Mobile Age: Co-created personalized mobile access to public services for senior citizens

The digital age has evolved into a mobile age. Mobile technologies such as smart phones and tablet PCs have become ubiquitous and almost indispensable companions of everyday life. These technological developments offer new opportunities and challenges for the accessibility of public services, especially for senior citizens. It is against this backdrop of an ageing population, the widespread use of mobile technologies, and the need to improve access to open government services and data that our proposal is located and focused. A growing number of European cities are making their data openly available and facilitate communication with their citizens on the move. However, such open data is normally read-only (that is, citizens are not usually able to easily suggest changes, correct errors, etc.) and there is little return for local governments. Our project proposes to provide improved access to open data through unification of data formats, the use of mobile technologies, so as to provide customised and co-designed services to the ageing population, who can in turn contribute to the curation of open government data sources. The proposed co-design with users through workshops will allow for more personalised and flexible interactions between senior citizens and government institutions.