The Centre for Collective Intelligence Design (CCID) and the Innovation Growth Lab (IGL) are supporting the European Commission with the delivery of its new project aimed at policy experimentation across EU Research & Innovation (R&I) policy and ensuring citizen engagement in achieving the EU’s five missions on climate adaptation, net-zero cities, healthy soils, clean oceans and a life without cancer.

A better and more frequent use of policy experimentation can help stimulate growth and accelerate the green and digital transitions. This approach allows for testing of new ideas before scaling up successful solutions and provides valuable evidence on what works, what doesn't and why. While this approach has been embraced by other policy fields, it has not yet become widely adopted in R&I, hindering efforts to further improve Europe’s R&I performance.

EU missions provide a space for experimentation, as they are a newly implemented instrument to develop real solutions to current global challenges. Citizen engagement is a crucial component of the EU Missions, since it brings people together around shared objectives and allows them to influence policy. But what practical actions can successfully engage citizens in the EU Missions?

Through experimenting and creating new evidence, this project will provide insights that can help answer this question.

Lessons from the project will be instrumental for the potential inclusion of more experimentation actions funded by the EU, as well as for providing lessons more broadly about policy experimentation and citizen engagement in mission-oriented innovation.

To understand the opportunities for experimentation and citizen engagement, the project focuses on four key activities.

• Analysing barriers and enablers to experimentation and evidence on citizen engagement

We are undertaking a large-scale review of the use of experimentation in R&I policy and the use of experimentation or lack thereof in citizen engagement activities such as citizen science, participatory budgeting and citizen assemblies.

• Understanding citizen attitudes to citizen engagement and experimentation

Through a survey, the first of its kind, of 4,500 European citizens from six countries (Finland, France, Ireland, Italy, Poland and Romania), we will understand people’s awareness of European missions, their willingness to participate in activities such as citizen science or citizen assemblies aimed at addressing these challenges. A specific aim of the survey will be to understand citizen preferences over how they would like to engage in activities aimed at meeting the five EU mission objectives. This will provide valuable insights for this project and others focusing on designing citizen-engagement activities.

• Experiments to test citizen engagement in EU missions

In collaboration with two specific EU Missions, 100 Climate-Neutral and Smart Cities and A Soil Deal for Europe, we will develop three citizen-engagement experiments. The aim of these experiments is to understand how best to engage citizens in the design and delivery of mission-oriented projects and how experimental approaches, such as randomised control trials (RCTs), can increase the evidence of what works.

• Developing guidelines and recommendations for the use of experimentation across Europe

Developing recommendations for how the European Commission and other national as well as local governments can better use experimentation. Tailoring practical guidelines and a training module for policymakers to increase awareness and capacity to design and implement experimentation in the development of new policies.