Exploring citizen and stakeholder engagement in Service Design

On March 11, 2025, the Policy Learning Platform , a digital space created by the Interreg Europe programme, hosted a webinar on Citizen-oriented Innovations, focusing on the transformative impact of digital innovation on public services and urban policies. The session was meant to explore the essential shift towards more inclusive, efficient, and citizen-centric solutions, emphasising the role of service design, smart city initiatives, and co-creation processes in urban environments.

Ilaria Mariani, Researcher at the Department of Design of the Politecnico di Milano, and part of the coordination team of ORBIS held a keynote, exploring the dual aspects of citizen and stakeholder engagement in service design. The discussion broadened to reflect on the extensive experience of the research group of the Department of Design in engaging stakeholders and citizens across multiple projects. These projects addressed stakeholder engagement as either a process and methodology, a research subject, or a teaching topic, experimenting with multistakeholder settings.

The projects presented are:

• ORBIS: which enhances citizen participation in decision-making by leveraging AI (Francesca Rizzo, Ilaria Mariani, Sabrina Sacco);
• easyRights: which facilitates migrants' access to rights through more inclusive services (Francesca Rizzo, Ilaria Mariani);
• GovTech Connect: which supports SMEs and startups in designing better GovTech solutions (Francesca Rizzo, Marzia Mortati, Ilaria Mariani);
• AI4GOV: a Master's program in AI for Public Services, winner of the EUROPEAN DIGITAL SKILLS AWARDS 2023; it has since expanded into an Executive Master at Poli.Design, and scaled up into the ongoing AI4GOV-X project (Francesca Rizzo, Alessandro Deserti, Marzia Mortati, Ilaria Mariani).

Each project was examined to reveal how stakeholder and citizen engagement was facilitated and the resulting insights into effective participation strategies, both identifying possibilities and opportunities, as well as potential pitfalls and challenges that arise when citizens and stakeholders actively participate in shaping services.

In this framework, the ORBIS project was featured as a prime example, showing the series of co-creation and co-design activities that were put in place to support the development of relevant innovation, thus following human-centered and socio-technical approaches.

Key takeaways from the ORBIS experience were presented across there main pillars:

1. Multidisciplinary Co-Desig: the integration of diverse professional backgrounds introduces varied perspectives and vocabularies, necessitating concerted efforts to align ideas and reach consensus, occasionally slowing the process, but ultimately resulting in better innovation. Challenges arose as not all partners are familiar with emerging technologies, so not technical persons initially struggled to unpack the possible uses of AI in their activities, and see the potential benefits of AI-enhanced tools for deliberative activities.
2. Bridging technology with deliberative practices: the ORBIS project adopted a continuous exchange and co-design methods to foster a deeper mutual understanding among all the different stakeholders involved, enhancing the collaborative development of solutions which consider the multiple needs and expectations, and the variety of perspective involved.
3. Risks associated with real-world piloting: engaging real organisations as pilot sites placed them at the forefront of innovation but also exposed them to risks associated with the experimental nature of the projects, highlighting the delicate balance between innovation and operational stability.

The webinar provided a relevant setting that engaged with over a hundred participants, sharing experiences and lessons learned from various projects, including ORBIS. This perspective was complemented with discussions with ongoing Interreg Europe practices, which offered further complementary best practices in applying stakeholder engagement to enhance our cities by making them smarter and better able to respond to citizens' needs.

The discourse emphasized how stakeholder engagement facilitates a shift from technology-driven innovation to value-driven and user-centric socio-technical innovation. This approach engages citizens and stakeholders in the development of public services, making them not only more innovative but also more desirable because they are relevant to their users. The collective insights from these projects continue to shape and refine approaches for integrating citizen feedback into policy-making and service design, ensuring that innovations truly meet the real needs of communities.