Level: Local Government

Esélykör – Circle of Opportunity

Esélykör (Circle of Opportunity) is a voluntary cooperation founded in 2016 by eight NGOs operating on the field of disability-care in the county city, Székesfehérvár. The goal of Esélykör is to coordinate and synchronise the operation of the different NGOs to enable effective collaboration with the local government and enterprises.

In addition to NGOs specialising in disability issues, there are two further organizations involved in developing and mentoring the NGOs of the circle. Of these, the activity of the Civil Centre Public Benefit Foundation (CiCe) is particularly emphasized as a think tank and coordinator. Thus, a total of ten organizations form Esélykör.

Esélykör is open and further NGOs can decide to affiliate. Until 2019, no new members joined the network, but this year the number of network members increased significantly: 15 new members joined the circle. The network thus includes not only member organizations but also the local government. Members of the network reach out to thousands of citizens with disabilities through their membership.

The foundation of Esélykör was necessary in order to remove impediments from the way of effective and efficient implementation of disability issues; the local government had difficulty negotiating with the several non-governmental organizations who run overlapping activities and did not want to address their common interests. It creates a single interconnected communication channel, involving civic organizations and local governments, which is reduces transaction costs of cooperation.

Stakeholders & Beneficiaries

The main beneficiaries of Esélykör are: people with disabilities living in Székesfehérvár, non-governmental organizations dealing with disability issues, non-governmental development organizations, Székesfehérvár City (local government). The member organizations of Esélykör have significant expertise among deaf and hard of hearing people, people with reduced mobility, people with visual impairments and citizens with mental disabilities.

Co-creation process

Esélykör’s main activities are:
  • Sensitizing society to the problems of their disabled peers.
  • Providing services to citizens with disabilities in Székesfehérvár.
  • Contributing to the employment opportunities of the disabled people in Székesfehérvár through organizing joint programs and operating information channels.
  • The members of the network work together to promote their interests through Esélykör.
The main innovation of Esélykör is that it has orchestrated strong cooperation among NGOs supporting people with disabilities in Székesfehérvár, and because of this bond it is able to facilitate a prosperous collaboration with the local government, to represent and act for the interests of the citizens it represents. Esélykör has an effect on the involved non-governmental organizations as well through the Civil Centre Foundation’s (CiCE’s) development activities. The municipality, although being an informal network, mentions Esélykör in its strategic documents and its funding has a separate line in the city budget. Esélykör is a bottom-up, voluntary and spontaneous innovation network, operating as an informal network at the moment. Esélykör can be interpreted as a centralized network with CiCE at its core as a NAO (Νetwork Αdministration Οrganization).

Digital Transformation Process

This case study is not about a digital transformation process, but about social innovation.

Results, Outcomes & Impacts

As a result of the activities of Esélykör, disabled citizens of Szekesfehervar are able to defend their interests more effectively, and organizations working for people with different disabilities have a cooperative attitude instead of their previous competitive approach. Not only can their services deliver greater coverage, but also the organizations’ tasks and operations become more efficient and transparent. Communication with non-professional organizations (municipalities, companies, the general public) has improved as well. The network is able to use municipal resources more efficiently along the designated goals (e.g. social sensitization). NGOs are able to respond more flexibly to social needs by working in a network. The network can utilize the capacities of all organizations in a synergic way, so it can respond better to unexpected situations. The network has greater social embeddedness than the individual organizations themselves, so they can act more effectively to assert their interests.

Challenges & Bottlenecks

The general management knowledge and the legal knowledge of small NGOs are insufficient, their objectives are not coherent and consistent. Their internal communication is ineffective, it is often full of conflict. Due to lack of management knowledge and internal conflicts, the civil sector is not credible to other actors of the economy. If they are not able to articulate their goals (social impact), then it is not worth working with them. There is no consensus-based social vision, this way there is no strategy. While NGOs compete for scarce resources, which may be good in certain cases, they do not develop a culture of cooperation. The barrier to municipal and civil cooperation is that the municipality can only cooperate with a non-governmental organization that is legally registered. However, this entails significant costs and time, meaning that the transaction costs of cooperation for many civilians outweigh the benefits. These self-organized civil groups are not enter collaboration with the municipality in a network system.

Transferability & Replicability

Based on the effective operation of Esélykör, the municipality would like to initiate similar processes among NGOs of other professional areas to establish networks and to take over complex social services from the municipality. It also shows that the Municipality wants to launch a planned, top-down innovation process, based on the experiences with the bottom-up innovation process of Esélykör.

Success Factors

The city (local government) saw the value of working with NGOs in the delivery of public services, but also realized that communicating with them separately would create an inefficient system and therefore supported the establishment of the network. The city administration visits Esélykör’s event regularly. They also support the communication of the network, which is beneficial to both actors, as of course this also serves political purposes. The administration listens to Esélykör’s suggestions, integrates them into its strategies in so far it is possible, and contributes to their implementation as well. European Union grants and funds also support network based operation models, as these organizations alone do not have the capacity to prepare, submit and implement large and complex projects. Non-governmental organizations cannot take over complex public services from the local government, while a network of NGOs is able to do so. Everyone can put their best knowledge, experience and resources into this network, and build a comprehensive, complex service portfolio.

Lessons learned

The success of the network is largely due to the activity and coordination capabilities of the network administration organization (NAO), the CiCE. The structure of the network, the presence of a NAO, contributes significantly to the efficient and effective functioning of the network, which is why we consider innovation primarily as structural innovation. The professional work of neither the local government nor the individual NGOs has changed radically, but they have become more efficient and effective.

Student Learning Experience (LX) at Kodolányi János University

The Service-Design-methodology-based (SD) development project, aimed at improving students’ learning experience (LX), was requested by the university in December 2017. The contracted partner was an external consultancy company specialized in public, higher, and further education.

As a private university, Kodolányi must face high pressure from students’ side to be responsive towards “customer expectations”. The main goals of the project were to uncover (1) how students perceive their learning process at the university, (2) what their impressions are about its operation, (3) how far they are satisfied with the services provided, and to see (4) in which areas they wish for changes and improvements.

The project is viewed as an ongoing development process and has two data collection periods completed already (2017, 2019).

Stakeholders & Beneficiaries

The main beneficiaries are the students of the university. The university has three campuses in Hungary, which are located in Budapest, Orosháza, and Székesfehérvár. It has full-time, part-time, and distance education programs, primarily at BSC level, however, some MSC programs and further education short programs are also offered mainly on the field of humanities and management, both in Hungarian and English. Inner stakeholders are the university leadership and staff. As an outside stakeholder, the Hungarian Accreditation Committee can also be mentioned, responsible for the accreditation process of all Hungarian universities, mostly because of its expressed interest in the SD development concept.

Co-creation process

The university engaged with the SD development project inspired by an SD workshop of the consulting company. The company brought its expertise on SD-based assessment and service-improvement and through the project they refined their tool for the university. The lead consultant educated the university leadership about the SD concept and reported the results in written reports and presentations. The project measured students’ LX with an SD methodology-based questionnaire (created and validated in previous research and updated after the first data collection) and provided an overview through customer satisfaction index (CSI) and net promoter score (NPS). Students were asked about the importance of certain touchpoints as well as how good their experience is with those touchpoints. Additionally, open questions were also offered to gain further insights. After the 2017 data collection, an SD workshop was organized with four groups using inspirational board, montage, and value proposition canvasing. Results of the assessment were brought further and got implemented by the Welfare Cabinet that involved students mainly from the student board.

Digital Transformation Process

Not applicable.

Results, Outcomes & Impacts

Survey results provide feedback for teachers and staff at the university. Educational material about SD, the questionnaires, and the survey reports are accessible via the Moodle system for all the teachers and university staff. The reports had been discussed in meetings of several departments as well. Changes have been implemented based on the 2017 survey, including:
  • Thematic weeks: The new thematic week system (previous educational innovation) was not at all well taken by students: it was perceived as meaningless and forceful, not taking into consideration students’ working life outside of the university. The concept of the weeks was completely redesigned.
  • Distance learning programme: Many students choose the university because of its distance learning programme, however, they got more and more dissatisfied with several features of the programme. While earlier online materials available for full-time and part-time students had been separated from those available for participants of distant learning programs, this limitation was lifted and online consultations had been recorded. The university plans to produce more pre-recorded and edited online materials in the future and has already organized Skype training for teachers.
  • Administrative services: Based on the results both the Study Office and the Welfare Cabinet revised some of their administrative processes.
The 2019 report contains a comparison to 2017 results. The overall, institutional-level NPS changed from -9 to +18, while NPS for the second degree also changed from -12 to +10.

Challenges & Bottlenecks

The primary problematic aspect was the scarcity of free time for workshops and further investigation that could give explanations for the survey results received. Difficulties in the inclusion of educators in the problem-solving process are quite problematic, as the essence of the method can get lost if not every party is represented and engaged in the process. However, some colleagues of the university feel the project unnecessary and expect the consulting company to solve the existing issues. The survey fill-out rates are to be improved for better overview and engagement.  A challenge during the implementation process is that students’ expectations are controversial: while they demand practical approaches in education, they often resent creative tasks and group works, making it unclear how to step forward in this question. The deeper involvement of students might start a tendency of complaining, thus, it is very important to “direct” these co-creation events so that they contribute to development, keeping a positive and proactive stance. If the opinion of smaller groups gains more attention, it might lead to a bias – this should be avoided, too.

