2023 Award "Best Practice in Citizen Participation"

In June 2022, a face-to-face Citizens‘ Jury engaged 24 Lombardy citizens - selected according to specific socio-demographics criteria - to learn, discuss and deliberate during two Saturdays about regional Responsible Smart Mobility. At the end of the Jury, Jurors provided Lombardy Region with specific recommendations on how to insert responsibility issues like privacy and profiling, digital and economic inclusion, and accessibility in preparation of a Lombardy Region call for projects on local mobility data driven services (launched in Autumn 2022). Citizens’ recommendations have been inserted as requirements for applicants to be considered in their project proposals and of course in the execution of the winning projects. Citizens Jury and other forms of deliberation can meaningfully inform policymakers to design better operational R&I policies (i.e. call for R&I projects or ideas). 

Useful criteria for selecting projects can emerge from this approach to ensure that the final outcomes generated by the funded project are, from the outset, aligned with societal values and needs. In fact, thanks to the citizens’ contributions, selected R&I projects will be “responsible by-design" since they will include citizens' opinions on societal responsibility issues when designing and shaping project results. An intense communication activity accompanied the engagement process, with the production of a web-section devoted to the project, an informational video and a report with all the results. A final public event was also held to present the results to the public.

1) Webpage hosted on Lombardy Region portal “Open Innovation” describing the TRANSFORM project, in which the Citizen’ Jury on Responsible Smart Mobility was conducted https://www.openinnovation.regione.lombardia.it/it/iniziative/transform-eu (External link) In this space there is a video on the Citizen’ Jury on Responsible Smart mobility: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YG9bgjBpEjE (External link)

2) TRANSFORM project pages on participatory activities (including the Citizens’ Jury) in Lombardy: https://www.transform-project.eu/data-driven-smart-mobility/ (External link)