We all long to live in places where our local or reginal authority works for its citizens; where we have hassle-free interactions with the administration, can deal with them electronically from our home if we want to, where we know our data is handled appropriately, but where we can also engage and make our voices heard about decisions that will impact our lives.

Member States have committed to make their public administrations just like that; user-centric in the design and delivery of digital public services (see: Tallinn Ministerial Declaration on eGovernment).

But how are local and regional administrations progressing in this endeavour? Many are experimenting with participatory budgeting (see Participatory Budgeting for Inclusive Smart Cities and Communities), participatory urban planning (see the Digital Transition Partnership's Action on Participatory urban planning'), co-creation and eParticipation (see H2020 ICT-enabled open government pilots) as well as other societal engagement tools (see CitizenCity), while others are focusing on personal data management (see the Digital Transition Partnership's Action on MyData) and preparing to be compliant with the General Data Protection Regulation, coming into force later this year (see Citizen Centric Approach to Data). Others again are focusing on reducing the administrative burden and implementing citizen-centric eGovernment services (see the Digital Transition Partnership's Action on 'Helping cities develop a user-centric eGovernment model'), while ensuring that nobody is left behind in the digital transformation of government (see the Digital Transition Partnership's Action on 'Digital Neighbourhood Instrument').

In order to recognise cities and regions already committing to making their administrations consider citizens first in their endeavours, we are calling on interested stakeholders (public administrations at all levels, citizens businesses, civil society and others) to jointly develop a quality label for those administrations that have achieved compliance with the user-centricity principles (see Annex of Tallinn Declaration). Such self-declared compliance could be demonstrated by the commitment to implementing a set of concrete actions, such as for example those mentioned above. In order to champion the most inspiring cases and to recognise their potential for replication, the Commission will hand out an EU award on an annual basis to a limited number of local and regional public administrations – in possession of the quality label - that create a high quality and efficient citizen friendly environment while modernising their own organisation. The first of such an award ceremony will be held in 2018.

Be part of this exciting first step to co-create the quality label – what criteria to adhere to, what concrete measures to commit to, and what should it be called? Join us for a co-creation workshop on 12 April 2018 in Brussels ( between 9:30-16:00 at Centre Albert Borschette, Rue Froissart 36 1040 Brussels, room AB / 4.B). Please see the draft agenda here: As places are limited, please ensure to quickly register here:

Looking forward to seeing you on 12 April!

The presentation used during this workshop is now available here.