Transferability & Replicability

The initial assessment has been repeated in 2019 at the university and the continuation of the development process is expected. As the consulting company’s LxLab (Learning Experience Lab) service is dedicated to educational Lx projects, further cooperation of the higher education sector and the business sector is possible.

Success Factors

One of the main success factors is the engagement of the university’s leadership, especially the vice-rector for education, who acted as an initiator and owner of the project. Another important factor was the trustful relationship between the vice-rector and the lead consultant. The external professional expertise and the internal organizational support for change, carried out mostly by the Welfare Cabinet leader, were a great combination to make focused improvements in students’ Lx happen.

Lessons learned

Through the project and the SD methodology, the university learned about hidden aspects of students’ learning experiences, enabling university staff to come up with improvement ideas they had not been able to do themselves. The project itself points to the importance of a dedicated and united leadership front that can engage and include the staff and studentship of the university and an external partner that is familiar with impactful service development methodologies but are familiar with the sector’s unique characteristics and context. Quick wins regarding first implementations also seemed to support the continued commitment to the project.

Development of a school-based health education program

This project was aimed at creating a curriculum for an 8-session-long health club for primary education, that could be used by schoolteachers and school nurses to provide health development activities in a classroom setting. The sessions covered the following topics: (1) Introduction, health, (2) Dietary habits, (3) Physical activities, (4) Sleeping, (5) Relationships, (6) Television, computers, phones, (7) Health care, (8) Summary.

The main and novel idea of the project was the direct inclusion of parents in the activities of the health club. This idea was supported by the fact that family background (knowledge, attitudes and actual health behavior of parents) is a significant influencing factor of the health behavior of children. This way, health clubs were considered in schools as extra-curricular activities, held in afternoon time slots, when one parent per child could be present. Participation was voluntary. This setup was unfamiliar for all participants (pupils, parents, teachers, school nurses), but also created unique opportunities to enhance family-school cooperation.

Stakeholders & Beneficiaries

The beneficiary of this project part was the University of Szeged, with four local schools recruited as pilot sites. Schoolteachers and school nurses are considered as the key stakeholders in promoting health in primary education. Participation in the pilot was considered as extra-hour work for them, with additional remuneration. The target group of the program was 8- or 9-year-old children, however, we can consider their parents as a secondary target group as their involvement was one of the cornerstones and distinctive attributes of the health club. Service users were not involved in the preliminary design processes, their feedback at the end of the club meetings was the way they contributed and got involved in the shaping of the current and later health club activities.

Co-creation process

The project consisted of the following steps. University researchers began the development of curriculum by reviewing literature and available evidence. It was decided that a workbook would be the central “organizing force” of the activities. It was clear that the workbook had to be designed to fit pupils’ and parents’ needs (both content and outlook) so that a designer was contracted. Schoolteachers and school nurses as well as students from the medical and district nurse programs were involved in further development activities during six workshops (the last one focused only on the administrative tasks required for project documentation). Those experts who participated in the development process, teachers and school nurses, medical students, school nurse students made a “test-run”: all the assignments had been tried by the experts and educators themselves (for example, children had “fruit names” during the health club, so “fruit names” were used during the trial as well). The health club was piloted at four schools. All of the sessions were visited by an observer (the above mentioned students from the medical and the health sciences faculties), who took notes. Assignments and sessions were evaluated by teachers and school nurses as well as the children. Health-related knowledge of participants were measured before and after the intervention so that the pilot project could have been evaluated.

Digital Transformation Process

Not applicable.

Results, Outcomes & Impacts

A pre-post evaluation of health-related knowledge of parents was measured by using a questionnaire. The average score grew from 6.78 to 7.16, however, this change cannot be considered as a significant change. Due to voluntary participation, the preselection of children and parents with better health-related knowledge might have played a role here. While the health club itself was discontinued after the pilot, several assignments are still used by teachers, and some skills acquired or strengthened during the pilot are evaluated positively (e.g. the school nurse communicates with parents more frequently and more easily).

Challenges & Bottlenecks

Due to the voluntary nature of participation, a selection bias occurred in the class: those pupils and parents who had already been more health-centric were more willing to participate. Although the design builds on parents a lot and it is part of its key success factors, it also emerges as a bottleneck: it needs a lot of time and attention from them. This way not everyone can participate, only those, who can attend club activities in the afternoon on a weekly basis (e.g. working parents with less flexible schedules have difficulties). The sustainability of the programme is mostly endangered by the required high resource use: the programme is quite time-intensive from the perspective of both parents and the school staff. It requires preliminary trainings and week-by-week preparation from school nurses and teachers. This amount of after-school activity for 8 consecutive weeks is quite difficult to manage for parents as well. Even though kids enjoyed the activities and did not regard the club as an obligation, it was a serious commitment from all the other parties.

Transferability & Replicability

The main outputs of the project are a workbook and an accompanying teachers’ manual (as well as additional materials, like evaluation sheet, leaflets, “key messages to parents” sheets, or a further education short program for school nurses). As intended, any school would be able to reproduce the program based on these materials. However, there was no school continuing or reproducing the program after the pilot. The main reason for this seems to be connected to the high resource use the program requires.

Success Factors

The development process was very user-centric and relied on expertise about how to communicate with children (strengthened by the participation of a service designer). This way, the program was tailored to the needs of children (and parents). On the other hand, the pilot was not followed by a wider-scale implementation (see Challenges).

Lessons learned

The main innovation of the programme was the inclusion of parents in health education activities in schools. It is rare that the children and their parents spend time together in school; this feature of the health club had an immense positive impact on the success of the programme by creating a safe atmosphere for the kids at school and engaging them at home, too. It also strengthened child-parent relationships by spending focused quality time together and creating common experiences. The situation was also new for school nurses and teachers because of this model, however, the novelty of the applied interactive methodologies provided a source of innovation for their practices. However, there was a selection bias: those children (and parents) who wanted to participate in the pilot had already been interested in living a healthy lifestyle, and had already deeper knowledge about health. High-risk groups (e.g. children struggling with obesity) were not participating. Moreover, the sustainability of the programme is endangered by the required high resource use: the programme is quite time-intensive from the perspective of both parents and the school staff.

Jarokelo.hu, a “street-fixing” website

Jarokelo.hu (www.jarokelo.hu) is a “street-fixing” website, which enables passers-by to report street infrastructure problems and subsequently inform the relevant department within local authorities or the public service providers assigned. It was launched in 2012, and inspired by Slovakian „Letter to mayor” website run by an NGO. The predecessor of the platform is the FixMyStreet.com.

The main aim of Jarokelo.hu is creating a fully citizen-centric and community driven internet-based and easy-to-use service to strengthen active citizenship, democratic participation, and improve urban management.

The key activities of the Jarokelo.hu:

  • Report: citizens are required to take and upload photos of “street problems” and add a short text description about the issue they would like to submit
  • Review and sending: the submitted report is reviewed by administrators of the website, and is sent to the local government or service provider
  • Publish on website: the report and reaction of local government, „Reported”, „Solved”, and „In progress” statuses. The official answer are made public. So, the user can follow the progress of the whole process.

Stakeholders & Beneficiaries

Beneficiaries: Járókelő is the Hungarian translation for “passer-by”, it refers to any citizen who is walking by and can be able not only to see an urban problem or malfunction, but also to report it in an easy and efficient way. Other group of beneficiaries are the local governments and other service providers (e.g. public transport companies). Járókelő has now more than 40 volunteers, mainly from the younger generation. There are monthly meetings for the volunteer administrators/ case managers.The association developed a volunteer recruiting and selection process in 2018.

Co-creation process

Járókelő created a fully citizen-centric and community driven internet-based service to strengthen active citizenship, democratic participation, and improve urban management. Járókelő is a mediator between civilians and authorities, so basically it created a new process for collecting and sending complaints, which had an impact on the whole system of fixing street problems. The employees of local municipalities tend to use their map application on the jarokelo.hu website. There are some local governments that indicate jarokelo.hu for citizens as their official forum of reporting street problems.

Digital Transformation Process

The innovation Járókelő realized is complex and practice-based (bricolage). The solution included not only the internet platform, but a process design, knowledge base, marketing and organisational innovation. By its digital solution Járókelő partly substituted prior co-production practices as well as some of the functions of the public organisations. Technology can enable citizen engagement. Platforms like Járókelő and others are tools that can have a positive impact on strengthening democratic institutions, transparency, accountability and foster public participation in public life. Járókelő functions as a bridge between citizens and local authorities in the common need to solve immediate problems in the built environment. As most of the problems reported are easy to fix, local governments can easily give a positive response to citizens.

Results, Outcomes & Impacts

Járókelő has grown considerably over the years since it started, nowadays it has reached around 20.000 visitors per month and registers 30 to 50 complaints per day in Budapest alone. Jarokelo has more than 9.000 registered users and more than 25.000 cases solved (as May 2019, approx. 2/3 of the reported cases are sold). Járókelő is often a „speeding lane”, so problem reporters experience quicker response. The positive experience encourages citizens to make further reports. Citizens monitor each other’s report, transparency is growing. The whole venture has not only grown in terms of the number of visits and reports but also in terms of the number of locations in Hungary such as Debrecen, Kecskemét, Veszprém, Szeged and Szentendre, cities that have joined the system. When the platform was launched, municipalities were unprepared for such an engagement, did not fully understand the platform and how it could be beneficial for them. As many of the municipalities lack the capacity of innovation to make their services more efficient and user-friendly, Járókelő can provide a platform that helps their work. Therefore, similarly to many other civic tech platforms, Járókelő can create a win-win scenario, building up trust between local governments and citizens, and improving public spaces. Nowadays Járókelő is more and more accepted as a trusted partner by public service providers.

