The document summarizes the ioPartecipo+ project, an e-participation initiative of the Emilia-Romagna Region of Italy. The project aimed to (1) build a digital space to promote citizen participation in regional policies, (2) better communicate regional policies, and (3) comply with the region's official portal. A collaborative design methodology was used involving users and stakeholders through focus groups, surveys, and remote feedback to understand needs and iteratively improve the design. Over 50 people were involved in the initial engagement activities. The resulting ioPartecipo+ website was launched at http://partecipazione.regione.emilia-romagna.it/iopartecipo.

1. ioPartecipo+
An e-participation case, a co-design process
Sabrina Franceschini

2. Context
Since 2004 Emilia-Romagna Region has promoted
projects about e-democracy; in particular the first
project was Partecipa.net and the further was Io
Partecipo. The above mentioned project experimented
solutions for the citizens involvement and participation
in the development regional and local policies.
Recently it was necessary to think over the tools and
methodologies adoped because of both the profound
political and social changes and the evolution of
dynamics, habits and consumption patterns of the new
communication means since the changed legal
situation (i.e. Law n. 3/2000 which affects both
European and regional level).

3. Project goals
• Build a digital-by-default, shared, web
space to promote the participation of
Emilia Romagna’s citizens
• Better communicate the regional
policies
• Be compliant with RER official portal
leveraging the existing features and
digital services.

4. Intent: Design for people
Methodology: collaborative-design with users and stakeholders
1. Start from people real needs
2. Design, Build and Evaluate iteratively…
… to learn where and how to improve
https://www.gov.uk/service-manual/start

5. Plan user engagement activities
Invest time and resources to listen to people
Plan meetings, focus groups, tools to collect user feedbacks

6. 1 MarCom workers, community managers, journalists;
2 Local and Regional Public Administration workers;
3 citizens and associations.
4 Emilia-Romagna Region internal employees
50+ people involved
Allow people to participate…
Focus Groups

7.  100 users involved
 150 comments
 30 unique authors
 25 surveys completed
…brings ideas, feedback and confirmations
#5
Remote feedback

8. Design for people, facing constraints
Start designing on paper with users at your table
Build prototypes and share them with domain experts
Change, refine, implement and test … and don’t take IT-guys
too seriously

9. Something we learned
Involve colleagues first in the design process to quickly collect
their constructive criticisms and warnings about existing
constraints
(tecnical, editorial, organizational…)
Do not be afraid to find out that citizens look to the public
institutions differently from internal
Highlight positive feedbacks from people
1: translation = you did a good job, but would you please also fix that…

10. ioPartecipo+ is online!
http://partecipazione.regione.emilia-romagna.it/iopartecipo

11. Thank you.