Abstract

This open access book attends to the co-creation of digital public services for ageing societies. Increasingly public services are provided in digital form; their uptake however remains well below expectations. In particular, amongst older adults the need for public services is high, while at the same time the uptake of digital services is lower than the population average. One of the reasons is that many digital public services (or e-services) do not respond well to the life worlds, use contexts and use practices of its target audiences. This book argues that when older adults are involved in the process of identifying, conceptualising, and designing digital public services, these services become more relevant and meaningful. The book describes and compares three co-creation projects that were conducted in two European cities, Bremen and Zaragoza, as part of a larger EU-funded innovation project. The first part of the book traces the origins of co-creation to three distinct domains, in which co-creation has become an equally important approach with different understandings of what it is and entails: (1) the co-production of public services, (2) the co-design of information systems and (3) the civic use of open data. The second part of the book analyses how decisions about a co-creation project’s governance structure, its scope of action, its choice of methods, its alignment with strategic policies and its embedding in existing public information infrastructures impact on the process and its results. The final part of the book identifies key challenges to co-creation and provides a more general assessment of what co-creation may achieve, where the most promising areas of application may be and where it probably does not match with the contingent requirements of digital public services. Contributing to current discourses on digital citizenship in ageing societies and user-centric design, this book is useful for researchers and practitioners interested in co-creation, public sector innovation, open government, ageing and digital technologies, citizen engagement and civic participation in socio-technical innovation.

Highlights

  • Few societal trends are as ambivalent as demographic ageing and the increasing digitalisation of social life

  • One reason for the mismatch between the actual needs of older citizens and the digital services offered by public administrations—as technologies for circulating information and interacting with citizens—is based on the disparity between those designing systems and the experiences and use practices of a service’s target audience: Digital public services are based on classifications that do not correspond to the life worlds of their target user groups, but rather represent bureaucratic ways of organising and thinking

  • The co-creation projects reported in this book were part of the EU-funded project Mobile Age1 in which digital public services were co-created with substantial participation of older citizens

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Summary

Conclusion

Co-creating Inclusive Digital Futures creating a service makes this service more appealing for the target group of older adults. A final challenge relates to an access and usage fit: A lasting social change and impact may only be achieved, if the take-up of the resulting service by its target audience is accomplished. All of these challenges are framed by the public information infrastructures as part of which the digital public services is being co-created. The learning points identified in this book provide evidence on ways to co-create better, more user-centric public services with and for older adults: If co-creation is based on a continuous engagement and participation of (older) citizens a more inclusive digital future is possible.

Introduction
Jarke, Co-creating Digital Public Services for an Ageing Society, Public
Summary
Introduction to the Project
A Framework for Co-creation
Introduction to Field Site
Enabling change
Learning about biographical relevance of technology
Findings
11 Understand participants

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