Challenges & Bottlenecks

Creating the financial background of the association is the biggest risk ever since Járókelő is functioning. Financial resources come from donor organisations (for-profit companies). The Association can plan their budget and operation only year after year. There is a slight risk that the government may introduce a one-stop notification system regarding public complaints, and this way Járókelő could lose its mediator role between civilians and authorities. There is also a little risk, that thanks to technological developments the local governments will have more and more user friendly ways of communication, so Járókelő’s platform may be superfluous. There is also a risk of emerging competitors e.g. a Swedish company trading with crowdsourced online streetmaps. Cooperation with most local governments and public service providers is well-functioning, but cooperation with local authorities has not always been easy. In many cases, municipal offices have been reluctant to cooperate with Járókelő. It really depends on the actual place and the people working in these offices.

Transferability & Replicability

The system can easily adapt to other Hungarian cities. Járókelő plans to develop its system to other Hungarian cities as well, for this they would need other paid coordinators, who could keep the contact with the volunteer case managers on the countryside. So the plan is to increase incomes in order to be able to finance new full-time employees.

Success Factors

Institutional factor: obligation for co-production on part of the public organisations is coded in Act CLXV of 2013 (dealing with complains and public interest disclosures). Even though in Hungary the Act CLXV 2013 deals with complaints and public interest, each city and district deals with them in a different way because the regulations of how to deal with those issues are actually made locally. Járókelő has now more than 40 volunteers, mainly from the younger generation (between 16 and 43 years). They work as web developer and case manager. The volunteers are typically students, free-lancers, have jobs with flexible schedule.  The Association has a well-developed volunteer recruiting and selection process. The IT system is constantly developed and the website is easy-to-use.

Lessons learned

Digital technologies can substitute traditional co-production practices (e.g. remote monitoring or predictive algorithms). The platform of Járókelő provides an easy-to-use technology for citizens, where the reporting users can track and monitor the problem solving process. Furthermore digital technologies can eliminate public sector organisations from co-production (e.g. self-serving communities). The citizens do not need to know which organisation (local authority or a public service provider) is competent to solve a given problem. This knowledge is provided by the Járókelő.hu.

BAGázs Public Benefit Association – change in the lives of segregated Roma settlements

Since its foundation in 2011 BAGázs Association has been working to contribute to an inclusive and accepting society in which Roma people have a chance to achieve their goals. Currently BAGázs works in two segregated Roma settlements in Central Hungary, in Bag since 2011 and in Dány since 2017.

The BAGázs responds to local needs with a complex and flexible program structure targeting children as well as adults (families). The main objective of the Association is to bring about a permanent change in the lives of segregated Roma communities and in their environment (e.g. local institutions, village communities) and to transform the stereotypes and prejudices of the majority society against the Roma. This is implemented through professional work based on local needs and adopted to the dynamics and development pace of the given slums.

Stakeholders & Beneficiaries

The main beneficiaries of BAGázs live in the segregated Roma settlements of Bag (400 people) and Dány (600 people) in Central Hungary. A survey conducted by the Association in 2017 showed that the local community is far from homogeneous and the households vary greatly from one another, but the fundamental characteristics of segregated areas still fundamentally define the lives of the communities. Less than half of the adults living in the slum have not finished primary school. Of these, one quarter are most likely illiterate, having failed to complete even the first two grades. It is presumably linked to the low level of education that despite nearly half of slum residents having regular work, the average net income is 227.54 EUR (72,000 HUF) per months, and in some families, due to the high number of children, per capita income is far below average. The most pressing problem in the Roma slums in Bag and Dány today is the spreading and pervasive use of designer drugs. The work of BAGázs extends beyond the segregated settlements to the local village communities and to the level of society. The Association build relationships and cooperation with local institutions: local governments in Bag and Dány, kindergarten and primary school in Bag, family and child welfare services, police. ‘Parent Group for Our Hometown’ (SzöSz: Szülői Összefogás Szülőfalunkért) is a citizens’ initiative in Bag. They work with BAGázs from Summer 2018, and they play an important role to getting to know and accept the Work of BAGázs in the village. One of the most important aspects of BAGázs method is the high number of committed volunteers supported the professional work. In the beginning (2011) yearly 20-30 volunteers supported the professional work, in 2018 they have more than 100 volunteers per year.

Co-creation process

BAGázs is working to eliminate socio-cultural disadvantages of Roma people living in these segregated settlements. This can only be achieved if they jointly set up changes in the community of the settlements and in the majority society. The Association seeks to make the Roma people more capable, while at the same time sensitising and making more accepting the people belonging to the majority society. The program structure consists of 8 programs: mentoring for children, free-time activities, summer camp, women’s club, legal clinic and debt management, job hunt, adult education program, mentoring for adults, family consultation. The programs are based on local needs, so they are constantly evolving and adapting to the community. Most of the programs are organised by volunteers, so they are directly involved in professional work. The development of the BAGázs method is the result of a multi-year learning process that resulted in a complex program structure based on holistic, multi-level approach. The learning process is very reflective and conscious based on continuous assessment of experiences and results. Some program elements were largely modified during the last years (e.g. mentoring), and some elements have been omitted (e.g. small garden program or sport program). During the planning and implementation of the different programs the BAGázs Association interact with many stakeholders (e.g. donors, local public institutions, local civil organisations). Many of them play a crucial role in the co-planning and co-production of the programs.

Digital Transformation Process

Not applicable.

Results, Outcomes & Impacts

BAGázs started a social enterprise in 2016, which can be a useful additional element to the core activity of the association. BAGázs Bazaar consits of a mobile and a regular charity shop and a community centre in Budapest.  In Bagázs Bazaar they do not only recycle used clothes but are also able to provide job opportunities to people from the settlements. This way they can gain experience and prepare for entering the labour market. BAGázs Bazaar is also a Community Centre. By opening a community space in Budapest, the Association is broadening the horizon of the volunteer work, while providing further programs for underprivileged children. Main results in numbers:
  • permanent presence in 2 Roma settlements (Bag, Dány);
  • a complex program structure consisting of 8 programs for children and adults, 75% of families in the slums participated in these programs;
  • 15 paid employees (9 full-time, 6 part-time employees);
  • in 2018 more than 100 volunteers are trained and involved in their programs to bring new patterns to the closed communities;
  • more than 200 Roma participants.

Challenges & Bottlenecks

The public social service system in Hungary is very fragmented, the colleagues of public institutions in this sector (e.g. case managers of the Guardianship Offices) are often overburdened, the prestige of social work is low, and therefore the lack of appropriate professionals is typical. The long-term finance is also a crucial question for the Association, they try to find more regular supporters. The relationship with local governments in Bag and Dány is not always supportive. Manifestations of antigypsyism, including hostility, prejudice and discrimination specifically directed at Roma combined with stereotypical portrayals of Roma constitute the predominant narrative in all majority society.

Transferability & Replicability

Together with the local social care system and municipalities, the BAGázs is working to solve problems together. As an independent NGO, the BAGázs feels responsible for addressing systemic issues and making changes in related professional areas. Presenting in the press and social media in order to gain more publicity and at the same time strengthen the potential for change within the Roma community.

Success Factors

The BAGázs supports entire families through individual and group programs. In the last years 75% of the families in the slums participated in these programs. There are also employees of BAGázs living in the segregated settlements. Their training and development demonstrates the potential and credibility of change not only for individuals but for the community as a whole. Communication between the non-Roma residents in the villages and the segregated Roma communities is being strengthened, with the aim of presenting everyone’s point of view and providing a basis for co-planning and co-operation. Volunteers participate in the on-site professional work on a weekly basis. The personal and ongoing contact with Roma people gives the volunteers a deeper understanding of the complex problem, and also the personal experience of obstacles makes volunteers more sensitive, receptive.

Lessons learned

The innovative approach of BAGázs method is based on voluntary and bottom-up processes. During the planning and implementation of the different programs the BAGázs Association interact with many stakeholders (e.g. donors, local public institutions, local civil organisations). Many of them play a crucial role in the co-planning and co-production of the programs. The development of the BAGázs method is the result of a multi-year learning process. This process is very reflective and conscious based on continuous assessment of experiences and results. The BAGázs method can be interpreted as an interactive process of innovation.

The PwC Experience Center

Development and technological innovation are changing the way people live and especially work. In 2015, to accommodate this shift, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) launched its first Experience Center in Hallandale, FL to serve as a space where collaborative, dynamic, and user-oriented business models could be developed and tested – ultimately helping bring together diverse stakeholders for innovative, multi-perspective solutions.

Since 2015, PwC expanded its Experience Center unit and now employs 3,000 people across 50 Centers and 5 key European hubs to support private and public industry as they evolve to meet the changing needs of their customers.  At their core, the PwC Experience Centers promote iterative, user-centric problem solving strategies and their staff facilitate essential and transformative client interactions throughout project design stages. The Centers function as independent intermediaries where PwC can reach non-traditional clientele and experiment with participatory design processes. Further, its operations are dual-purposed as PwC Experience Center staff advises internally and externally – supporting PwC consultants while also offering services to outside clientele.

