Abstract Summary
Public procurement of (smart) city technology is a defining moment in the development of our cities. More often than not, however, it is a closed process to the inhabitants of these cities. As part of the ongoing research project Human Values for Smart Cities, Waag Futurelab and partners investigate how to include human values in our (future) cities by involving citizens in the procurement process. We do this by developing and testing methods for citizen-led procurement through a series of workshops. We identify several touchpoints in the procurement process where citizens can be involved. We design a method which can be applied with citizens in one of these touchpoints to discuss public values. We propose an 1,5 hour co-creative session where we share knowledge on opportunities for and best practices of citizen involvement in the procurement process with a visualization of Waag’s research in the Human Values project and we test a participatory method for public procurement with the visitors of the AMS Scientific Conference on Reinventing the City. The learning outcomes include: - Knowledge on the public procurement process, including touchpoints for citizen involvement, with practical examples and methods to use. - A new method for municipalities to apply together with citizens in the procurement process - Experience with a co-creation method for discussing public values. Our objectives are: - To highlight where there is room in procurement processes to include human values through involving citizens; - To test a method for public procurement (with the general public); - To stimulate municipalities to actively engage citizens in digitization; - To give citizens grip on the (procurement) processes that shape their city. The target audience consists of government employees who are involved in procurement and citizens who want to actively influence the smart city of the future. There are no prerequisites or experience required. We will encourage further use of the method after the workshop by giving the participants a sense of ownership through the co-creative process and through open-source availability of the workshop materials and research outcomes.
