A linked open data based system utilizing structured open innovation process for addressing collaboratively public concerns in regional societies

Regional governments are looking for ways to address public concerns more efficiently by utilizing eGovernment systems. The complex environment presents problems for situational awareness and cooperation in public spheres. Current solutions are either lacking in structuring the information or do not support collaboration or discovery. We addressed the problem by developing an open innovation process based web platform for gathering public issues, forming public goals, and for structuring concrete subgoals as goal trees to facilitate participation. We use SOCIA ontology to structure goal information as linked open data. We calculate similarity between a pair of goals by utilizing the tree like structured goal relations. We implemented a negotiation user interface on a video conferencing platform to facilitate interorganizational cooperation and conflict resolution. We are arranging workshops and using the system in various hackathon events to evaluate and analyze the system in real life situations and to gather real life data. We provide the implemented system as a free to use tool.