What is the Difference between Citizen Engagement and Participation?
Over the last years, there has been a shift from a top-down governance to a more horizontal governance. This new way of governing includes all the stakeholders of a public policy project, such as public...
8 Steps to Effective Participatory Budgeting
Participatory budgeting is an important process for inclusive and accountable governance. It allows cities and towns to educate, engage, and empower their citizens along with strengthening their governance. It has...
Participatory Budget: The Beginners Guide
A participatory budget is an innovative policymaking tool which directly involves citizens in policy decisions. It was first used in 1989 in Brazil and, since then, 1,500 times participatory budgets have been...
3 Tips to Blend Online and Offline Citizen Engagement
Online or offline citizen engagement, which strategy is best? Both online and offline platforms have their merits and when combined, they can be incredibly effective. Yet, cities don’t do this...
Introducing Surveys
We’re proud to announce that surveys are now an integral part of the CitizenLab platform. On popular request from the cities using CitizenLab, we’ve added them as a first-class feature in our system....
5 Citizen-Centric Sessions You Cannot Miss at SCEWC16
Gathering over 600 cities and more than 14.000 visitors, the Smart City Expo World Congress brings together urban leaders from Nov 15-17 in Barcelona. This year’s edition is focused on the role of smart...
We’re shortlisted for the Smart City Award!
CitizenLab has been chosen as one of the 5 finalists for the 4YFN Smart City Award. At the Smart City Expo in Barcelona, taking place on 15-17 November 2016, CitizenLab will present itself on stage on 17/11 during...
How These 10 Belgian Cities Are Using CitizenLab
Already more than 10 Belgian cities and municipalities are using CitizenLab to boost their online citizen engagement. As the software allows cities to easily fit in the current ongoing projects, all these cities...
How to Inject Startup Mentality into Bureaucratic Governments
Governments – these bureaucratic, inefficient organisations we all know – are more and more willing to reinvent themselves and their way of working. Startups can be a great inspiration source for this....
4 Emerging Technology Trends in Citizen Engagement
Digital technology is rapidly transforming the way cities are engaging with their citizens, and vice versa. To stand out from the crowd as a city government, it is critical to embrace and implement the following...
New Admin Dashboard for Your Citizen Participation
Do you want to easily oversee how your community of citizens engages online? We do think so! That’s why we created an analytics dashboard for city administrators that show you all key metrics in a nutshell....
Meet CitizenLab at Smart City InFocus in Yinchuan
The Chinese city of Yinchuan and TM Forum organise this week an impressive Smart City conference called ‘Smart City InFocus‘. The conference gathers both public and private leaders in the smart city...
From Talk to Action: Kickstart Your Smart City Plans
Wondering how to make your city smarter? But what does the buzzword “smart city” actually entails? What are the fields on which you could work on to turn your city into a “smart” one? And what are the first steps...
5 Most Common Myths About Citizen Participation
There are a lot of misconceptions out there about citizen participation and what it entails. This article aims at uncovering some of them notably by showing the differences between online and offline participation....
The Ladder of Citizen Participation in the Digital Era
Citizen participation refers to the process during which citizens are given the opportunity to participate in the public decision-making process. The government can decide to what extent the citizen’s opinion will...
Open Data for Government: A Gentle Introduction
“Open data is the idea that some data should be freely available for everyone to use and republish as they wish, without restrictions from copyright, patents or other mechanisms of control.” This implies that data...
Belgian City of Ostend launches citizensourcing platform
The city of Ostend (Oostende) launched its city platform this week! This city has decided to use CitizenLab in order to co-create the city with the help of their citizens. Ostend can understand the vision of their...
Three Alternatives to a Referendum
With the Brexit just behind us, questions arise about the eligibility of a referendum for asking people’s opinion. A referendum issue should stand on its own. In the Brexit case, it was clear that the EU...
Belgian city of Geel launches citizensourcing platform for urban planning
The city of Geel has launched its city platform one week ago! They will use CitizenLab to gain insights in how the citizens imagine the future of Geel, in order to co-construct the urban plans. Geel promotes...
City as a Platform: How It Changes Governance
What is the future role of city governments? As digital technologies are changing the way we interact with each other, cities have to undergo a transition as well. Tomorrow’s government is not merely a...
Four Steps to Enhanced Crowdsourcing
Over the past decade, crowdsourcing has grown to significance through crowdfunding, crowd collaboration, crowd voting, and crowd labor. The idea behind crowdsourcing is simple: decentralize decision-making by...
Why Govtech Is Europe’s Next Big Thing
Even in the digital era we’re currently in, using online government services can sometimes feel like stepping into a time machine. However, governments across Europe are waking up to the need to bring their...
5 Inspiring TED Talks About Our Governments In The Digital Age
New governance technologies are redefining authority and change what it means to be a citizen in the 21st century. Thanks to this digital transformation, decision-making will become more collaborative,...
Only Smart Citizens can enable true Smart Cities
The concept of a Smart City, as advertised by tech giants like IBM, Cisco and Siemens, is a city with sensors in every aspect of everyday life, gathering large amounts of data and using algorithms to optimize...
Gamification in Citizen Participation
Before getting your hands dirty with building a citizen participation programme, rethink why citizens would participate nota bene. Understanding the motivations and motives of citizens correctly leads to a more...
10 Must-Read Books About The City Of Tomorrow
With the Easter holidays coming up, you might find some more time to grab a book and learn about the city of tomorrow. We have curated our favourite list of books in the fields of urbanism, governments,...
5 Ways Crowdsourcing Serves Our Governments
Friedrich Hayek wrote in 1945: “The knowledge of the circumstances of which we must make use never exists in concentrated or integrated form.” Today’s networks enable institutions to gain access...
Why Citizen Experts Are The New Paradigm
We have the means to build a strong digital environment where citizens can connect with each other. This opens up the possibility of calling upon their collective expertise. So, why do we still put forward an...
5 Tips for Civic Hacking
Last weekend, the Hack With Refugees hackathon took place in the heart of Europe (yup, that’s Brussels — eat that, Donald!) to execute on ideas that have been generated for over two months on a...
Hack With Refugees: A Roundup
More than one month ago, CitizenLab started — in collaboration with a community of Brussels-based positive impact entrepreneurs — crowdsourcing ideas about how to turn the arrival of refugees into...
3 Key Learnings To Move Forward With Citizen Engagement & Co-Creation
We’re moving towards a new era. An era of smart cities with citizens actively involved in problem-solving, innovation and decision-making. Smart cities are often depicted to be about digital technologies only, but...
A Network of City Makers
Over the past couple of years, the City Makers movement has been taking off. City Makers are people who singlehandedly initiate change in their urban surroundings and are shaping the city in transition. Citizens in...
Hack with Refugees
Beyond the emergency and the emotional reactions generated by the massive arrival of refugees in Europe, it’s time now to think about mid-term and long-term issues and opportunities. What can be done to...
From Tech to People: Takeaways from Smart City Expo 15
Last week the CitizenLab team was present at the Smart City Expo World Congress in Barcelona. It won’t be exaggerated if you’d call it ‘a gathering of the brightest minds in the urban...
Meet CitizenLab at the Smart City World Expo in Barcelona next week!
Next week from November 17th until November 19th, the CitizenLab team will be present at the Smart City Expo World Congress in Barcelona. This is the world leading event for smart cities – bringing together...
5 Reasons Why Your City Should Start Online Civic Engagement
Civic engagement refers to the practice of encouraging citizens to become involved in the community life and help shape the community’s future. Thanks to the rise of modern technologies, your city...
