ROUTETOPA is a European innovation project aimed at improving citizen engagement by enabling meaningful interaction between open data users, open data publishers and open data. Open Knowledge International is one of 12 partners working on the project and our main mandate is to build genuine and active communities around the ROUTETOPA tools. In this blogpost, we share more information on the ROUTETOPA user stories.

ROUTETOPA is an acronym that stands for Raising Open and User-friendly, Transparency Enabling Technologies for Public Administrations. It is a three-year, multidisciplinary,  European Union Horizon 2020 innovation project aimed at improving citizen engagement by enabling meaningful interaction between open data users, open data publishers and open data.

ROUTETOPA’s seeks to do this in 4 ways:

1. Through the Social Platform for Open Data (SPOD) which seeks to enable social interactions between open data users and local Governments
2. Through the Transparency Enabling Toolset (TET), built on CKAN and conglomerating data from existing local government open data platforms
3. Through SIM, which seeks to provide Public Administrations with statistical analysis on user behaviour and generalized feedback from users on SPOD and TET so public administrations can understand what citizens are interested in
4. Through GUIDE, a set of recommendations for open data publishers, extrapolated from SIM, aimed at promoting higher transparency levels through open data

Open Knowledge International works on building genuine and active communities around the ROUTETOPA tools. One of the key ways we intend to do this is by finding meaningful ways for communities to interact with data and with each other on the ROUTETOPA platforms. We have now defined the following user stories:

USER STORIES

Open Data Enthusiasts

1. I am a citizen interested in knowing what ROUTETOPA is and why I and others should care
2. I am a citizen wondering what open data is and how transparency benefits me
3. I am a resident in City X interested in knowing what data exists for my city.
4. I am a resident in city X interested in tracking an ongoing project in my area.
5. I am a graduate/post-graduate student interested in using open data for my research/ thesis/ paper
6. I am a teacher / lecturer /professor looking to introduce / teach my class about open data
7. I am a journalist looking to tell a data story on a City X
8. I am a journalist looking to write an article about H2020 and the ROUTETOPA project as a beneficiary
9. I am a media house representative looking for know more about ROUTETOPA tools
10. I am a policy maker interested in learning how ROUTETOPA tools work so I can see if it makes sense for my local authority to take up the use of these tools.
11. I am an activist interested in discussing issues in the community I live in with my local authority
12. I am a business owner interested in opportunities for business with public administrations
13. I am a data scientist looking for big, quality data from Area X for use in my work
14. I am a developer interested in the underlying code for ROUTETOPA tools
15. I am a developer with additional feature suggestions for ROUTETOPA tools
16. I am a designer with UI/UX suggestions for the ROUTETOPA platform
17. I am a non-EU open data user wondering whether I should interest myself in ROUTETOPA
18. I am a non-EU open data user interested in replicating ROUTETOPA tools for my continent
19. I am part of an open data community lead looking to discuss open data topics with my community

Open data publishers

1. I am a public official wondering what ROUTETOPA is and why I should care / be involved
2. I am a public official looking to get citizen feedback on the data our local authority has opened up
3. I am a public administrator keen on answering questions the community has raised regarding the data my administration has published and for which I am responsible
4. I am a public administrator looking at solutions that other public administrations have employed in publishing open data to determine what suits us best
5. I am a public administrator keen on involving citizens in Area X in decision making that affects our community
6. I am a public administrator and I’m new to open data and would like to get an introduction to this form of open government
7. I am a public administrator instructed to find open data cases in other municipalities that are easy to duplicate  (low hanging fruits cases)
8. I am a public administrator and I would like to implement a long term open government data strategy in my municipality. And I need an action plan
9. I am a public administrator looking for easy ways to update citizens about the open government data project and progress
10. I am a public administrator who maintains an open data platform based on CKAN and is looking for economical and easy extensions that add value to our open government data program
11. I am a public official who is looking for ways to update and communicate with involved colleagues from other units of my administration

More information on the project and its outcomes is available from http://routetopa.eu.

Serah Rono

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Developer Advocate, Open Knowledge Foundation

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