Emerging tech for civic participation
About emerging tech for civic participation
Emerging technologies are creating new opportunities and challenges for civic participation, calling for the exploration and experimentation of innovative ways for governments to address people’s needs and expectations.
About the project
Portugal, Spain and the Netherlands are promoting “Improving civic participation through emerging technologies”, a project funded by the European Commission under the Technical Support Instrument (23PT04). Since 2023, the OECD Observatory of Public Sector Innovation, together with the OECD Open Government Unit, have been working on the project as implementation partners. This project aims to support Portugal, the Netherlands, and Spain in enhancing civic participation using emerging technologies with the objective of:
- Exploring the potential benefits and challenges of these technologies for innovative civic participation
- Adopting civic participation methods to design, monitor, and assess innovative solutions to priority policy challenges identified during the project.
Project activities and outputs
The project will draft a report on the state-of-the-art of the use of emerging technologies for civic participation. This report will identify and analyse existing trends and approaches, as well as relevant case studies with lessons learned. The goal is to generate knowledge and insights on the use of technologies such as AI, IoT, and AR/VR in civic participation.
In parallel, the project is conducting an ecosystem mapping of relevant stakeholders across the quadruple helix (public, private, research, civil society) in the three countries of the project and on the international stage. This is being done by combining insights from online surveys, interactive workshops, and in-depth interviews with the objective of understanding who are the relevant actors, what are their connections, and exploring the barriers and enablers for value creation in the ecosystem.
From this robust knowledge-base, the project will organise a 2-day co-creation event in Portugal to engage with ecosystem stakeholders, including citizens. This bootcamp will bring together actors from the three countries and beyond to address the challenges identified as priorities through the project by work collaboratively to design and develop initial prototypes of solutions.
As the project unfolds, many more exciting developments and deliverables can be expected, alongside opportunities to contribute to the project and engage with the global community working in field of emerging technologies for civic participation.
Expert panel
The OECD Innovative, Digital and Open Government (INDIGO) division has gathered an expert panel with specialists from around the globe to support the work and ensure the highest level of insight and expertise. The experts are contributing their knowledge and expertise pro bono to ensure that the Project creates value.
Get in touch
Excited to contribute or learn more? Reach out and join us in shaping the future of civic participation with emerging technologies: bruno.monteiro@oecd.org
This project is run in collaboration with the national authorities and beneficiaries of the project, Instituto Nacional de Administración Pública (INAP) in Spain, Digicampus in the Netherlands, and AMA – Agência para a Modernização Administrativa (Lab X) in Portugal.
