobile-first ecosystem with digital identity, binding e-signatures, and services organised around life events. Within 18 months, 1.66M citizens registered voluntarily, completing now in minutes what previously demanded a visit in…

Many deaf citizens still struggle to complete essential government services because they cannot easily communicate with staff. Our innovation is an AI system that instantly translates between spoken Arabic and Arabic Sign Language, using a signing avatar and camera. It lets deaf citizens deal with Civil Affairs independently, privately, and with dignity.

The Saudi Commission for Health Specialties introduced Basma as a new model to help healthcare professionals navigate complex regulatory services more easily. The platform uses artificial intelligence and a localized avatar to translate regulations into clear, step-by-step guidance, enabling practitioners to understand requirements and complete processes independently. This improves access to services, reduces confusion, and enhances the efficiency of regulatory service delivery.

Gaeilge365 was created to respond to growing demand for bilingual public services while opportunities to use Irish in everyday local authority services remained limited. It redesigns existing services to create real speaking opportunities, increasing annual use from 10,000 to over 26,000 in one year, with a target of 150,000 by 2028. It is innovative because it replaces translation‑based compliance with a scalable, measured service model that delivers clear social impact.

“Madrid, Digital Capital” is a city-wide transformation model that redesigns how Madrid delivers services and makes decisions using real-time data and digital tools. It simplifies procedures, improves daily services and helps the city respond faster to citizens and businesses. It is innovative because it turns digital transformation into a single, measurable system for running government, not just isolated projects, and that is fully user and citizen centred and also environmental centred.

Many rural communities face difficulties accessing government services due to distance, ageing populations and digital barriers. Navarra created Mobile Citizen Offices: travelling public service units that bring administrative procedures and digital support directly to small municipalities. By reversing the traditional model—government travelling to citizens—the initiative reduces territorial inequalities, simplifies access to administration and strengthens trust in public institutions.

Digital public services often fail not only due to lack of provision, but because of invisible barriers that hinder or even prevent citizens from accessing and interacting with government in digital environments. The FCINCO Anti-Sludge method systematically identifies and removes these barriers. Applied in real services, it can improve access, reduce friction, and increase the efficiency of public service delivery.

Tax laws are very complex, requiring much time from public servants to apply them consistently, check for errors, or predict the effects of changes. To address that challenge, Germany's Federal Ministry of Finance is piloting Rulemapping – a methodology that converts legal rule sets into structured visual diagrams, making the logic of the law easy to read, test, and analyse. Unique worldwide, it enables finding errors in laws and testing the effects of proposed changes before implementation.

Ibagué faced two challenges: symbolic participation, with proposals often disappearing in paper-based processes, and fragmented manual reporting. “MiGestión” addresses these challenges through Lego® Serious Play® workshops, where citizens build their dream city while proposals are captured on tablets, validated on site, and georeferenced. An in-house platform links these inputs to the Development Plan, Action Plan, budget (POAI), and investment projects (PIIP). Today, over 2,700 citizens…

Despite ambitious climate pledges, a persistent “last-mile” gap remains: individual climate actions are often undervalued within existing frameworks. Gyeonggi Province addresses this gap by converting verified citizen actions into measurable public value and rewarding participants with local currency to support local economies. By reinvesting these rewards in climate technologies, the initiative transforms citizens from policy beneficiaries into active co-creators of a sustainable future.