Methods and tools used in the Nieuvegen pilot

Policy makers and professionals needed to look for new ways of working. The co-creation approach was employed hoping to find some solutions people will respect and follow.

Ongoing door to door conversations. An initial phase in Nieuwegein involved better awariness of the strategic level and political context and reaching out in the form of ‘door to door’ conversations inventorying good ideas, picturing living conditions, and catching dreams, capabilities and needs of inhabitants.

Next method was organizing meetings with inhabitants by giving attention to the design of the meeting, the quality of relations and conversations as well as how ideas were generated for experiments. In many ways these meetings could be seen as using Living Lab approach with focus on change need, new ideas, roles and needed relationships. The project leader and her team underlined that change will only be achieved in the neighborhood if it is done with the citizens in co-creation. The design of first meeting was open, meaning that professionals were open to its outcomes. The meetings were seen as valuable in themselves if working on the premises for co-creation. The primary objective though was to find common solutions for the waste and litter deposit problem in co-creation with inhabitants. The idea was that through designing experiments based on their own ideas the inhabitants of Plantsoen will eventually take common responsibility for their living environment.

The meetings took place in one of the buildings of Plantsoen where one of the apartments has been transformed in to a “living room for the neighborhood”. It was functionally decorated, with a big table where conversations with 10 to 15 people could take place. One of the walls has been transformed into a blackboard and the space was being gradually transformed through co-creation. These meetings resulted in unfreezing of first ideas and plans for improvements. To the table are invited inhabitants of the four building blocks, representatives of the municipality, the neighborhood coordinator, a representative of social care organization. The Social Housing organization did not attend the inhabitant’s meetings, as many complaints by inhabitants are related to housing. A danger would be that the objective of the meeting would shift to individual problems and grievances. Inhabitants present were either invited because they were already active citizens, or they were invited because of their input during door to door conversations.

Support from neutral action researchers: Throughout the whole process the academic partner supported the experiments through monitoring, process evaluation, observation and feedback.

Results

The three meetings were regardless of all communication challenges positive for the formulation of ideas.

• Experiment 1: Co-Designing and Co-creation of a funny waste deposit by inhabitants and a designer artist.
• Experiment 2: Co-Designing and Co-creating a communication platform/ tool by inhabitants with students and / or researchers from communication and journalism department of HU University of Applied Sciences.
• Experiment 3: Opening of new underground containers, with cameras and control on the ground whether waste is deposited next to the container instead of inside.
• Experiment 4: Co-create a calendar for the neighborhood and organization of a clean-up day

One of the most important results up until now is that the area is noticeably cleaner. Inhabitants as well as other stakeholders have observed this. Besides that, inhabitants seem to speak up more and more when there is – yet again – waste in the surroundings of their apartment buildings. 

The use of open data, Social media and Digital technologies

Social media are counter-productive at this stage. We searched neighborhood apps for information and found none. The neighborhood was not detectable with big data strategies. For a long time, social problems were therefore ognored.

More than once an attempt was made (outside this pilot) to use online communication, often with no response.

The role of open data: Increasing municipal transparency.

Mapping open data sources. Houten municipality does not yet use open data to a great extent. They do use all kinds of data that are processed in several yearly reports. These data are however not yet openly available in a common, machine-readable format. The municipality has ambitions to make these types of data accessible in the future. How and when this will happen is currently still a topic of debate within the municipality. However, the Dutch project team envisioned several national and local databases (see below) for the municipality with regard to unemployment, work and income and other topics relevant to the pilot.

Building bridges between the needs and the data. The main purpose to use open data in the Dutch pilot is to provide transparency towards citizens regarding the results of the municipalities’ policy. The pilot aims to contribute towards better results regarding the current mismatch between job seekers and employers and to help to diminish the unemployment rate in the municipality. The pilot also addresses the problem that people (inhabitants and professionals) can’t oversee all the relevant information available in order to find a suitable and rewarding job. The Dutch team convinces that open data can be helpful to connect several datasets that contains this information, such as a dataset concerning one’s medical situation (and the extent (%) to which someone is declared disabled for work, for instance), a dataset with information on one’s income (and benefits) and a dataset with information about the household/family (see figure). Connecting these datasets for instance with an app could help to manage and oversee all these aspects that are now separated in different ‘silos’. By connecting them, it will be possible to measure the consequences in case the conditions in one dataset changes. This way innovation is possible.