The Futurium: state of play and lesson learnt

Franco Accordino Head of IT unit DG CONNECT

Purpose

To enable citizen to co-create

ideas and share evidence in

order to feed public policy

reflections

It's a bit of a…

• Social network

• Wiki

• Ideation tool

• Foresight platform

• …

Evidence + Participation

Futurium's initial

requirements

• Support "Digital Futures" foresight as an input to new College (spring 2014)

• Open to everyone's participation

• Consultative rather than deliberative

• Combining aspirations with evidence

• Experimental, low cost/risk ("no regrets")

Policy Hints

Storyline

Oct 2012

Mar 2012

1st AOPL

event Dec 2012

EP event

(futurium

kick-off)

ICT2013

Nov 2013

DAA Dublin

Jun 2013

New College

Briefings

preparation

May 2014

Out comes

Futurizens

120+ Events, 3500+ participants

20+ Webinars

1900 members, <15% active

New policy making practices

Futurium model

20+ Requests for take-up

210+ Futures

1800+ Evidence items

11 Themes

Futurium under the ISA programme

• Generalise the process and the data model

• Consolidate the platform's core and advanced features

• Make it available to anyone via the ISA's JoinUp

• Three deliverables:

1. Drupal distribution and/or module(s)

2. Technical manual

3. Use manual

Futures

(Visions)

Policies

Inspire

Impact on society,

economy,

environment, …

Real world

Trends

(Scientific)

Evidence

Sense & Analyse data,

Identify issues,

Elicit knowledge

(Re-)shape Inform

Envision

IMPLEMENTATION /

REVIEW

DESIGN

Stakeholders

Policy makers

Other factors

than evidence

Social

Networks

Ra

tio

na

l, s

cie

nti

fic

, a

na

lyti

ca

l Emotional, intuitive, holistic

Rules

and Laws

1. Generalizing the process

2. Generalizing the Data Model

Trend

Trend

Vision

Vision

Vision

Policy Policy

A1 A101 A A

B A C

Futures

Ideas pillars actions

Agents

p1 p7

Policy

A A

p p

A A

Vision Vision Vision

@ ? #

Evid

ence

Events

Opportunity Challenge • Desirability • Likelihood

Opportunity Challenge

• Impact • Plausibility

Stakeholders

Engagement

Tools

Policy Makers

Analyse

Analyse

Social Media

(Twitter, FB, G+,…) Participate

Participate

Real world data

Participate

Participate

Data Gathering

Data Crawling

Open

Data

Cloud

Data Analytics

Tools

Conceptual architecture

Sense-making

Engagement/Co-creation

Sense-making

Sense-making

Two sets of features into one platform

Analytics tools

Engagement tools

Gaming,

multi-agent

simulations,…

Foresight tools, workflows,

delphi surveys, back-cast,

content diagrams…

Text processing tools: fact-

finding, keyword extraction,

summarisation,…

Data

analytics,

statistics

Basic data types:

visions, policies,

evidence, events

Communities

Messaging

Events

Wiki

Blogs

Desirability Plausibility

SMART policy attributes

Impact

Library

Polls

Notification

Subscription

Data

gathering,

APIs,

plug-ins

Building blocks

Futurium ISA's milestones

Requirements and specifications (September 2015)

Release 1 (Oct 2015-March 2016):

• Core futurium + analytics and basic workflows (march 2015)

• Engagement of test users (3-5 municipalities)

• User and technical manuals

Release 2 (June 2016):

• Configurable workflows

• Content diagrams (e.g. idea's structure, roadmaps, …)

Future releases (2017+) ?

• Advanced data analytics (summarisation)

• Data plug-ins

• Simulations,…

Digital4Eu

Digital4Science

eGov Action plan

Innovation 4EU

REGIO EPSO

Futurium (common IT platform)

EC's instance: multiple use cases (flavours) on top of a shared engine

• Avoids duplication/mushrooming of platforms • Sharing features/data • Sharing experiences/best practices/lesson learnt • Customisable/adaptable (with some limitations) • Scalable to all commission

…..

• Define an engagement strategy first

• Be clear on the purpose, make it a shared one!

• Set expectations (policy sponsors, citizens, …), set targets for getting "viral"

• Inter-leave online process with in-person conversations , "go local", engage all,

organising thematic events/webinars

• Be focused: fewer topics is better than discussing about everything

• Start simpler, make it gradually more complex, if needed

• Be clear on the rules of the game (data, workflows,…)

• Define roles: community managers, content curators,…

• Work on people, value their creativity, set incentives, reward contributors

• Feedback is key (draw summaries, make sense of conversations…)

The lessons (being) learnt

The Challenge is Not The Toolbox…

…but the design of a (viral) engagement process with a lot of variables:

- Political - Communication - Engagement - Content - Technical - …

Technical solution must ensure rapid adaptation to emergent business needs

More information

General introduction to the model:

http://www.springerlink.com/openurl.asp?genre=article&id=doi:10.100

7/s13347-013-0108-9

The futurium platform (EC instance):

http://ec.europa.eu/futurium/

Thanks!