PwC advances several initiatives at its Experience Centers including, application of Design Thinking in workshop settings, product/service usability testing for clients, and trainings for how to implement the Centers’ agile and responsive on-demand approaches. In addition to consulting on local projects across sectors, the PwC Experience Centers allow critical exchange of information and produce crosscutting connections, thereby enabling an innovative PwC-wide network of service offerings.

Stakeholders & Beneficiaries

There are several examples where PwC Experience Centers engaged multi-stakeholders and served as platforms where users/citizens could express their needs and wants of certain products/services. In the Lombardy case, for instance, in addition to the co-creation session PwC helped organize a call-for-feedback session, where Lombardy citizens were able to submit their opinions on the new public portal. Through this process, the Regione Lombardia could collect responses and better understand the fundamental issues of the application based on the user experiences. Another example, the Meet Sweden project pioneered by the PwC Stockholm Experience Center in partnership Swedish Industrial Design Foundation (SVID) and Swedish public agencies, highlights how the public sector is growing increasingly interested in the role of users/citizens in service model development. Asylum seekers in Sweden often struggle with long and arduous processes when trying to resettle and legally immigrate to Sweden. Information is lost between multiple visits to disjointed public organizations and refugees does not feel in control of their own asylum journey. To remedy some of these issues, PwC Stockholm brought together private and public actors as well as the migrants themselves at the Experience Center to participate in co-creation sessions and generate human-centric solutions. Assessing the needs of the migrants was essential when developing the layout and in-app design features in the Meet Sweden mobile application. As a result, the participants jointly created a new mobile application that streamlines the asylum process and saves time, money, and energy of all involved actors. This is just one project where livelihoods were improved based on co-creation design thinking and it exposes the potentialities of Experience Centers in enhancing public service delivery models.

Co-creation process

Through iterative activities at the Centers, including group brainstorming in the Sandbox rooms, usability tests of company products and design thinking exercises, PwC works jointly with the public sector, its providers and the citizens to develop approaches that align with the above pillars. PwC intentionally outfits each Experience Center with adjustable, client-friendly workspaces and focuses on developing efficient and agile solutions. While Centers in every country belonging to the PwC network abide to a shared set of methodologies and approaches, each has its own focus and peculiarities. PwC structures each physical space differently to match regional and cultural characteristics. One example is the PwC Rome Experience Center. Inside the Center, there are flexible spaces with adjustable walls and moveable tables to accommodate activities organized for and with clients. It has a work café with objects of Italian design to create a familiar environment conducive to make people unwind and spur a positive ideation and reflection process. Additionally, the interactive technology and writeable walls incorporated in the central Sandbox meeting room offer clients unique spaces for meetings, workshops, and trainings with PwC UX design and technology professionals. The Testing Lab and Observatory Room include a unidirectional mirror so clients can carry out usability tests and observe real time client reactions to services/products. The Rome Experience Center also has AI technology, 3D printing, and contemporary digital programming to collaborate with clients in the development of prototypes.

Digital Transformation Process

Scholars envision Living Labs as the generators of concrete, tangible innovations based on contributions from users and communities, rather than just simply functioning as brainstorming spaces. The PwC Experience Centers propel forward several iterations of innovation by recruiting diverse job profiles, applying co-creation methodologies, and prioritizing the human experience in all project designs. Dynamism and functionality are consistent features across all PwC Experience Centers and this allows innovation to manifest in a variety of ways at different stages in the development process. Namely, we will detail out how the Experience Centers incite business model innovation for its public sector clients, and how they understand service/product and touch point innovation throughout the design process. Innovation is transient across levels and, at PwC Experience Centers; it is contingent on the end goals of the client.

Results, Outcomes & Impacts

PwC Experience Centers’ principal objective is to bring together customers and businesses in dynamic spaces to establish business models that incorporate user feedback at all design stages. In occupying this intermediary role, Experience Centers help identify user needs and the root causes of customer dissatisfaction through co-creation processes so the resulting business model used by the client satisfies needs of end-users. This open-innovation environment attracts private companies and public organizations looking to modernize and transform the business-consumer service delivery relationship. Their human-centric nature makes these spaces distinct and helps concentrate varied perspectives and problem solving tactics in a central meeting location. In joint collaboration with other stakeholders, PwC helps clients rethink their mission and generate innovate business models to meet end users’ needs. By asking questions centered on how to alter current business practices for greater customer satisfaction, clients can identify areas for growth and ultimately find a new path forward. The PwC promoted business models are considered innovative, especially for the public sector, given that they reconfigure the model to meet new objectives established based on consumer input. Thus, by enabling conscious changing of an existing business model or the creation of a new business model, clients can strategically elevate models to better satisfy the needs of the customer. The associated organizational structures and methods for service/product delivery reflect a shift in mindset of the client and focus on impact and growth.

Challenges & Bottlenecks

Typically, larger organizations have more rigid organizational hierarchies and learned cultural habits, which can make implementation of flexible methodologies difficult. The objective of the PwC Experience Centers are to function as testbeds and incubators for entrepreneurial design thinking and help PwC evaluate hybrid/agile managerial approaches to public sector challenges, in-house. By having the Centers operate in this way, PwC can overcome organizational challenges and share niche-consulting expertise gathered through Center activities to internal PwC consultants. This sort of ‘Agile Desk’ unit of PwC is transformative for internal work cultural – both enhancing workflow and teaching nuanced strategies for managing client relationships. There is a tri-fold benefit from PwC Experience Centers as clients, their customers, and PwC, learn and improve from the co-creation sessions and find solutions to broad, complex problems.

Transferability & Replicability

The PwC Experience Centers can also serve as intermediaries and network enablers between actors that have struggled to communicate productively. According to researchers James Stewart and Sampsa Hyyaslo in their analysis of the role of intermediaries in the development and appropriation of new technology, intermediary organizations, such as PwC, configure the users and involved actors yet maintain a position of separation from the decided end use of the technology. This enables intermediaries to influence through workshops and co-creation sessions, however, the participants have the final decision-making power. Thus, as an intermediary PwC drives the new partnerships through six key “bridging activities” (Bessant and Rush 1995):
  • Articulation of needs, selection of options
  • Identification of needs, selection training
  • Creation of business cases
  • Communications, development
  • Education, links to external info
  • Project management, managing external resources, organizational development
When broken down further, it essentially tasks the intermediary with enabling transfer of knowledge, sharing knowledge across the user community, brokering to a range of suppliers, and diagnostic/innovation – trying to identify what end users actually want. These tasks are driven by three main social learning roles occupied by the intermediary: facilitators, configurers, and brokers. In the PwC context, Experience Centers are living out these archetypes as they bridge gaps between customers, companies, and the public sector. In practice, we have seen the importance of PwC occupying this intermediary role and facilitating critical client-customer interactions at the Centers. Contamination of approaches between the private and public sectors, knowledge transfer, and elevated understanding of shared challenges are just a few of the benefits in having PwC as an intermediary network enabler.

Success Factors

Social learning and/or contamination of techniques/approaches during interactions at PwC Experience Centers is another key way that public value is realized. Social learning refers to two simultaneous, complementary, and intertwined processes: innofusion (Fleck, 1988) and domestication of technology (Sørensen, 1996). Fleck defines innofusion as the innovation that takes place during the diffusion of new technology amongst participants. In this phase, users discover their needs and wants through a process of technological design, trial, and exploration. The other component, domestication of technology, addresses the pre-existing “heterogeneous network of machines, systems, routines and culture.” Essentially, it recognizes how cultural consumption habits influence user behavior and underlines the value of incorporating users’ creativity in product design processes. For PwC Experience Centers, a transfer of co-creation approaches and design thinking techniques to its participants is valuable for ensuring sustainability of solutions and enabling shared sponsorship to anticipate possible resistance to project implementation. Additionally, there is a cross contamination of techniques between participants as they originate from diverse backgrounds and bring to the workshops different views for how to solve problems. In this process, divergence in ideas and incorporation of distinct actors allows critical knowledge transfer that often precludes innovation and helps identify overlapping challenges. Outcomes generated from co-creation activities at the Centers have included the use of private sector business models by public organizations. By seeing the design elements of private sector models implemented by PwC, clients can interpret and apply similar structures in their own operations – thus initiating a transfer of proven strategies between private and public actors.

Lessons learned

Living Labs play a critical role in displaying the mutual value of co-creation approaches for public and private actors. In the public sector, there is a hesitancy to welcome consumer engagement throughout the service design process. Governments and public organizations are fearful that actively seeking consumer input is too cost and time intensive and are unaware of the potential benefits for engaging customers in the earlier design stages. Therefore, it is essential to understand the PwC Experience Centers’ role in helping enable public-private mutual understanding and fostering innovative co-creation solutions. They add value by acting as a platform for idea exchange between all actors, inciting and analyzing customer feedback, and promoting multi-perspective discourse. The resulting improvement in services and increase in public value benefit the supply-side and user-side equally, and substantiates the importance of intermediaries in opening communication channels. It enables organizations and companies to explore how to improve their own services and/or processes with consumer engagement as the central focus and at the Centers they can test, fail, retest, and optimize proposed strategies before actual implementation.

