Civic Agency in Public E-service innovation

A main problem in digital transformation of the public sector that stands clear from public sector research is the lack of user involvement in development of public e-services. This problem is related to a digital divide in e-service use, where marginalised user groups lack digital skills, and it also blocks the potential in innovating future services based on the growing possibilities in open public data.

The CAPE project addresses these issues by developing Civic Innovation Centres (CICs), a novel innovation facility hosted in public libraries, where citizens engage in improvement of current e-services, as well as citizen-driven innovation of new services based on open public data. CICs will initially be developed in three project sites: Denmark (Ballerup Library, Ballerup), Finland (Oudi Library, Helsinki) and Sweden (Malmö City Library, Malmö). The goal is to initiate more CICs within the timeframe of the project.

The project consortium consists of the following partners: IT University of Copenhagen, project coordinator (Denmark); Aalborg University Copenhagen (Denmark); Ballerup Library (Denmark); Malmö University (Sweden); and Aalto University (Finland).

The CAPE project is a three-year Nordic research collaboration financed by Nordforsk in the call “Digitalisation of the Public Sector – Research and Innovation Projects”. Local funding organisations are: Innovation Fund Denmark, Forte (Sweden) and Academy of Finland.