Citizen-Driven Innovation

Read this guidebook, which explores smart cities through a lens that promotes citizens as the driving force of urban innovation. It presents different models of smart cities that show how citizen-centric methods can mobilize resources to respond innovatively to challenges in governance. The living lab approach encourages agile development and the rapid prototyping of ideas in a decentralized and user-centric manner. How can mayors and public administrators create partnerships that drive value in their communities through citizen-driven innovation? How can sustainability be integrated into municipal strategies and solutions? How can city leaders join forces to learn and network globally?

Co-designing Solutions - Chapter 3

5. Go Official

As your project evolves, you will be able to look into the future and plan future steps with greater clarity. It is important to set agreed objectives and milestones so that you can have checkpoints where together you can assess progress with respect to the original objective and carry out any necessary changes of direction or partnership. It is important to have a view of when to expect different levels of maturity, so that people can focus their expectations and have a better understanding of the role and value of intermediate results.

At some point, especially as regards the internal administration procedures, you need to 'go official' and make the adoption of the new city service a formal part of the city protocol. This will probably require specific acts of the Mayor's office or the City Council, but it is also a good opportunity to give full public visibility not only to the new service but also to the citizen-driven process that has designed and developed it. It is also an appropriate moment to relate this achievement with the broader vision and strategy for citizen-driven innovation.

Of course going official doesn't at all mean that you've finished; it is only an important milestone in service development. Adequate planning, if it is sufficiently open and flexible, allows you to pace the next steps of the co-design process over the longer term, maintaining the multi-stakeholder partnership and consolidating the capital of trust and engagement. These aspects will be fundamental to guarantee the long-term sustainability of the new city service, since citizen-driven innovation needs to become not just an episode of co-design but an integral part of a new way of running your city. 

Checklist for Co-designing Solutions

Have you...

  • Discovered at least one already funded initiative that can gain a new direction through co-design?
  • Opened up at least five datasets from different departments to support the co-design process?
  • Held a press conference with your innovation partnership to show results and commit to follow up?
  • Identified the appropriate administrative departments to involve in service implementation?
  • Issued the necessary directives to incorporate the new service in the city's standard procedures?