Participation in decision-making is the power of people to voice and share expertise and opinions. It provides a possibility for individuals, CSOs, and other interested groups to shape the policies and laws that impact their lives. At the same time, it helps global, regional and national institutions to create fair laws and policies that reflect real needs and build trust in their work.
By the end of this learning package, you will:
- Be familiar with innovative tools that promote public participation in decision-making processes related to public policies;
- Identify how these tools can empower marginalised groups to participate in policy discussions and promote meaningful engagement on important issues;
- Understand the potential, but also the considerations of using these tools, and how they should be designed, developed and applied to shape policies at the local, national and EU level in an inclusive way.
New and emerging technologies, the spread of digital games, social media and online platforms have fundamentally re-shaped the landscape of public participation. They provide more opportunities for people and organised civil society to engage in policy-making, but also a space for experimentation.
In the next section, you will discover the advantages of using digital tools, illustrated by inspiring examples to spark new ideas.
1. Increased engagement.
Using digital tools makes policy discussions more accessible. They have the potential to engage broader groups and allow a wider set of voices to be heard because they can reduce barriers to participate. This can be either because these tools allow people to engage whenever and wherever it suits them, which is especially appealing for those who may lack the time or the opportunity to attend meetings, or who might feel hesitant, such as women or underrepresented groups in certain contexts. Online tools can also be more appealing to specific groups, such as youth, who may be more attracted to interactive formats. Moreover, they can better facilitate participation of people living with a disability or people that experience language barriers. Many of the online digital participatory platforms offer multilingual interface. This is important because inclusiveness and accessibility are key prerequisites for meaningful participation
Maptionnaire: online platform to design and manage location-based community engagement
A group of urban planning researchers and professionals based in Helsinki identified an emerging need for cities and urban planners to engage the public and to get input from residents. To address this need, Maptionnaire was developed: a platform and online software to facilitate citizen engagement, using spatial Geographic Information System (GIS) data. Maptionnaire allows users to collect data, communicate plans, decide together, analyse results and do interactive mapping. It aims to make city planning processes more inclusive and engaging. The data collection methods can be tailored to the users’ needs through a variety of methods, such as multiple-choice questions, map-based surveys, online polls or prioritising budget spending. Citizens can respond when it suits them best and they don’t have to download a separate application.
Maptionnaire was used in the municipality of Peja (Kosovo) to boost public engagement in local spatial planning processes. The online map-based surveys attracted a high number of participants. Contrary to conventional public engagement processes, 45% of Peja’s Maptionnaire survey respondents were women. This was a significant improvement compared to the 5% share of women taking part in the face-to-face meetings.
Find out more about Maptionnaire in this video.
Decidim: open-source platform to strengthen participatory processes
To strengthen participatory processes, the Barcelona City Council initiated the development of an online participation platform: Decidim. Decidim is Barcelona’s first digital democracy tool. The platform was used for a participatory budgeting process, which started in 2020. The City Council invited citizens to decide on the allocation of 75 million euros of the municipal budget (5% of the overall budget) between 2020 and 2023.
One proposal was submitted by a group of young girls from the Pakistani community in Barcelona: they proposed to build a cricket field where they can practice this sport. In their proposal they wrote that the team members and those who lead the project are all girls: “Training is for us a space of safety and female empowerment where we can develop our skills freely”. They proposed a comprehensive reform of an existing field, adapting the space to the needs of Barcelona residents who practice minority sports. In the last phase of the participatory budgeting the proposal was one of the most voted in their district and the cricket field is becoming a reality. These girls may not have shared their great idea with the municipality or been able to draw attention to it if it wasn’t for the easily accessible online platform.
Decidim was developed as an open-source platform, which can be used by other stakeholders. Since its launch, it has been supporting not only the city of Barcelona but more than 400 municipalities, institutions and organisations to strengthen participation processes.
Find out more about Decidim in this video.
2. Community building.
Online tools have the potential to bring communities together by fostering shared experiences, collective problem-solving and a better learning experience. They can promote a sense of unity and joining together to achieve common goals. Some of the tools are not exclusively online, but also integrate some in-person elements in their participatory processes, such as the below example.
