The CLARITY project seeks to support European Member States in their pursuit for greater trust, transparency and efficiency within government via the increase take-up of open government initiatives. CLARITY is a small-scale coordination and support action designed to: 1) mobilise a multidisciplinary network of stakeholders across the open government ecosystem in order to support and encourage the take-up of responsible eGovernment applications that can help drive open government initiatives. 2) Conduct an interactive needs assessment and gap analysis in order to understand gaps in the market and support the growth on innovative solutions for open government in Europe and 3) work with the network to develop a blueprint for next steps in facilitating open government initiatives in Europe. Key outputs from the CLARITY project include: 1) opportunities for stakeholder engagement and innovation via focus groups, workshops the CLARITY Sprint Event and the CLARITY Exhibition and final conference; 2) the findings from the needs assessment and gap analysis in order to see current gaps in the provision, design and development of eGovernment applications; 3) the CLARITY blueprint for next steps in the take-up of eGovernment applications in Europe and 4) the establishment of the Open Government Marketplace – a space for the advertising, case studies and testimonials surrounding the implementation of eGovernment applications for Open Government initiatives.to be added

The European Commission has developed two parallel approaches to support the implementation of smart urban technologies: the creation of 'lighthouse projects' (large scale demonstration of technology in cities and communities) and 'horizontal activities' to address specific challenges (e.g. regulatory barriers, in standardisation, public procurement and performance monitoring). CITYKEYS project is within the context of these horizontal activities. The mission of CITYKEYS is to develop, and validate, a holistic performance measurement framework for future harmonized and transparent monitoring and comparability of the European cities activities during the implmeatation of Smart City solutions. The work methodology will be based on the following key factors: • Extensive collaboration and communication with European cities. • Establish a baseline by analysis and integration of existing results from previous initiatives. • Develop a set of KPIs specific for Smart Cities initiatives evaluation and comparability • Smart solutions for transparent and open data collection and processing. The tangible objectives of the CITYKEYS project are to: 1) Develop and validate a transparent performance evaluation framework: including KPIs definition, guidelines for data collections, performance system prototype and testing in case-cities. 2) Develop recommendations for the implementation of the performance system into the cities decision-making process and recommendations for the development of new business. 3) Engage stakeholders in identifying and exploiting opportunities for synergy and replicability; and establish a collaboration platform for European cities. The consortium includes 3 multidisciplinary research organizations, 1 cities association and 5 partner cities covering different geographical regions in Europe and different urban realities. In addition to the 5 partner cities, 15 others shown their commitment to join the project stakeholders advisory group.

BENEFITS will develop a Holistic Appraisal Framework (HAF) to measure the social, economic and environmental value-added of social services. HAF consists of a set of innovative research, technology and experimental solutions based on active citizen engagement to provide well-founded evidence on the social and economic returns of social services. HAF will leverage existing innovative, “beyond GDP”, valuation methods, leveraging insights from economics, social, behavioral, and political sciences as well as citizens and policymakers. Upon this preparatory work, BENEFITS will set up a research and engagement plan to identity, measure and visualise the social, economic and environmental value-added of social services as well as the enabling, inhibiting and mitigating factors that will allow to scale-up the positive effects of social services while ensuring a prosperous, inclusive and just transition. BENEFITS will consolidate these findings through setting up a) a Social Services Policy Observatory (SSPO), which will document, assess, evaluate and co-design policies across multilevel governance in the EU, and b) citizen’s assemblies, integrating participants from all backgrounds, to deliberate on proposed policies. These two activities will also be facilitated through BENEFITS’ Visualisations Platform (VP), an innovative technological solution, which will collect, document and visualise data from various sources (i.e., social media, news outlets, web) on issues related to provision of social services, welfare and prosperity, providing citizens, stakeholders and policymakers the necessary information to promote change. Through data and insights collected from the research, experiments, SSPO and VP, BENEFITS will build a Policy Evaluation Toolkit (EVAL-KIT) which will inform policy making, though co-designed recommendations, with the aim to promote the uptake and value scaling up of social services.

The Mobile Age project will focus on open government data, mobile technology, and the provision of public services in relation to Europe’s elderly population. Europe’s senior citizens are growing steadily and are predicted to comprise of 28% of Europe’s population by 2020. However, senior citizens do not normally share the same level of connectivity to the Internet as younger generations, and while government agencies are increasingly providing their services through digital platforms, this risks excluding senior citizens from the design and use of such services. Mobile Age will provide the basis for the development of mobile-based open government services focused on senior citizens. We follow a co-creation methodological approach that will allow for a substantive participation of senior citizens. MobileAge will focus on the co-creation of services related to the production and use of open data for cities. This will be achieved by pursuing four objectives: i) exploring and implementing innovative ways to support senior citizens to access and use public services through personal mobile technologies that are based on open government data, ii) develop and deploy co-creation approaches and methodologies to engage senior citizens effectively; iii) develop a situated, practice-based understanding of accessibility, mobility and usability of services from a senior-citizen point of view; and iv) develop a framework for impact assessment and evaluation for co-creation approaches to open service development for the ageing population. Mobile Age’s approach will be applied in cities and counties that are already providing innovative approaches for the participation of senior people in the development of city services: Bremen, South Lakeland, Zaragoza and the Region of Central Macedonia, with scenarios related to social inclusion, extending independent living, data curation for a safer and more accessible city, and the management of personal health information.

INTERLINK aims to overcome the barriers preventing administrations to reuse and share services with private partners (including citizens) by developing a novel collaborative governance model that merges the enthusiasm and flexibility of grassroot initiatives with the legitimacy and accountability granted by top-down e-government frameworks. We believe that a solution incorporating the strengths of these two approaches will be able to overcome their individual limitations, namely lack of involvement of private actors, transparency and trust for “top-down” and lack of sustainability, accountability, and legitimacy for “bottom-up” initiatives. To enable this, INTERLINK will provide a set of digital building blocks, called “Interlinkers”, that implement the defined governance model and standardize the basic functionalities needed to enable private actors to co-operate in the delivery of a service (organization, communication, scheduling, monitoring, etc.). In this way, the new shared service will maintain the effectiveness of digital solutions adopted in grassroots initiatives to support self-organization and make collective decisions, and at the same time fulfill the technical and legal requirements necessary for adoption by Public Administrations (PAs). The INTERLINK multidisciplinary consortium will deliver the new governance model and Interlinkers within a technological framework and operational platform based on an open software system leveraging on mobile communications, facilitating the co-production of services between PAs and private stakeholders. The solution will be customised, deployed and evaluated on three use-cases within the partner PAs: the Italian Ministry of Economy and Finance, the Latvian Ministry of Regional Development, and the City of Zaragoza. Lessons learned in the three use-cases will be generalized to deliver a re-usable solution across Europe.