European Programme Horizon 2020

Understanding transformation of public administrations

On 14 October,  the call for proposals CULT-COOP-11-2016/2017 “Understanding the transformation of European public administrations” has been published by the European Commission in the framework of the Horizon2020 Programme.  

The aim of the current CULT-COOP-11-2016/2017 “Understanding the transformation of European public administrations” call for proposals, published by the European Commission in the framework of the Horizon2020 Programme, is to explore and analyze how the public administrations can become open and collaborative, encouraging the engagement and participation of public, private and civil society stakeholders - such as for example other public authorities, users, citizens, businesses, researchers, civil society organisations, social innovators, social entrepreneurs, media actors, artists and designers - for effective, appropriate and user-friendly public service design, delivery and policy-making. The research proposals should present evidence of previous experience in creating environments fostering co-creation through engaging different societal actors in addressing research and impact goals (scientific, political and social) and their planned research should go beyond the existing theories and empirical evidence. The actions need to engage multi-disciplinary and multi-sectoral teams to explore the complexity of public services, enablers for public administrations, identify the necessary changes, risks and barriers to implementation, assess the potential of different policy domains and explore feasibility in different public administration contexts (across a representative set of Member States and different levels of governments). The actions need to provide a set of concrete recommendations for policy-makers at local, regional and national level. The actions need to address the transferability and sustainability of their results.

The priorities of the current CULT-COOP-11-2016/2017 “Understanding the transformation of European public administrations” call for proposals, published by the European Commission in the framework of the Horizon2020 Programme, are:

- exploring what the role of governments in an open and collaborative government setting may be and how this could be embedded in an EU setting (taking into account shared European values, diversity as well as principles of subsidiarity);

- developing methods and approaches to understanding community assets, needs and requirements in order to provide meaningful public services;

- understanding the demographics, appropriateness of participatory practices and their feasibility for scaling up, so as to generate civic participation on all levels, ensure level playing field in public engagement and legitimacy of the process;

- analyzing the necessary cultural attitudes, roles, skills, expertise, knowledge as well as incentives and drivers (such as for example possibilities for wellbeing, healthy life, employment, democracy issue, etc.) of those involved in this process (including civil servants, service providers and users);

- exploring how innovative processes and mechanisms (e.g. through scalable open platforms or open architectures, etc.) can be embedded in public administrations to create an open digital government environment and ecosystem for improving service delivery and citizen engagement;

- analyzing the conditions under which user-knowledge input is fully integrated in the services/policy development/design process;

- analyzing what co-creation in the public sector can learn from the private sector in terms of critical drivers and enabling factors;

- exploring the suitability of different institutional frameworks for collaboration both within the public sector and with external actors that allow sharing data, information and services internally between departments and with external parties for re-use;

- exploring the suitability of innovative technologies that facilitate for example co-creation, sharing relevant information between stakeholders, address issues of privacy, data protection and security or improve communication;

- analyzing the drivers and enabling factors for societal actors to engage in public service or policy co-creation and identifying different sustainability models (such as for example Public Private Partnerships, government spin-offs, hybrid government teams, etc.);

- exploring, monitoring and measurement approaches, methods and tools to understand the impact of open, innovative and collaborative government for public administrations, for growth and societal well-being and for substantiating the link between innovative public sector service and public sector efficiency.

 

The expected impact of the current CULT-COOP-11-2016/2017 “Understanding the transformation of European public administrations” call for proposals, published by the European Commission in the framework of the Horizon2020 Programme, is to create the basis for new institutional strategies and mechanisms to enhance collaboration among government departments and with other actors to collaboratively design, produce and deliver public services and policies. The findings will help public administrations at all levels to rethink their roles in the European society. Results will give guidance to governments and policy makers on how to transform public administrations to become open, innovative and collaborative. The policy recommendations will provide guidance on the cultural, legal or procedural changes needed to facilitate the direct uptake of research and other insights by stakeholders. The actions will also improve the understanding of the effectiveness of related public policies in different democratic models. Taking up the policy recommendations will ultimately lead to improved public service delivery and policy effectiveness, higher quality services, improved societal evidence, improved user experiences and inclusiveness as well as increasing level of civic participation, transparency, trust, social inclusion, accountability of institutions and good governance.

 

The budget earmarked for the co-financing of the current CULT-COOP-11-2016/2017 “Understanding the transformation of European public administrations” call for proposals, published by the European Commission in the framework of the Horizon2020 Programme, is EUR 0.5 million. This does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.

 

The deadline for submitting proposals in the framework of the current CULT-COOP-11-2016/2017 “Understanding the transformation of European public administrations” call for proposals, published by the European Commission in the framework of the Horizon2020 Programme, is 4 February 2016.  

 

Further information on the current call for proposals is available on the Horizon2020’ web site at: http://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/portal/desktop/en/opportunities/h2020/topics/3088-cult-coop-11-2016_2017.html.