Grendel Games: serious game designed to promote public participation
The city of Zwolle in the Netherlands wanted to motivate residents to work on climate resilience. In partnership with Grendel Games, a serious game was developed. In this game, participants get to work with the online (re)design of their garden in a digital twin city to make it as climate-resistant as possible. Participants compete against their neighbours and also work as a team with them against other neighbourhoods. The aim is to raise awareness on the importance of climate resilience and activate people to make adaptations in their own garden. Grendel Games is also used to solicit feedback and share knowledge in healthcare and education.
If you want to know more about the difference between serious games, gamification, and game-based learning; watch this video.
3. Enhanced feedback.
Some of the digital participatory platforms are calibrated in a way to ensure that feedback cannot be deliberately overlooked, and it is obligatory for the organisers to address all comments received, if they are not detected to be spams. This can address the common issue where, despite having opportunities to participate in decision-making, it is often unclear how people’s comments influenced the final decision and why certain comments were considered or disregarded. The platform of Decidim allows for setting up a project this way.
4. Awareness raising.
Sometimes the primary goal of a digital tool is to raise awareness around topics like sustainability, climate-resilience or even EU values. Participants receive real-time feedback on their learning process, stimulating creative thinking. This can be done with the use of interactive and visual features, which enhance the overall learning experience.
In addition to the benefits mentioned above, digital tools can also be used to enhance trust in participation processes because they allow for easy communication with people who provide input, keeping them informed on progress and how their input has been taken into account. Furthermore, the use of digital tools could be more cost-effective compared to traditional means because they save time and money on travel, meetings and processing input.
Digital technologies significantly influence public participation and, in principle, contribute to greater public activity. If set up carefully and considering the needs of various groups, digital platforms for public participation, gamification, and other similar methods offer a range of benefits that institutions and people must capitalise on. At the same time, there are potential issues that must be considered.
These are some of the points to consider when integrating digital tools in participatory processes:
1. Internet Access.
Digital divide between those who are able to access and effectively use online tools and those who do not have access or the capabilities to make use of them is a persistent problem.
2. Digital Literacy.
E-democracy tools should be equipped with a form of monitoring to counter the spread of disinformation, and should flag up unverified information, refute false information with counterevidence and enable fact-based discussions.
3. Content curation/moderation policies.
Transparent, easily understandable and inclusive policies allow users to understand when, how and why their posts will be removed and how they are provided with access to human review. There also should be clarity on where and how contributions are posted, in what order, for how long, and if they are edited. Policies should also cover how the tool facilitates inclusivity, combats hate speech and disinformation and allows users control over their participatory experience.
4. Privacy and Data Protection.
Safeguards must be in place for all sorts of potential abuses of data processing, including against the unlawful use of data for profiling purposes or unlawful processing of users’ sensitive data. In the EU, the structured involvement of the European Data Protection Supervisor in the development and implementation of e-participatory tools could ensure this.
5. Cybersecurity.
Hacking, trolling and denial-of-service (DoS) attacks are only a few dangers that can seriously compromise not only the functioning, but also the credibility and trustworthiness of e-participatory tools.
6. Protection of human dignity.
Individuals have an inalienable right to have access to meaningful participation in physical spaces, where they can express themselves and fulfil their human dignity inface-to-face interaction and socialisation. Institutions using e-participatory tools could still provide at the same time alternative or parallel opportunities for meaningful in-person exchanges.
7. Effective follow-up.
In order to strengthen the accountability of e-participatory tools and improve their trustworthiness among users, tools should have clear and easily accessible information on how users’ input is used and provide feedback on whether it has been taken into account or not.
8. Environmental impact.
Computation-intensive AI systems bear a significant carbon footprint related to energy and resources consumption.
Reflect on your own context:
- Are there any examples in your country/context, where new digital participation tools were used? If so, which groups engaged with those and what was the outcome of using these new tools? If not, do the groups you work with face challenges that these digital tools could effectively address?
- Could new tools be used to address barriers in participation faced by marginalised or underrepresented groups (for example women, youth, people with disabilities)?
- Are the government institutions, activists or organisations you work with supportive of digital participation methods? Could you work together to implement these tools in your context?
- What are the potential risks of using these tools in your experience?
