Reaching Citizens’ Engagement by Services: Swiss Use Case

Abstract

Collaboration with citizens and users plays an increasing role in the transformation of public services towards new forms of production and delivery. Thus there is a need to modernize the civil service to accelerate innovation in governments, as civil servants will also have an important role to play. Digital civic engagement platforms can provide a more attractive and accessible means for participation. We believe that neither an exclusive top-down approach nor a bottom-up approach can address the current needs. Instead a hybrid approach should be designed. This paper presents a novel approach to address the issue of current civic disengagement. This approach is illustrated through four different use cases in the Swiss context.

Keywords

• citizen engagement
• services
• trust and transparency