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Collaboration and participation of citizens in governments’ activities at all levels has received increasing levels of attention in many disciplinary fields such as public administration and government studies, urban planning, public service design, computer science, and information technology (e.g. Bryer & Zavattaro, 2011; Gil de Zúñiga et al., 2010; Linders, 2012; Magro, 2012; Munthe-Kaas & Hoffmann, 2016; Sanders & Stappers, 2008; Slotterback, 2011; Verschuere et al., 2012). Much of this attention derives from the potential contribution of new social media, digital platforms and other ICTs to the interactions between (national and local) governments and citizens. Because of wider economic trends, welfare state retrenchment, devolution and new knowledge-sharing patterns, citizens’ demands and governments’ actions increasingly require two-way engagement and closer collaboration (Kleinhans et al., 2015). A renewed interest has appeared in citizen co-production of public services, especially in view of the financial pressures currently facing governments around the world (Linders, 2012; Parrado et al., 2013). Co-production generally refers to the public sector and citizens making better use of each other’s assets and resources to achieve better outcomes and improved efficiency (Bovaird & Loeffler, 2012, p. 1121). Co-production is widely regarded as a “solution to the public sector’s decreased legitimacy and dwindling resources by accessing more of society’s resources” and as a means “to reinvigorate voluntary participation and social cohesion in an increasingly fragmented and individualized society” (Brandsen & Honingh, 2016, p. 427). In line with this stance, mobile applications and platforms created by professional developers through government challenges, prizes, apps competitions, and hackathons - where governments make their data available to produce new ideas and solutions - are widespread and common (see e.g. Challenge.gov; New York City Big Apps; Europe Open Data Challenge, Rotterdam Park Hackathon, San Diego Apps Challenges, Code for America).
While there is an abundance of literature on the use of social media for citizen-government relationships (see e.g. Bryer & Zavattaro, 2011; Magro, 2012; Mergel, 2013), this paper focuses on a more specific type of ICT: digital participatory platforms (DPPs – see Section 2 for definition), that aim to bring together public and private actors (for example Commonplace, coUrbanize, and TransformCity) (Ertiö, 2015; Desouza & Bhagwatwar, 2014). While DPPs have a large potential for facilitating two-way interactions between government and citizens, previous studies highlight that their application to truly foster interaction, mutual collaboration and co-production of ideas, solutions and new services has not been so widespread (Afzalan & Evans-Cowley, 2015; Desouza & Bhagwatwar, 2012; Ertiö, 2015; Williamson & Parolin, 2013; Zavattaro & Sementelli, 2014).