Scan a QR-Code and Participate – The Story of PLACEm
Interview | PLACEm, an easy-to-use, location-based participation app is a finalist in the Innovation in Politics Awards in the category of Democracy Technologies. Gregor Dehmel co-founded Politik zum Anfassen, which published PLACEm. We talked to him about his experiences in the project, from hiring developers to bringing the app to the users.
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Democracy Technologies at the Innovation in Politics Awards Convention
On 11 May, leaders and political innovators from across Europe will gather at the Palace of Culture in Warsaw for this year’s Innovation in Politics Awards. This year they are held as a day-long convention with a special focus on Democracy Technologies.
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Bringing Private Sector Innovations to Government
Michael Mascioni recently published his book "Reinventing Government Through Political Entrepreneurship and Exponential Innovation". He talked to us about how innovation strategies and tools could be adapted from the private sector to the public sector, why he uses the term crowdsourcing rather than participation, and about gamification in government.
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Climate Democracy – Can Participatory Approaches Help Tackle the Tough Decisions Ahead?
Climate change policy requires citizen participation. The Climate Democracy Action (CDA) by People Powered seeks to prepare its participants to make that happen. Clara Bois, Program Manager at People Powered explains how.
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The World According to AI
Politicians are automatically men, and women are overtly sexualised: Our experiences with the biases of AI image generators.
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Job Opening: Copy Editor & Proofreader (w/m/d)
We are looking for a copy-editor and proofreader to support our editorial board by preparing articles, guest contributions, and interview transcripts for publication.
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The team tested how ChatGPT could be useful for Democracy Technologies
ChatGPT is the latest natural language chat program out of AI research lab OpenAI. Having taken the internet by storm with a surprising array of capabilities, we decided to see what the impact on democracy (and our work) might be, by asking it a few questions of our own.
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What Collective Intelligence can do for Democracies
Interview | Stephen Boucher talked to us about how people can be smarter collectively than indivudually and what that means for Democracy.
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4 Useful Resources on Digital Participation Tools
Choosing the right tool can be a tricky part of planning a participation project. Here are four useful resources which should help you get oriented, including a database that we have just launched.
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World Bank Expert Talks About Digital Divide in Participation
Interview with Tiago C. Peixoto | The existence of a digital divide does not automatically lead to unequal outcomes in digital participation processes.
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VOTO: Expanding Youth Participation in Cottbus
In the Germany city of Cottbus, the VOTO voting advice app is being used to encourage young voters to find out more about the candidates in the election for the city's Lord Mayor. An interview with Julius Oblong, Founder of VOTO, and Lea Brunn, Children and Youth Commissioner, City of Cottbus.
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DemocracyNext: Replacing Elections with Deliberation
Claudia Chwalisz is the founder and CEO of DemocracyNext, a research and action institute launched in September 2022 which aims to establish new institutions for government founded on the principles of participation, representation and deliberation. We talked to her about a future where elections and parliaments have been replaced by an ecosystem of deliberative bodies of citizens selected exclusively by lottery. A conversation about deliberative democracy, and the role digital tools can play in it.
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Antwerp’s 10 Conditions for Good Participation
The City of Antwerp has developed training materials to guide less experienced city employees through the process of setting up their first participation projects. The "10 conditions for good participation" are part of this guide, and serve as a checklist for anyone starting a new participation project.
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Kutná Hora – Where Students Manage the Participatory Budget
One of the most effective solutions to boost interest in Participatory Budgeting has been their introduction in schools. With modest budgets, they nonetheless yield high participation rates. And more importantly, they educate a new generation of citizens on how to get involved in local government.
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