The Rome Collaboratory: the role of Living Labs in fostering local development

LabGov, short for the LABoratory for the GOVernance of the City as a Commons, is a global network that aims to explore methodologies and policies for collaboration and shared management of urban spaces/resources through empirical and applied research platforms. Currently, LabGov consists of seven Urban Living Labs (ULL) spanning across Europe, the United States, and Latin America. The overarching objective of these Living Labs is to analyze the efficacy of ‘commoning’ – a term coined by Dr. Elinor Ostrom in her pioneering research on cooperative governance strategies. The work of LabGov’s co-directors Sheila Foster and Christian Iaione is aimed at operationalizing Elinor Ostrom’s framework and the design principles of institutional design she elaborated for the cooperative governance of common pool resources to the urban context with the appropriate adaptations. This work is synthetized  in a series of scholarly articles (C. IAIONE, Città e beni comuni, in G. ARENA and C. IAIONE (eds.), L’Italia dei beni comuni, Rome, 2012, p. 127; C. IAIONE, La città come un bene comune, in Aedon, 2013, 1, p. 31; C. Iaione, Governing the urban commons, in Italian journal of public law, 2015, vol. 7, 1, 2015, p. 190; S. Foster and C. Iaione The City as a commons, Yale Journal of Law and Policy, 34, 2, 2016; C. Iaione and E. De Nictolis, Urban pooling, in Fordham Urban Law Journal, 44:3, 2017; S. Foster and C. Iaione, Ostrom in the city. Design Principles and Practices for the Urban Commons, in Handbook of the Study of the Commons, (D. Cole, B. Hudson, J. Rosenbloom eds.), Routledge, 2019) the authors argued about the need to create public-civic or public-community partnerships as a policy and legal tool to ground a cooperation between the public administration and social innovators through co-design processes to realize projects of general interest in cities.

This case study herein will focus on a project – the “Rome Collaboratory”, developed by LabGov’s LUISS Roma Lab based out of LUISS Guido Carli University in Rome, Italy. The Rome Collaboratory currently works as part of the OpenHeritage  project , which has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No776766 . The Rome Collaboratory has been selected as a best practice to look at in order to analyze the role of living labs in fostering local development.

Stakeholders & Beneficiaries

City inhabitants and their experiences are integral to co-creation methodologies. As aforementioned, co-creation’s human-centric and core structure that involves user-input is paving the way for nuanced multi-stakeholder interactions. It prioritizes the inclusion of all city inhabitants in order to guarantee mutually beneficial project outcomes and stronger community linkages. Co-creation projects, like the Rome Collaboratory, proactively and consciously valorise the role of users and city inhabitants, and they are changing the landscape of shared governance. The bi-cognitive institutions and the Rome Collaboratory activities, which produce connections leading toward effective and productive interventions, sustain the people engaged and empower communities. It is evident that the city inhabitants are driving the program content development and are central in the design process. In addition to the aforementioned bike tours, diffuse hotel, and Collaboration Day, the meetings during the co-creation process inspired a new Living Memory Exhibition and a Local Campaign for the districts. The exhibition plans to feature the artwork, photography, and musical talents of district residents and seeks to share their interpretation of cultural heritage with the public. Moreover, the Rome Collaboratory team will lead a tailored and streamlined communication campaign to give visibility to the district’s new projects and to promote use of digital applications. In working with community members and local actors across the three districts, there has been a significant increase in civic engagement and shared interest in the proposed revitalization projects.

Co-creation process

Living Labs and the associated methodologies are broadly defined – varying in purpose and function. The leading definition of a living lab is “innovation networks based on the philosophy of open innovation where users become equivalent to other participants” (Pop 2018). Within the OpenHeritage’s LL framework, the objectives of the Rome Collaborative are primarily to promote processes of adaptive reuse and sustainable management of cultural heritage. The Rome Collaborative and the five other Cooperative Heritage Labs are sites determined to have the potential to increase community engagement and build resiliency. The creation of the six LLs is part of the OpenHeritage’s broader objective to create a network built on two main pillars:
  • Open Knowledge – ensuring easy access the knowledge generated by the project including discoveries based on project outcomes and within the development process;
  • Open Space – creation of platforms for social cohesion and cultural management where views of different stakeholders (local actors/administrative professionals, financial partners, researchers, policymakers, civil society, and undeserved groups) are equally considered
The Rome Collaboratory is characterized as a living lab due to its co-creation approach for engaging in research and experimentation. It is a space that adds public value by operating as a platform for exchange of knowledge, tools, and ideas for innovative solutions.

Digital Transformation Process

As an innovation method, living labs are spaces where collaboration and multisided discussions are encouraged. They serve as platforms where differentiated approaches and nuanced methodologies are tested and ultimately proven incubators for nuanced strategizing in governance, private sector industry, and social enterprise. More precisely, it embodies, “an ecosystem approach in which end users and other stakeholders are involved in the development of an innovation over a long period of time, in a real-life environment, following an iterative process (Niitamo & Kulkki, 2006; Schuurman et al., 2012) applying multi-method, user-centric innovation research with a strong focus on user empowerment and real-world experimentation.” There are several examples of living labs across sectors, yet the focus of the LabGov and the Rome Collaboratory is to analyze the effects of co-city protocol in transforming culturally untapped areas in chosen European cities. The LUISS Roma Lab used LabGov’s Co-city protocol as the guiding methodology for the Rome CHL’s conceptualization sessions and communal brainstorming activities. The protocol consists of six phases 1) Cheap talking, 2) Mapping, 3) Practicing, 4) Prototyping, 5) Testing, and 6) Modelling. Each phase is a part of the overall objective to guide policymakers, researchers, and urban communities in co-governance experiences. The process is innovative in that it is an output of numerous field-experiments and investigations on patterns, transitions, and procedures within the public policy development process. It situates the city as an infrastructure that enables participatory approaches and aligns with the Open Knowledge and Open Guidance principles of the OpenHeritage project. Importantly, there is concrete evidence for the validity of the process due to its survival through and support from three consecutive public administrations in Italy.

Results, Outcomes & Impacts

In the context of the Rome Collaboratory, the inclusion of citizens’ ideas, desires, and needs, in the design and implementation phases of the revitalization project produces public value and varied approaches to governance. Further, the revitalization project specifically targets local public administrations, policymakers, civic organizations, residents, and social entrepreneurs, to ensure methodologies actively address the needs and wants of all future beneficiaries working in the public sector. The intention behind Rome Collaboratory spaces is rooted in the preconception of public value. This case example defines public value as the value an organization provides to a society and understands it in terms of the benefits it offers to society as a whole. It measures the value by how well it meets the public citizens’ inherent and changing needs. Therefore, to add value, the application of LL methodologies in the public sector has to generate outcomes that reflect the communities’ desires. This requires multi-actor engagement and resource pooling in preliminary stages and ultimately precludes shared governance strategies.

Challenges & Bottlenecks

In the context of the LUISS Roma Lab and the newly formed Rome Collaboratory, there is an evident transformation in how consumers are interacting with public services and a fundamental shift in the user-service relationship. Most notably, the integration of a quintuple helix model and the presence of living labs has translated into increased civic engagement and participation. Residents and end-users are not simply service recipients, rather they shape the delivery processes and actively contribute in co-governance sessions hosted at cooperative spaces. Insofar, this has raised the level of awareness of the challenges limiting the Centocelle district from attracting tourism and has reengaged the community. By having a stake in the adaptation process and providing input, the districts’ residents feel empowered to lead and it has resulted in an overall shift in perceptions of their role in the revitalization project. Fundamentally, these new models and theoretical applications are conducive to civic autonomy and localized management of shared resources.

Transferability & Replicability

The intended deliverables of Living Labs and co-creation methodologies more broadly, are to alter the existing service experience/relationship and to produce new techniques for governance interventions. Traditionally, governments and public organizations delivered services to users in a top-down manner – adapting policies with minimal external input. The LabGov co-city protocol and the subsequent co-cities including Co-Roma served as experiments for exploring new organizational mechanisms for public services. By positioning the city as a ‘shared urban commons’ the co-city approach disrupts the conventional services to end-user relationship. Therefore, delivery of services evolves and adjusts to meet the needs of citizens operating within these shared/co-governed spaces. The quintuple helix model, which is the concept of a public-private-commons partnership intended to overcome the division between public versus private management of the commons, gives relevance to the role of knowledge institutions. Different from the linear service experience, positioning civil society, universities, community organizations, local enterprises, and other knowledge institutions at the core of the model creates a new form of social contract. Complex challenges demand increasingly active and shared participation of urban authorities and local, civic, private, and community actors.

Success Factors

A key attribute of Living Labs as an innovative tool is their ability to produce new and/or enhance pre-existing networks. Often, living labs are conducive to new interactions and bring together actors to operate within both established and emerging networks. By hosting co-creation sessions, testing new co-governance strategies, or enabling actors to engage through new avenues, living labs are acting as intermediaries between innovators and the intended beneficiaries. As previously mentioned, the Rome Collaboratory is strategically designed to be human-centric and to keep city inhabitants’ needs at the core of the co-governance model. However, it is worth noting how preliminary networks developed by the LUISS Roma Lab and ENEA are interfacing with the new innovation spaces and are serving as baseline models for future co-governance networks. In particular, the pre-established co-city network and the Centoc’è  smart-city e-network are essential foundational networks that the Rome Collaboratory can replicate as it strives to develop a platform for crowdsourcing and collaboration between stakeholders.  The methodological protocol for the construction of urban neighbourhoods and collaborative communities (the co-city protocol) documents work in the field of theoretical and applied research on urban co-governance to summarize principles, techniques and solutions aimed at spreading urban cooperativism. The subsequent networks that have surfaced out of the establishment of these co-cities and the co-city protocol at large are transforming knowledge exchange practices.

