In our project "Digital Dabei?" we use Citizen Science as a democratic research method to examine the digital transformation of public administration from the perspective of people who are rarely involved in political or technical design processes: people with limited digital skills, language barriers, or without access to digital devices. In the digitalisation of public administration, decisions are often made technocratically, without taking into account the diverse realities of people's lives. Citizen Science makes it possible to generate knowledge "from below", make it visible, and feed it as an actionable basis into the development of inclusive public services.

The perspective of those affected is indispensable, as many hurdles are invisible to experts. It is often assumed that everyone has an email address or can use online forms — which is not the case for many people. Citizen Science helps to identify blind spots in the digital transformation and creates a realistic basis for sustainable improvements.

Citizens are actively involved as co-researchers: they document their own experiences and those of people in their communities with digital services, reflect on them in workshops, and analyse them together with the project team. In participatory future workshops, they develop concrete impulses and guidelines for an inclusive digital public administration of the future. Citizen Science thus becomes a means of producing socially relevant knowledge and a foundation for social innovation.