On 12 April 2018 the Commission organised a workshop on Co-creation of a Quality Label for Citizen Centric cities and regions, which aims to set up a label for local and regional administrations committing to implement the 8 user-centricity principles agreed by all EU and EFTA countries in the Ministerial Declaration on eGovernment signed in Tallinn in October 2017.

The aim of the label is to ensure the implementation of the Tallinn “User centricity principles” and to give visibility to cities and regions that are compliant with these principles. The principles should be implemented through a political commitment to apply within a reasonable timeframe all the principles and concrete actions, bringing real benefits to citizens in their daily life when interacting with their local administrations.

The Commission welcomed more than 30 participants with different backgrounds, whose exchanges throughout the day provided great ideas that will inspire the creation of the label. I would like to warmly thank all participants for their real interest to launch this label and for their very active contribution!

The workshop was organized in three collaborative sessions: In the first session the participants discussed which concrete actions should be implemented by local and regional administrations in order to comply with the Tallinn user centricity principles. In the afternoon, the governance of the label was discussed in the second participatory session while the visual identity and the name of the label were discussed in the third session.  

Let me share with you our main takeaways from this participatory day:

Takeaways from the workshop

Session 1: Actions

During the first session the participants discussed how the user-centricity principles could be translated into specific actions that local and regional administrations can implement in order to comply with the  principles.

For example, the participants found that an action to implement the principle of citizen engagement could be to include a feedback mechanism when providing digital public services. Another possible action for this principle could be to crowdsource ideas on how to improve public services. For the principle of redress and complaint mechanism a possible action would be to create mechanisms for citizens to follow their complaint in a way that is transparent, allows for interaction with the responsible person and allows for the exchange of documents. Another action for this principle could be the participation of citizens in redress committees. For the principle of accessibility, security, availability and usability the participants found that concrete actions could be that websites are easily searchable, indexed and provides information in multiple languages. 

Session 2: levels and governance

In the second session, the participants focused on the eligibility criteria and governance of the label.

·         On the eligibility criteria:

The Commission foresees the label to have 4 levels, each level corresponding to the number of user-centricity principles implemented.

Most of the participant stated that the political commitment to comply with the user-centricity principles is enough to reach the first level of this Label. Some participants shared the idea that the first level of the label (only political commitment) should be represented with a label without stars. It was also mentioned that it would be useful to have a template for an action plan for the implementation of the user-centricity principles. Most groups distributed the number of principles evenly over the levels. However, some groups proposed a maturity model for each principle, which would distinguish between commitment to a principle and implementing the principle. A suggestion was made to create a fifth level where the cities/regions will coach the other cities/regions to further implement the principles.

·         On the governance of the label:

During this part of the session, the participants were asked to come up with a governance model for the label. A majority of groups suggested that the Label should be published after an external evaluation (expert group or open data). In order to ensure the long term sustainability participants suggested involving citizens and allowing the evolution of the criteria over time so the cities will be driven by the will to maintain their user-centricity quality.

Session 3: Branding and name

Participants were asked to write down 4 key words that best expressed the idea behind the Label and to propose a name for the Label. Key words include participation, easy, inclusive, citizen-centric, modern, credible, open, inspiring, services and digital. The participants also provided inspiring and creative names for the label, including Infor(m)all, YES : Your Easy Services, We-Gov Label , (T)ALL-IN, IC Label , Easy Digi, Beneficium Digi-Tallinn!, City-Zen , Cities for Citizens Label, Digital Nudging and @+name of the city.

I want to thank for the inspiring ideas that will help us move forward with the creation of the label.

What's next?

We will organize another co-creation workshop on 23 May 2018.  In the meantime we will work with the ideas we received during the workshop.

See the presentations of the day here.

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