From citizen participation to citizen co-engineering: The role of open data in developing new digital public services

Jubilee Fund of the City of Vienna for the Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration

This proposal adds to this stream of literature by adding another perspective to the demand-side of digital government. Whereas previous research asked whether citizens would participate in already implemented digital platforms and services, we focus on the particular trend where citizens are involved in designing (new) public processes, which we refer to as citizen co-engineering as a specific element of citizen participation. We are in particular interested in how open data can help in this citizen co-engineering process. We will analyze this by looking at the particular debates – and the various viewpoints from citizens – on how ethical trade-offs are inherently changing, now that new technology is available and ready to be implemented in (new) public services.