The 6th International Partners Meeting of the Complex Challenges – Innovative Cities project (CCIC) took place in Tartu, Estonia, on the 23rd and the 24th of January 2014. Its main focus was the discussion of strategies and practices employed in ensuring viable involvement of civil society as an important partner in public sector innovation. This marked the last of 4 thematic meetings within the CCIC project, with previous ones having focused on innovation in publicly owned enterprises, financial instruments for innovation, and public procurement for innovation.
Experts from Tartu and Aberdeen introduced successful practices of civil society involvement, representing innovative approaches to integrating citizens’ input in local decision-making. Participants agreed that citizen-oriented and citizen-consulted activities are of critical importance in the pursuit of improving local and regional services to both communities and businesses, and that the culture of innovation is rapidly gaining significance in the public sector in its effort to be more responsive and more accountable.
Also discussed were partners’ strategies in transferring innovation-producing practices across national and regional borders. An important step in this regard is the proper documenting of successful practices in order to ensure shared learning among partners, as well as to gauge interest in specific policies on the local and regional level, which may yield richer innovation-centred approaches.
CCIC involves 14 partners from 10 EU countries, representing municipal and regional authorities, local development agencies, as well as nonprofits dealing with sciences and technologies, research and policy analyses. It is funded under INTERREG IVC programme co-funded by the national governments.
