Citizen Participation: Digital Platforms as an Instrument for Solving Urban Problems

This paper focuses on the study m-government urban services and urban communities in social networks as communication platforms for citizens. The problem of this research is the low level of Moscow citizens involvement in the activities of the ‘Vmeste’ system, which includes ‘Activnyy grazhdanin’, ‘Nash gorod’ and ‘Crowdsourcing projects of the Moscow Government’, by citizens. The primary aim of the study is to develop recommendations for increasing the level of interaction between citizens and m-government services. Based on the foundational theories of political management (by V. Pareto, G. Mosca, R. Michels, etc.), approaches to studying urban management have been analysed. In addition, the history of the creation of m-government services in Russia and their functional features have been considered. Also, classifications of urban communities in social networks have been developed. Then, the m-government services of the system ‘Vmeste’ have been analysed, according to the theories ‘Ladder of Citizen Participation’ by Sherry R Arnstein and the pyramid of web-services by AA. Voloshinskaya. To achieve the goal of this paper, a survey has been carried out. The number of respondents who participated is 276. As a result of the study, the discrepancy between positioning of the ‘Vmeste’ services and how citizen perceive them has been analysed for. Recommendations for the process of involving citizens in the activities of the m-government services of the 'Vmeste' system can be used not only by the Government of Moscow but also the Governments of others Russian cities in order to improve similar urban services.