On 23 March 2021, cities and regions from the project UserCentriCities gathered once again for a co-creation session around the deliverable D1.1: Baseline survey report. This document is based on a survey sent to cities and regions from February to March 2021. A total of seven European cities and regions answered the survey, thus providing insightful inputs for the deliverable. Katri Grenman, research scientist at VTT, provided the participants with an overview of the answers.
Two main things are interesting to note. Firstly, a lot of cities had common answers to most of the questions: all cities measure the digital interactions, the accessibility, availability and usability of digital services. All respondents comply with the GDPR and use incentives to promote digital service use. Secondly, although user-centricity is at the heart of many respondents’ considerations in terms of development of their services, none of them have an official definition of user-centricity. It is obvious that user-centricity is a commonality but approaches vary from one administration to another.
Generally speaking, room for improvement is strongly related to implementing a common understanding of user-centricity, harmonising its measurement, and engaging all kinds of citizens. In that sense, UserCentriCities will help to provide cities and local authorities with a common understanding and a comprehensive dashboard to compare good practices.
You can find the recording of the session here (28 minutes).
Eurocities