Increase Mobile and Geolocalised Crowdsourcing with Dansmarue V2 (PAR0004)

PROBLEM COVERED BY THE COMMITMENT: DansMaRue is a tool that allows Parisians to crowdsource irregularities in the public space to the administration, through a mobile application. It was experimented with success on « negative » aspects of the city. It doesn’t allow Parisians yet to participate in a positive way to the co-design of the city.; PRIMARY OBJECTIVE: The Version 2 of the tool DansMaRue will offer inhabitants and users the possibility to get involved and participate to positive crowdsourcing on a given subject. For instance, the new location of equipment, works or services.; DESCRIPTION OF THE COMMITMENT: Offer the possibility to Parisians through a geolocation mobile app to express their preference on their city’s evolution.; RELEVANCE: The tool will allow Parisians and users to co-design and to share their priorities for a future construction or service by using a digital tool that already has a good user base.; AMBITION: The irregularities crowdsourcing part of this app receives today 3000 datas each month. A strong ambition would be to receive at least 1500 « positive » crowdsourced datas each month. STEPS IN IMPLEMENTATION: 1. PUBLICATION THE NEW VERSION OF DANSMARUE V2 FOCUSED 1. JUNE 2017 1. JUNE 2017 V2 FOCUSED ON IRREGULARITIES , PUBLIC SPACE AND EQUIPMENTS. 2. PUBLICATION OF THE VERSION WITH POSITIVE DATAS CROWDSOURCIN G 2. OCTOBER 2017 2. OCTOBER 2017

4. Increase mobile and geolocalised crowdsourcing with DansMaRue V2

Commitment text:

DansMaRue is a tool that allows Parisians to crowdsource [and report] irregularities in the public space to the administration, through a mobile application. It was experimented [tested] with success on negative aspects of the city. It doesn’t allow Parisians yet to participate in a positive [constructive] way in the co-design of the city.

The Version 2 of the tool DansMaRue will offer inhabitants and users the possibility to get involved and participate to positive crowdsourcing on a given subject. For instance, the new location of equipment, works or services.

The tool will allow Parisians and users to co-design and to share their priorities for a future construction or service by using a digital tool that already has a good user base.

Milestones

1. Publication of the new version of DansMaRue V2 focused on irregularities, public space and equipment

2. Publication of the version with positive Data crowdsourcing

Commitment Overview

Commitment Aim

Overall Objective & Relevance

Parisian citizens currently have access to mechanisms through which they can suggest policy changes to the city of Paris, such as “Madame la maire j’ai une idée” (idee.paris.fr) and the participatory budgeting initiative called “Paris, Budget Participatif” (budgetparticipatif.paris.fr) to provide input to and monitor the budgetary process. However, there is no mechanism to capture citizen demands and ideas to improve public service delivery or maintenance of public areas (for instance, a citizen who would suggest the installation of a new bench or bicycle parking station).

This commitment builds upon the on-going efforts to improve the already existing public application called DansMaRue, developed by the City of Paris in 2012 to enable users to notify irregularities at the street level (i.e. cleanliness issues, litter, re-pavement). This commitment calls for the continued support of a new version of this app (DansMaRue V2) and the creation of a new feature to allow crowdsourcing of constructive feedback and to suggest improvements to the city of Paris. Meetings to develop the new feature of DansMaRue V2 started in May 2016 ^{The meetup group “Paris Open Innovation Meetup” is visible only for its members. The content of the 2016 May 30th event “Co-concevoir le dispositif DansMaRue V2” is available in the public folder: https://goo.gl/hWCTQ7} and were expected to continue during 2017 to launch the application by October 2017. According to the action plan, the government expected to collect at least 1500 monthly suggestions.

The commitment is relevant to the OGP value of civic participation because the new features of the mobile application would allow citizens to provide input for the improvement of public services. However, as articulated, the app would not call on the government to justify its actions in response to citizen feedback, which is why the commitment is not relevant to public accountability.

Specificity and Potential Impact

The specificity of this commitment is coded as medium. Although the two activities identified in the action plan are verifiable, it is not clear how the deliverables would achieve the expected outcome of the commitment. The action plan does not provide details on what constitutes a suggestion and under which criteria they will be taken into consideration for further action. It also lacks a clear plan to explain how the government would raise awareness and launch the application in order to ensure citizen uptake and understanding of its new use.

If implemented fully, the IRM researcher considers that the potential impact of this commitment would be minor. This commitment proposes the objective of opening a channel for minor street-level improvements. However, its ambition is conditioned by the quality and quantity of the input. It is unclear how the city would translate these requests into action and if existing users of DansMaRue would use it for providing suggestions instead of its original purpose which is signaling irregularities.

Besides, considering that the design of this platform started before the formulation of the action plan and that, as written, this commitment does not specify how its inclusion in the plan will enhance the new features, the IRM researcher believes that there is no clear major change expected in the status quo. The commitment is an incremental step towards participation in the co-design of service delivery. It is limited in scope as it does not provide detail in regards to how to make use of or process the data collected, nor creates new policies on inclusion of citizen input in decision-making.

Completion
Limited

The first milestone—the release of the new version of DansMaRue V2 focused on irregularities—was achieved. The application was released on August 2017 according to the history of versions of the app on Apple’s App Store ^{https://itunes.apple.com/fr/app/dansmarue/id662045577?mt=8} and is published on Google Play Store as well ^{https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=fr.paris.android.signalement} . However, while the new version of the app features improved design and ergonomics, ^{https://itunes.apple.com/fr/app/dansmarue/id662045577?mt=8} the feature regarding street-level improvements has not been released yet, as confirmed by the government point of contact. ^{Sabine Romon (government point of contact for OGP), comments made during an interview with the IRM researcher, 16 November 2017.} She explained that this delay was due to issues during the testing of the second version of the application.

While one of the milestones of the commitment called for the release of a new version of DansMaRue, the main objective of the commitment consisted of allowing Parisians to signal street-level issues. Therefore, an update to the app that does not include this new functionality is considered to constitute only limited progress.

Early results: did it open government?

Civic Participation: No change

This commitment aimed to open a channel for Parisians to propose minor street-level improvements that could not be previously submitted in the application DansMaRue as they are not issues to be fixed. This new feature had the potential to further include citizens in the design of public places, even though the process by which requests would translate into actions was unclear.

At the close of the action plan, the feature allowing Parisians to propose improvements in DansMaRue, instead of only fixing issues, had not been implemented yet. The new version of the app consisted mainly of cosmetic changes and improved design without the addition of any new functions or opportunities for influencing public policies. The IRM researcher therefore did not find evidence of changes in government practices regarding civic participation for this commitment.

Recommendations

The design and implementation of this feature to propose street-level improvements might benefit from the help of the innovation lab mentioned in the fifth commitment of the action plan. In the innovation lab, the city of Paris could learn how to co-design the app to expand collaboration between the administration and the citizens on the process of handling these requests and translating them into action. Specifically, the innovation lab might help to inform how the city can crowdsource improvements.

In addition to how the requests will be handled, selected and translated into actions, another question is how the improvements will be funded. Street-level improvements could become a new category of projects in the participatory budget, for example.

Eventually, the city of Paris should make sure that this new feature in DansMaRue follows the principles of its newly adopted participation charter to ensure that the street improvement process is inclusive and transparent. In particular, the government should provide feedback on which citizen suggestions are accepted, along with the reasons for why some suggestions were accepted and others were not.