Conference Agenda

Background: Digital technologies can alter how citizens interact with their government(s) and ease an active engagement in the policies they are subject to and the services they receive. Interacting with citizens and gathering their input for smarter decision-making and customised service delivery, for example, can now happen at an unprecedented scale, anywhere and at any time, through engaging interfaces with AI-enhanced support. In these civic tech trends, open governance plays a crucial role in bridging traditional public administration (characterised by hierarchical and closed decision-making) with the contemporary call to involve citizens more meaningfully in policymaking, service design and delivery. It does so, amongst other things, by being transparent, ensuring quality open government data, and empowering citizens to use it actively to support their civic engagement.

Research objective: Through this paper, we aspire to identify influential open governance building blocks for successful citizen participation and co-creation, such as transparency and open data, accountability mechanisms and rules, and particular collaboration and participation methods, requirements and activation strategies.

Relevance: This study will offer a framework for studying open governance in digital democracy. In applying the framework to digital democracy use cases at different policy levels within Europe, we furthermore assess whether open governance features always constitute a deliberate choice in which, for example, accountability rules and transparency requirements are meticulously planned. What can best practices in digital democracy teach us about the true requirements for open governance (sustainability) in citizen participation? How do we guarantee that the opportunities offered or instilled by open governance truly are citizen-empowering?

Research methods: This research will proceed in two phases based on desk research. Firstly, a scoping review (following PRISMA guidelines) on the literature at the intersection between open governance and participatory digital democracy will be executed to determine core building blocks and themes. We then use these elements as a priori codes to qualitatively explore whether and how open governance was realised in 20 well-documented and published use case studies on digital democracy at different European policy levels.

Results: Remains to be determined based on our qualitative data analysis.

Implications for practice: This study offers governments, policymakers and civil society a valuable overview of the fundamentals of open governance and its impact on digital democracy and citizen co-creation or participation by delving deeper into best practices.