Erasme Living Lab – Lyon Metropole: 20 years of Public Innovations

Created in 1999 as a multimedia centre in the countryside one hour west of the metropolitan area of Lyon (Rhône-Alpes Region), Erasme Living Lab became the Living Lab of Greater Lyon Metropole (the political institution that drives the urban area) in 2015, when Rhône department and Lyon Metropole merged. The management team were relocated in the centre of Lyon, the greater city of the region (1,3 millions inhabitants). Dedicated to digital culture since 1999, the ERASME missions were enlarged to smart city and the co-creation of new digital public services for inhabitants. Since 20 years, the Living Lab experimented different methods of open innovation with users on the one side and technological experts in various fields on the other. So, the Erasme team is specialized in collaborative workshops, service design, prototyping and digital technologies. Erasme is a tool for internal services of Lyon Metropole to rethink public services but the Living Lab has also a good reputation with diverse professional communities of the regional ecosystem and even at a national scale.

Stakeholders & Beneficiaries

The transfer of the Living Lab from the countryside toward a metropole led to a new organization and the definition of 3 beneficiary targets. Erasme’s service offering is divided into three levels:
  • The first level concerns all digital projects carried by Lyon Metropole, with the Directorate of digital innovation and computer systems. Beneficiaries are the inhabitants that may be interested by a multiservice card or a better life in a smart city, for example.
  • The second level concerns diverse internal departments of Lyon Metropole for improving public services about child health, culture, transports, Public Service Houses, and so on.
  • The third level concerns the offer for external partners. It may be a municipality that seeks methodological support in the framework of a European programme. Or it may be private companies working for urban services, for example.

    • Co-creation process

    Since 1999, policy makers have imagined the Living Lab as a public service with a dedicated place and a team of experts in digital technologies at the service of local development. In this first stage (1999-2015), Erasme was used to work with museums (Muséolab programme) or teachers (ICT in education). When Erasme delocalized towards Lyon, in 2015, the Living Lab was at a mature stage with a strong experience. Since then, exhibitions are organized “outside the Lab” to mobilize inhabitants around some themes of public interest such as: culture, education, elder or poor people, smart city (urban regeneration, collective transport…). More than a Living Lab that mobilizes users to imagine new concepts or prototypes, Erasme claims to be a “Do Tank” to innovate and change urban life with digital technologies. The co-creation process is divided into two stages: the “Mix” and the “Lab”. This methodology has emerged from the long-term experience of the Living Lab since 1999.
  • The “Mix” is an event in which a specific place (museum, station, church, etc.) is “invested massively” by users for 2 or 3 days. It is a time to produce ideas and first prototypes but also a way for transforming organizations thanks to agile methods, collective intelligence and by creating contributive communities.
  • The “Lab” is a time for creating an innovative product or a digital service. Innovation requires a few weeks and sometimes several months for transforming prototypes into operational tools and services. Professional skills from diverse ecosystems are associated in neutral contexts and tests are realized in real life with end-users.

    • Digital Transformation Process

    Erasme Living Lab claims to be a “Use Laboratory” for the people and not a Lab dedicated to test digital technologies for new markets. Digital tools (software, device) are designed, prototyped, tested then developed in new technological device but to improve life of inhabitants in different public fields: culture, education, health, elderly, mobility and Smart City. The Living Lab mobilizes experts in culture and education but also in digital technologies, a mix of skills that creates a special alchemy to invent the museum of the future (Muséolab, Museomix, digital arts), digital workspaces for pupils, digital tools for aged people to keep in touch with their family, for example. The aim is to solve problems of inhabitants thanks to digital solutions but with a focus on public services, even if some innovations are developed with Start-ups or even with big firms of the region. More recently, Erasme Living Lab is working on the “SelfData project”, which makes it possible to invent services from citizens’ data while ensuring the security of the personal data beyond the requirements of the GDPR. Moreover, the “Grand Lyon Smart Data platform” (www.smartdata.grandlyon.com) makes it possible to co-create new urban services with users and private stakeholders. Lyon Metropole is also associated with the cities of Nantes and La Rochelle, in the west of France, to experiment the “Territorial SelfData”, a project launched with a national think tank called FING (New Generation Internet Federation) which is a leader in exploring the future of Internet and digital transition for people.

    Results, Outcomes & Impacts

    Co-creation workshops deal with four themes of public interest, which produced some services or products.
  • Culture (since 20 years): recent digital technologies were tested such as RFID, e-paper, Ubicomputing, Tangible interfaces, with the help of digital artists, in particular for a science and society museum (Musée des Confluences at Lyon).
  • Education (since 20 years): ICT education then e-learning environment for primary and secondary schools. The ENT (digital work environment) is open to teachers, pupils and their parents. Enriched year after year, it became a digital platform (laclasse.com).
  • Seniors e-care (since 2005): A tool (Webnapperon) was prototyped and tested with the elderly in retirement homes for dependent people. Improved in 2011 in the framework of a European project to co-design with 15 users, a service called “Host-communication” was implemented with open source software to create a social network between the elderly, often alone and far from their family.
  • Services for people in social difficulty have been a new field of experimentation for Erasme since 2015: The aim was to rethink the “Public Service Houses” of the Metropole in particular to welcome foreigners who do not speak French and do not know their social rights.
  • Smart city is also a recent field of experimentation: All citizens are end-users that can test new products or services, such as mobility with public transports.

    • Challenges & Bottlenecks

    Challenges originated in the creation of Erasme Living Lab by political decision: in 1999, a Senator interested in ICT and Internet decided to create a place to foster digital tools in cultural and educational fields, in particular in the countryside (his electoral constituency), where innovations are scarce. The transfer of Erasme towards Lyon in 2015 was also a political decision, to invent a smarter urban life but also to create a new administration with common goals after the merge of Lyon Metropole and the Rhône Department whose missions were different. Bottlenecks are diverse. First of all, the Living Lab is a “service of missions” which has to find budget for/thanks to new projects each year. The budget instability is a problem to follow more and more projects with a small team of managers. Young researchers or experts are sometimes recruited with a fixed-term contract thanks to the ERDF funds or other national or regional project funds but skills and competencies disappeared at the end of the contract. The lack of budget and its instability are also a problem to create a dedicated place for the Living Lab. Even if mobile workshops in the city are a good solution to attract citizens to the experimentations, a dedicated place is necessary for the development and innovation stage when professionals from diverse ecosystems have to meet and share their competencies.

    Transferability & Replicability

    Diffusion of innovations is important for Erasme. For example, prototypes of the Muséolab were diffused in museums, even at an international scale. The table Museo Touch is commercialized by a private firm. In education, the digital platform laclasse.com is used by more and more educative institutions in France. As Erasme is the oldest Living Lab in France, the question of replicability is very important for the management team. As Erasme belongs to different networks, at a local, national or even European scale, the co-creation model called “the Mix” was experimented elsewhere. Moreover, the reputation of the Erasme team generates solicitations from other geographical areas, even from around the world for the ”Museum of the Future”. Internationally, Erasme is registered in networks such as the Arts Sciences Network, Enoll (in 2010) or EUROCITIES (from 2017). Nevertheless, as Erasme claims a value creation in the service of general interest, transferability of the co-creative approach (Mix, Lab) is not easy with economic ecosystems in the region. But the theme of Smart City opens the partnership to businesses even if big firms are not used to open innovation, open source or Creative Commons License. Once they agreed with these principles, big firms use Erasme as a training centre to co-creation methods for their own employees. Barriers to co-creation are step by step transformed in a way to diffuse co-creation methods in the economic ecosystem of Lyon urban region. The future creation of an “Augmented Third-Place for Urban Worlds” (Smart City, Smart Territory) by a collaboration with another Living Lab in Lyon (TUBÀ), the university and other institutions, is the result of the Erasme reputation acquired step by step since 20 years.

    Success Factors

    The success of Erasme Living Lab depends on diverse factors.
    • The management team is composed of engineers, designers, developers, makers who are familiar with open innovation methods, animation and project management. They share competencies with diverse creative and professional communities, all experts in a specific field (culture, education, technology, health…) at a local, regional or even national and international scales.
    • Established step by step during 20 years, the methodology of co-creation with users and stakeholders is proven: a first phase of “Mix” with users (from ideation to prototypes); a second phase of “Lab” with professionals and users (from prototypes to tests then development of an innovative product or service).
    • Education to the “right to fail” through a communication about “lessons from experience”. Because failures can be a source of value rather than a barrier to co-creation.
    • A Living Lab approach “out of the walls”, in public spaces with citizens rather than in a dedicated place, is a way to promote co-creation to the general public, digital artists or social innovators. But a dedicated place “as neutral as possible” is better for associating professional ecosystems such as big firms, creative start-ups or higher education institutions (design, digital coding, urban planning…).
    • Thanks to its 20 years of seniority, Erasme Living Lab is well identified by the metropolitan ecosystem, and even beyond the region.

