Engaging citizens in the smart city through participation platforms: A framework for public servants and developers

Smart cities refer to the application of information and communication technologies to improve the quality of life of citizens. Smart city projects may fail if citizens do not actively participate in their design. In smart cities, this participation often occurs through dedicated participation platforms where citizens can vote, discuss, and submit ideas. However, current platforms are not always aligned with the requirements of citizens in a representative way. Furthermore, they are neither always aligned with the reality of the administration and the requirements of public servants. In this paper, we examine what characteristics a participation platform should possess to be aligned with the requirements of citizens and public servants. A quantitative survey of citizens and qualitative interviews of several public servants are performed to elicit those requirements. The most important requirements for citizens are free access, user friendliness, and government usage of the ideas while the most important for public servants are the representation of the city's identity, back-end functionalities, and inclusivity. Afterwards, a guiding framework, following Design Science Research, is composed based on the requirements and applied to the platform LeuvenMaaktHetMee. Furthermore, the framework updates the founding framework of Macintosh and Whyte from 2008, allowing to guide the development and implementation of participation platforms.