This document details concepts, methods and procedures to be applied for the purposes of the WeGovNow project in relation to research & Innovation aspects, usability and e-accessibility aspects as well as legal, data protection and ethical aspects.
Positive aspects of the deliverable:
- the idea of the integration of the open data with crowdusourcing elements;
- the idea of reusing applications and platforms already existing, rather than creating new ones;
- the use of an "agile" approach, with iterative evaluations of the designed platform.
Negative aspects of the deliverable:
- the organization of the document is not optimal. E.g.: the document describes the system architecture without firstly considering their functional requirements; overlap between the description of the system architecture and the description of the user interfaces of the system; lack of efficency with the division in paragraphs and sub-paragraphs (the use of diagrams and graphs can improve the readability of the document);
- at this level it is not clear what the user can do with this system;
- it is important to have an approach that does not consider the design for a particular cathegory of people, but the design for all the people (see the transgenerational design approach);
- the methodology for the analysis of the accessibility seems not well defined;
- the UCD approach for the design of services in the public sector should be integrated with a more participatory design approach (the citizen not as user but as partner). Despite the document refers to meetings with local stakeholder, it is not so clear their involvement (that is referred more to the definition of problems than to the identification of solutions;
- it is important to consider that the technology should be adapted to the territory need and not the contrary.
The overall document is good and improves D1.1.
However I still have my comment (already presented for D1.1) related to the presentation of the conceptual framework and the corresponding figure.
I report it here again. The above-mentioned figure shows a preliminary technical architecture of the envisaged tool rather than a conceptual architecture. I would expect to see another figure where the boxes concerning the tools (e.g. ImproveMyCity, FirstLife, LiquidFeedback, …) are replaced by the related functionalities specified at the conceptual level (e.g. Citizen to PA communication, opinion formation etc…). Currently it is not easy to understand if these functionalities overlap or if there are alternative and better tools to perform the tasks. A more conceptual analysis of the tools would be helpful also to manage the future of the platform.
Concerning Section 5.3.2, the EU General Data Protection regulation was published in the EU Official Journal on 4th May 2016 and the Directive on Security of Network and Information Systems (the NIS Directive) was adopted by the European Parliament on 6th July 2016. As this document was released on February 2017, I would expect to read something about them in that section.
Having read the first version of D1.1 earlier this week, the expanded version makes a few things clearer. This is a technology-heavy project, potentially very stong in architectual perspectives and possibly in interface design perspectives, in which the individual users and various organiztion input is yet to be named. But it is a project that starts with the idea of integrating technology rather than anything else. Nothing wrong with this, especially if the both structure, apps and interfaces are smooth and makes sense from various government and non-governmental perspectives, but it really makes the value of the project dependent on broad, deep and sustained usage.
The little I saw on trials in this in the deliverable indicated that they were going to be limited in both scale and scope which does not bode well. As always the issue of project survival beyond the project period, as quite correctly mentionen in the deliverable, is all important.
This document is well conceived and detailed, however sometimes a clear and synthetic overview of approach key concepts would help to better and easier understand the overall document.
This is a programatic document, broad in overview and needs very skilled expertise to professionaly analize it.