    Lessons learned

    For the managers of Erasme, many Living Labs look more like Think Tanks. Erasme claims to be a “Do Tank” because the management team has the will to “make” without being so far a Fab Lab. Erasme is actually relying on existing Fab Labs to make some prototypes. End-users are invited to the co-creation process but at specific moments: 1) upstream in the ideation phase (one or two days) and the rapid prototyping phase (10 days); 2) downstream to test the prototypes. Between these two stages, time (several weeks even months) is given to private and public stakeholders for the development phase (further prototyping, tests, returns and iterations) of innovations that can be put on the market (diffusion phase). To be efficient during theses different stages, the Living Lab need a management team for maintaining a clear purpose (production of solutions and not only concepts and prototypes) and for offering a methodological accompaniment to users and stakeholders. But the respect of freedom in a “neutral” space or place is necessary in order to foster creativity, the emergence of disruptive ideas, and agility necessary for prototyping out of usual operating constraints. Paid professionals are a necessity to mobilize experts in the development phase, to be able to cross technical competences with artistic skills in dedicated domains (education, culture, health, smart city…). But the number of professionals have to be limited to maintain proximity among the stakeholders when it is necessary to obtain a consensus about the final product.

    L.I.V.E. – A Living Lab created by 3 cities to Co-Create Digital Urban Services with Citizens

    L.I.V.E. is the acronym for “Lab pour Imaginer la Ville Ensemble” (Lab to Imagine the City Together). The Living Lab approach is a methodology to co-design “user-friendly digital (public) services” with inhabitants and to imagine the “Smart and inclusive City”. L.I.V.E. was a political initiative of the mayors of 3 medium-sized cities in the Lille Metropolitan Area (North of France), composed of 95 municipalities with independent administrations, except some common services supported by the Lille European Metropole (MEL) administration. From a geopolitical point of view, L.I.V.E. was an innovative project that encouraged public officials of three municipalities to share their practices and to create digital urban services for and with citizens. Doing so, L.I.V.E. was a political innovation because municipalities are not used to share experiences with other municipalities. It was also a social innovation because the social profile of citizens in the three cities is very different: Marcq-en-Baroeul (a upper-class city with business and financial services) “against” – politically speaking – two declining industrial cities, Tourcoing and Roubaix (a working-class city with a high proportion of foreign-born population and high unemployment rate). So a Living Lab approach was chosen to go beyond the traditional political, administrative and social divide between the three contiguous cities. The project was launched and tested in 2017 then operationalized in 2018-2019, supported by the MEL within the framework of ERDF funds. But in the end of 2019, L.I.V.E was still a «work in progress».

    Stakeholders & Beneficiaries

    The key stakeholders included policymakers and public agents from the three municipalities as well as agents of the Lille European Metropole (MEL) to check the coordination between the policies and the scales of service implementation. Private stakeholders were associated according to the themes of the workshops (real estate companies, car parks managers, craftsmen, local shops,…). Local service designers or digital startups were associated to the Living Lab to help public agents and citizens during the design sessions or the prototyping of new digital services. They participated to the knowledge transfer and to co-creation practices for digital transformation. Beneficiaries were twofold: citizens and public agents. L.I.V.E. addressed citizens in order to invent new digital services that were solutions for “real needs” in the city (local e-commerce, car parks, digital application for leisure, co-working spaces, connected urban furniture…). But the Living Lab addressed public agents too for them to better understand the “real needs of citizens”, to share new knowledge and competencies about open data and social media and to create new public policies in the three cities.

    Co-creation process

    The co-creation process was divided into two stages: an experimental phase in 2017 and a structuration phase in 2018 and 2019. During the experimental phase, inhabitants were invited to discuss about their needs: 30 to 70 inhabitants per workshop “played the game” to imagine what types of digital tools could be created through a Living Lab to “imagine a better city together”. During the structuration phase, there were less inhabitants per workshop and sometimes only public agents and stakeholders according to the themes of the sessions, even if incentives to participation was diffused through websites and social networks. Co-creation process was considered by public managers and stakeholders as a “pleasant way of working” to solve problems by an innovative methodology. There were no dedicated place for the Living Lab but workshops were alternatively organised in one of the local community in respect of a “political equilibrium”. Agents of each collectivity were invited to share their different competencies with the help of designers specialised in design thinking or service design. Some startups were invited to prototype some digital solutions according to the ideas of inhabitants and stakeholders, and only some of these solutions were tested with inhabitants.

    Digital Transformation Process

    The digital transformation process concerned two types of users. On the one hand, citizens were the main target of the Living Lab project: L.I.V.E was a method to imagine a “better life” in the city thanks to new digital services, not created by American firms (GAFAM) or by Parisian Startups but co-created with citizens and local Startups to meet what they called “real needs” of citizens. On the other, public agents of the three implied cities were the secondary target: in place of digital services imagined by IT public services in a Top Down approach, the L.I.V.E. project was a methodology to help public agents to better understand the “real needs” of citizens or public agents following a bottom up approach. It was also a methodology to transform IT public departments of the municipalities, that have no skills about open data, social media or API tools.

    Results, Outcomes & Impacts

    As the experience lasted less than three years, it was too short to obtain significant results in term of new digital public services or even private digital tools for inhabitants. The main outcomes could be political as three mayors accepted to work with citizens and allowed their public agents for sharing time and local data. COVID-19 was a barrier to finalise some projects during the consolidation phase of the program. Value creation was less in the domain of public cost savings, neither in the creation of new digital public services than in a change of mindset and the discovery of service design and design thinking with inhabitants and stakeholders.

    Challenges & Bottlenecks

    A first challenge was the participation of inhabitants. If they were mobilised during the experimental phase, in 2017, to discuss about their needs, it was more difficult in the structuration phase of the Living Lab (2018-2019): citizens had not always time to participate to all the co-creative workshops, in particular if they were organised in the afternoon. A second challenge was institutional even if elected people were at the origin of the Living Lab project. Each local community constitutes the territorial and administrative framework for public services to inhabitants. So co-creation of new public services could face to administrative or legal barriers. Organising workshops from place to place without any dedicated building to the Living Lab was a way to mobilise inhabitants but was finally a barrier for mixing the population of the three cities. If, on the contrary, geographical mobility was not a problem for public agents and stakeholders, some public managers consider that a dedicated place for the Living Lab could be a “symbol of the political will” to work together and could be a lever for attracting potential (private) investors. Bottlenecks are linked to administrative traditions. Design workshops are important to identify real needs, to imagine new scenarios, to test prototypes and to identify irritants with inhabitants. But public managers consider that it is difficult: 1) to make “quick and dirty” with public procurement; 2) to «co-manage» new services with users. If validation of new policies is the role of elected people, production of digital services is the role of IT service Directorates of the local collectivities. Usual routines of service production and delivery are the main attribute of IT Directorates: if they agree with the role of users in the co-design phase, they are not ready for co-production and co-delivery with inhabitants.

    Transferability & Replicability

    The L.I.V.E. project is not at a stage of transferability. The scale of replicability could be the transferability of design processes from a public service to another public service in the framework of the three municipalities. Nevertheless, the aim was to diffuse to “other cities” new practices experimented through the Living Lab, because the project was co-financed by European funds and had to promote the results at a larger scale. But the end of the financial support and because of COVID-19, experimentations were stopped: the last news on Facebook or Twitter was posted in June 2020. Impossible to find any other information about “L.I.V.E” or “www.imaginezlaville.live/” on the Net in 2021. Transferability and replicability seem so to be largely compromised. Nevertheless, the Living Lab approach is still applied through a place dedicated to public service design in the building of the MEL. In 2020, Lille Metropole was also the World Capital of Design to improve public policies through a Living Lab approach at the scale of 90 local communities and more than 1.2 millions inhabitants, when L.I.V.E. project concerned 3 local collectivities and 250.000 inhabitants.

    Success Factors

    For local public managers, a criteria of success would be better public services thanks to Open data. L.I.V.E was an opportunity to test in real life with inhabitants some solutions and tools usually developed by Startups. Local collectivities can use data of their internal professional services in order to create new piloting tools before a larger openness of public data. For local authorities, data can lead to a revolution in public services and “doing together” with inhabitants and stakeholders “makes sense because nobody knows everything”.

    Lessons learned

    L.I.V.E. was imagined in the context of the digital transformation of public policies and local administrations. How to improve the relationship between citizens, elected people and public agents? How to switch from existing ICT tools (websites of municipalities) to online public services? The originality of the L.I.V.E. project is that workshops were organised in 2017 with the inhabitants to define the themes to explore and invent “the City of Tomorrow together”. The Living Lab workshops in 2018-2019 were planned to work on the priorities previously defined by citizens in 2017: family recreation, car parking, co-working, local trade, data for local collectivities, connected urban furniture, nature in the city, digital at school. Even if the project lasted for only three years, conditioned by the funding, the important outcome is not new digital services (still at a stage of “work in progress”) but the change of cultural mindset for public agents and inhabitants. Nevertheless, elected representatives have to take final decisions for public policies but co-creation of services through Living Lab methodology is difficult to integrate in a traditional political process. So, for transforming public services and public policies through co-creation with citizens and users, it is often “necessary to go under the radars”, working in small groups to encourage co-design. Then administrative managers have to list the priority projects to be proposed for a political validation.

