The co-creation process is facilitated through a set of suitable web interfaces allowing all stakeholders not only to provide suggestions for the new services (by means of the Ideation Board component), but also to take an active part in the design, implementation and deployment of services (by using the Service Composer component) thus enabling them to assemble the services based on their personal needs. WeLive environment enables crowd-sourcing of data and co-creation of demand-driven services directly by the citizens, leveraging data contributed by the city through open data interfaces as well as by the citizens and businesses themselves. An important technical innovation of the project is the Service Composer component, a component which enables the democratization on the creation of public services by enabling non-ICT users to easily assemble composite services that suit their personal needs using the city functionality building blocks through an easy to use web interface.
The creation and delivery of services has been stimulated by using a vote/rate mechanism to elicit the best ideas and services; ideas receiving more backing will maximize their possibility to be implemented, while services receiving more votes will have more chances to be massively reused. This kind of mechanism, together with the design of a transparent idea selection process implemented in the Ideation Board, will give users the feeling of being a real active part in the decision process of a city. The ecosystem is leveraging the latest web technologies and the Open Data provided by the public administrations, but also by any other entity, and is predominantly targeting smart phones and tablets as the most suitable service delivery channels for the modern city life. At the end of the project, there were 40 public services using the WeLive infrastructure, 21 of which were Android apps and 8 created through the Service Composer. The WeLive ecosystem provides tools, e.g. RESTful API and Service Composer, and functions for easy integration of various types of citizen’s devices (air quality, weather) as well as for the crowd sourced input on different topics and events happening in cities, thus supporting citizen co-creation of services in different domains of interest for the life in a city. WeLive hopes that such an ecosystem might be a catalyser for the creation of applications that will be offered on public administrations’ stores (WeLive Service Catalogue and Hosting Environments) bringing revenues to the creators and the contributors of each application, while at the same time simplifying and improving public services and the general quality of life in a city.
In essence, WeLive purpose has been to foster the integration, refinement, and population of the WeLive environment publicly available at
https://dev.welive.eu(öffnet in neuem Fenster) and, secondly, to pilot the WeLive tools and public service artefacts, i.e. datasets, building blocks and apps, in the three cities and one territory participating, once a thorough planning for the piloting had been generated. As a result, an evaluation and assessment of the impact of WeLive has been produced.
