Co-creation and Convergence - The Methodology for Designing the Migrant Integration Platform MICADO

The article reports about the development of the platform MICADO, a Horizon2020 innovation action, that merged approaches in business intelligence, data analytics and visualisation in support of migrant integration management in European cities. The resulting application  addresses public authorities, civil society organisations, and migrants alike, providing multilateral information access, data exchange, and navigation for all involved stakeholders and institutions. Resting on the hypothesis that co-creation among user groups plus data integration across departmental silos enables high-quality service provision for migrant education, housing, labour, and health, a novel project methodology was created that focussed on custom-tailored co-design and convergence activities. These formats substantially helped to collect, analyse, and streamline the requirements raised by the variety of local stakeholders and use cases. The new methodolody ensured the co-creation of a location-agnostic universal solution, its diversification into locally specific solutions, and its parallel pilot application in four cities. The MICADO approach may thus present a promising blueprint for agile and responsive IT development in the sphere of publication services.