From idea to reality

Abstract

With smart governance, citizen participation for the delivery of services and the transformation of society to a participation society, there is an increased focus of governments on the stimulation of citizen initiatives and the usage of their knowledge for the delivery of services. What is seen more and more nowadays is that online platforms are introduced which collect, connect and help citizen initiatives for the city. Not only governments benefit from the interaction with citizens and citizen initiatives, the initiatives often need the local government for the realization of the initiative. However, for a lot of citizen initiatives, the current revenue-models and legal & bureaucratic systems are not always suitable for the citizen initiatives. So, there is a mismatch between the government and its governance and the pursuit of citizen initiatives. Besides, governments are rather slow in adapting and utilizing certain platforms. So, local governments have to find ways to guide the organization through the process of necessary change in order to be able to stimulate citizen initiatives. However, there is a lack of usable mechanism and frameworks that give insight in and promote bottom-up collaboration and participation. Hence, insight is needed in the organizational structure of local governments for the stimulation of citizen initiatives. Besides, insight is needed in the (possibilities of) online platforms for citizen initiatives and the usage and added value of the platforms. This research combines an extensive literature review on smart governance, citizen engagement and literature on citizen initiatives and online platforms with an empirical study that follows municipalities and online platforms for citizen initiatives in the Netherlands and examines the case studies on six elements: strategy, technology, organization, people, environment & success. Besides, the research includes an analysis of the usage of online platforms for citizen initiatives and their impact on the built environment. The main goal of the research is to provide recommendations on how local governments can stimulate citizen initiatives.