What if cities could compare democratic innovations and choose the most effective ones? And what if they could assess how successfully citizens have been engaged in decision-making?
This may soon be the case. Associate Professor Mikko Rask of the University of Helsinki and his team are developing the Co-Creation Radar, an AI-enhanced tool to manage democratic innovations in cities.
Democratic innovations are being developed and tested in cities worldwide. Democratic innovation refers to new practices and technologies that enable citizens to participate in critical decisions impacting their lives and communities. While many emerging initiatives are promising, cities need help implementing and managing them effectively.
The Co-Creation Radar is an AI-enhanced tool that allows city officials to navigate the growing space of democratic innovations. It consists of three distinct services. City Pulse helps cities understand citizens' needs by analysing citizen feedback data against open-source contextual data. City Tips turns citizen needs into actionable programs using AI-prompted recommendations. City Radar identifies performance gaps and measures impact based on 120 validated indicators and expert assessments.
“With the Co-Creation Radar, cities will be able to make more effective decisions, improve public participation and develop better regional solutions,” says Associate Professor Mikko Rask of the University of Helsinki. Advanced analytics and machine learning are used for weak signal detection and deeper analysis of citizens' underlying needs. “In the future, it will also enable cities to compare their democratic health with others worldwide, " Rask continues.
The Co-Creation Radar tool has considerable global potential. Many cities are implementing democratic innovations – from citizen assemblies and participatory budgeting programmes to digital citizen engagement platforms.
“We are also supported by the fact that national laws mandate the use of participatory budgeting programmes,” says Thomas Holm, Commercial Lead of the Co-Creation Radar project. According to the OECD, the Co-Creation Radar is the only solution that acknowledges the contextual factors of participatory performance.
The Radar has been used to assess participation programmes in European cities such as Helsinki, Tampere and Lahti, Gothenburg, Trondheim, Antalya, Ljubljana, and Sarajevo.
The Politics of Co-creation Research team at the University of Helsinki has received a two-year Research to Business grant from Business Finland to commercialise its innovation. The transdisciplinary team includes political science, anthropology, artificial intelligence, and business experts. This commercialisation funding initiates a co-design project involving collaborations with the City of Helsinki, Seoul, and Suwon in South Korea.
This commercialisation project funded by Business Finland has ended and it continues as a spinout company Väki Insight.
Democratic innovation refers to new practices and technologies that enable citizens to participate in public decision-making between elections. However, the lack of tools for measuring the effectiveness of these initiatives leaves cities struggling to harness their full potential for more inclusive and impactful democratic participation.
The Co-Creation Radar is an AI-enhanced tool that enables city officials to navigate the expanding realm of democratic innovations. It offers three distinct services: City Pulse, which aids in understanding citizens' needs; City Tips, which matches these needs with practical participatory programmes; and City Radar, which identifies performance gaps and maps impact.
The Co-Creation Radar team aims to establish a spin-out company offering license-based online services with additional tailored consultation fees.