    Verschwörhaus

    The Verschwörhaus was founded by the mayor of the city of Ulm. Its goal is to provide a space for the civil society where they can develop technological prototypes, experiment with digital tools and engage in voluntary work. For example, the Verschwörhaus is equipped with laser cutters, 3d-printers and woodworking tools. Therefore, the Verschwörhaus resembles a fablab.
    The Verschwörhaus is funded by the city administration and a local initiative called initative.ulm.digital, that aims to facilitate the digitalization of the city. Both organizations, the city administration as well as initiative.ulm.digital provide staff and funding for the equipment of the Verschwörhaus.
    There are two employees working at the Verschwörhaus in part time. The first is the head of the Verschwörhaus, that supports the activities the volunteers plan and serves as connection between the Verschwörhaus and the city administration. The second employee is responsible for operational tasks.
    The Verschwörhaus is formally connected to the organizational structure of the city of Ulm, however, the volunteers working at the Verschwörhaus are free in deciding their goals and activities. To achieve the overarching goal of facilitating voluntary work by the local civil society, the employees at the Verschwörhaus engage in several activities. First, they host events, where the residents of the city can come by and play around with the various tools that are available at the Verschwörhaus. Second they host larger events as, for example, hackathons. Third, there are also ongoing projects, as some volunteers got together to design and create a circuit board that can be used to facilitate an Internet of Things.

    Stakeholders & Beneficiaries

    There are two main stakeholders, that facilitate the activities of the Verschwörhaus. The first stakeholder group are the city administration and the initiative initative.ulm.digital that founded the Verschwörhaus and are responsible for the operational tasks surrounding the living lab. They provide the resources for the volunteers so that they can focus on the various projects and events happening at the Verschwörhaus. The initiative.ulm.digital consists of different local corporations. Therefore, the Verschwörhaus also has ties to private sector organizations. The second group of stakeholders are the volunteers that organize and host the events. They can freely decide what they want to do and through their efforts they bring the lab to life. Most of the volunteers working there have a background in the STEM fields and therefore provide technological knowledge and experience and share it with citizens that lack this kind of knowledge. The main beneficiaries of the Verschwörhaus are the members of the civil society as the Verschwörhaus is an opportunity for individuals to work with tools that are expensive or take a lot of space, for example, most people do not have laser-cutters at home. Individual citizens can experiment with these tool and get help by volunteers, who explain them how the tools work. Furthermore, also young people benefit from the Verschwörhaus, as it hosts events that are targeted to young people.

    Co-creation process

    The co-creation processes taking place at the Verschwörhaus are diverse, as the volunteers that participate there are independent and pursue projects as they like. Because of this, the co-creation processes are characterized by a diverse set of actors and at the end, a prototype of a technological tool or product is presented. For example, some volunteers planned and developed a cheap circuit board, that can be used by students, individual citizens or the volunteers themselves to experiment with sensors or establish an Internet of Things. In this project the volunteers had the initial idea and came to one of the employees of the city administration to pitch it. The employee of the city administration procured the materials so that the volunteers could construct the circuit board. The volunteers then independently developed the circuit board. The funding was also partly provided by the initative.ulm.digital so it was possible for the volunteers to develop several prototypes. This example of co-creation shows that co-creation happens independently in the Verschwörhaus and is driven by the work of the volunteers. The role of the city administration is to facilitate this process and to solve problems.

    Digital Transformation Process

    At the Verschwörhaus facilitating the digital transformation of the public administration and civil society is not an explicit goal, however a lot of activities are targeted at developing digital tools or facilitating the digital infrastructure. Furthermore, the focus on digital transformation is also mirrored in the type of stakeholders of the Verschwörhaus, as the initiative.ulm.digital was founded to facilitate the digitalization of the city of Ulm. The digitalization is mainly driven by the outcomes the Verschwörhaus produces (as for example, the circuit board) or the events, where individual citizens learn about technology. Furthermore, the Verschwörhaus also helps public servants from the city of Ulm to digitize processes, as the head of the Verschwörhaus invites them to the living lab and hosts design-thinking workshops for them.  

    Results, Outcomes & Impacts

    There are several benefits, that arise from the Verschwörhaus’ activities. For example, digital technologies become more accessible. Public servants and individual citizens can come to the Verschwörhaus and play around with tools and technologies as circuit boards. Especially the creation of prototypes leads to an enhanced understanding of technologies. Therefore, the public servants learn about different technologies and open up their minds about digitization. However, the impacts the Verschwörhaus has is partly dependent on how the prototypes can be scaled-up. As the Verschwörhaus is seen as an experimental space, it is questionable if an upscaling can be realized through the work of volunteers. For the civil society the benefits are that they have a space with advanced technological equipment to experiment with technology. Furthermore, knowledge-transfer is enabled, as the volunteers explain individual citizens how they can use the tools properly. The benefits for the volunteers working at the Verschwörhaus are the generation of knowledge and networks. For example, one motivation for the volunteers to create a circuit board was to learn how a circuit board is created. So they took the opportunity to learn more about technology themselves. Networks are generated, because the Verschwörhaus creates the opportunity for volunteers to meet like-minded people and share the knowledge and experience they have.  

    Challenges & Bottlenecks

    Even though the Verschwörhaus is independent in pursuing projects and setting goals, there are some legal barriers that inhibit the progress of some projects. For example, if the Verschwörhaus needs additional material resources (as, for example a circuit board) they have to follow the rules for procurement of the city of Ulm. Therefore, procuring new materials takes time which slows down project progress. The second barrier is the lack of staff, as there are only two employees of the city administration that work primarily at the Verschwörhaus. Therefore, the Verschwörhaus in not able to host as many events as they like, as the employees are present at these events and their work schedule does not allow for events on every day of the week. This limits the possibilities of the Verschwörhaus, as it is open only at a few days of the week for citizens to come there and work with the different tools. The third barrier is that the communication between the Verschwörhaus and the city administration is flawed sometimes. Reason is, that the volunteers working there, have a different mindset and educational background. Therefore, it is hard for the volunteers to justify what they do and why they need those expensive resources as the decision-makers at the administration lack technical knowledge to understand exactly what the projects are aiming at. This challenge is partly resolved through the efforts of the head of the Verschwörhaus, who is working part time at the Verschwörhaus. He serves as transmission between the volunteers at the Verschwörhaus and the city administration because he has a STEM-background as well but also knows the organizational structure and culture of the city administration.

    Transferability & Replicability

    The activities of the Verschwörhaus are dependent on the work of a lot of volunteers that contribute time and resources in their leisure time. Therefore, the transferability of the concept of the Verschwörhaus is dependent on an active civil society that is willing to get involved in such a project. Here, the city of Ulm has a few advantages because some local firms are technological, innovative firms, and some of them collaborate already with the Verschwörhaus. Furthermore, in the civil society there are a lot of highly-educated people with a background in the STEM-fields that volunteer at the Verschwörhaus. This economic-political context might be rare, so if another city wants to adopt this concept, they should strategically think about if there are volunteers with fitting knowledge available that would volunteer. The second factor that is important for transferability is, that the decision-makers within the administration as well as the employees at the Verschwörhaus need to be careful not to demotivate the volunteers working there. In this case, the Verschwörhaus enjoys political support and the volunteers can freely decide which projects they want to pursue. However, for an administration this might by risky, as the absence of formal goals makes it hard to justify why a living lab might be necessary for the city.

    Success Factors

    There are several factors, that contribute to the success of the Verschwörhaus. The first factor is the physical space and equipment of the Verschwörhaus. The Verschwörhaus is located at the city centre and is easily reachable by bike and public transportation. Therefore, it is possible for a lot of citizens to come to the Verschwörhaus. Besides the different tools there is also a kitchen where the volunteers can meet and cook together, so the equipment of the Verschwörhaus also facilitates a sense of community. The second factor is the technological infrastructure, as the variety of tools enables the volunteers to create prototypes. Furthermore, they provide free Wi-Fi and server infrastructure so the volunteers can bring their own technical devices. The third success factor is the political support the Verschwörhaus enjoys from the mayor of the city. The mayor initiated the Verschwörhaus and enables that the Verschwörhaus can act independently. For example, the mayor convinced sceptics within the administration to take the financial risk without knowing the benefits the Verschwörhaus could produce beforehand. The fourth success factor is the freedom of action that the Verschwörhaus has, as they can set their goals independently without limits or requirements that have to be fulfilled. The employees of the Verschwörhaus support the volunteers and provide them feedback, without determining the goals of a project. The fifth success factor is the mindset of the volunteers and public servants working at the Verschwörhaus. The volunteers are crucial in this regard, because the Verschwörhaus is dependent on the input they provide, as they have specialized knowledge that public administrators do not possess. They are highly motivated, as they contribute time and effort to pursue the projects of the Verschwörhaus. The same applies to the head of the Verschwörhaus, as he is also motivated to work with volunteers as well as facilitates the co-creation processes within the Verschwörhaus and communicates the results back to the administration.

    Lessons learned

    This case study on the Verschwörhaus highlights the importance of political support, sufficient financial and material resources as well as the independence of the organization. To be successful, it is necessary to facilitate the voluntary effort that the Verschwörhaus is dependent on. This happens through the ongoing support from the mayor as well as the operational support from the head of the Verschwörhaus. They have recognized that the volunteers need the best environment possible to work on the solutions and projects and that the task of the administration is to facilitate this environment. Especially important here, is that the collaboration between the administration and the Verschwörhaus still needs some adjustment, as the barriers that are described by the respondents refer to the lack of staff as well as the scepticism of decision-makers within the public administration of the city of Ulm. Therefore, if a lab is too independent from its founding organization, it might be the case, that it loses its legitimacy within the organization, as the benefits produced by the lab do not benefit the administration as well.