UserCentriCities

preconditions
Local authorities play a vital role in the provision of digital services, they are the front office of the government as a whole and the first way citizens experience digital services. But the role of local authorities in implementing the principles of user-centricity, design thinking and co-creation is not sufficiently recognized, and the fundamental tools to implement user-centricity on a local scale are missing. 
The principles of user/citizen centricity, set out in the 2017 Tallinn Declaration on Digital Government, remain quite generic and there is no guidance on what they mean in practice. Furthermore, local authorities, unlike countries, do not have the necessary data to compare their performance with that of others.

Partnership
The Lisbon Council (Coordinator)
eurocities
Moutain Biking
Espoo City
City of Milan
City of Murcia
City of Rotterdam
Tallinn city
Emilia Romagna region

UserCentriCities is a Horizon 2020 project started in December 2020. The project aims to: 

  • Support the implementation of the “user-centric principles for the design and delivery of digital public services” set out in the Tallinn Declaration, putting citizens at the center of the digital transformation of governments at city and regional levels;
  • encourage and support cities and regions that are adopting policies to become more user-centred;
  • promote capacity building, best practices and exchange of experiences, reuse of solutions, training, awareness raising through a community building approach;
  • ensure that the mechanism for recognizing cities and regions supporting user- and citizen-centred digitalisation policies becomes self-sustaining and sustainable beyond H2020 funding.
     

  • Strengthen local authorities-EU collaboration by adapting the Tallinn Declaration to the needs and challenges of local governments and citizens and preparing high-level policy briefs and participating in events bringing together European and local decision-makers
  • Creation of a dashboard to compare the performance of cities in terms of citizen centrality
  • Creation of a support toolkit and peer-learning service
  • Inclusion of other local authorities as Associate partners in order to increase the impact of the project and its sustainability.

The UserCentriCities project will build a platform dedicated to local authorities, to help them evaluate and compare their performance in terms of user-centric services, and to start a community of decision-makers at European level, in which experiences, knowledge and and lessons learned on how to implement user centricity at the local service level. At the same time, the project will serve to confirm the importance of local government in realizing the digital agenda.

Updated: 01/04/2022