Lightning Talks

🔵 The Collective Power of Multiple Communities: The Experience of Integrating EJ Tool on Decidim

Speaker: Henrique Parra (Institute Cidade Democrática)

Decidim is one of the most complete free software platforms for citizen participation and collaborative governance today. The available functionalities cover a wide range of business needs for participation with various combination possibilities in processes from the simplest to the most complex.

This power means that Decidim is being adopted by the administrations of several countries and cities around the world, becoming the gateway to participation for millions of citizens worldwide. This also brings with it a great responsibility to place itself as an interoperable platform connecting with other free software solutions for social participation that can enrich the participatory processes made possible by the Decidim instances around the world.

The objective of this talk is to outline the main challenges on integrating Decidim with a free tool EJ (Pushing Together) to offer the possibility of using multi channel poll with opinion groups in initiatives carried out via Decidim and to present and discuss the main lessons learned. The idea is to be useful to the community as a whole for future integrations of this kind.

Language of the session: Spanish

🔵 Can a Chatbot Foster Participation at Decidim?

Speaker: Maite López Sanchez (Universitat de Barcelona)

In this lightning talk we will briefly introduce how can we include a conversational agent (also known as chatbot) to Decidim. We will discuss how it can guide newcomers and its potential to encourage participation among those citizens that are already registered. The work we present here comes from a modest research project carried out at University of Barcelona with the financial support of Barcelona City Council.

Language of the session: English

🔵 From Digital Platforms to Digital Public Spaces

Speaker: Mauricio Mejía (OECD)

Understanding digital platforms like Decidim as public spaces can help governments define a more ambitious strategy to improve digital democratic participation. What does this imply? A physical public space requires public infrastructure like lightning and benches to be usable and inclusive. A physical public space needs a set of rules and collective practices for it to be democratic and safe.

Therefore, what can governments do to move from platforms to digital spaces? How to understand digital public infrastructure in this context, and what rules should be defined to make sure digital spaces are democratic?

The OECD will share a preliminary analysis of it's forthcoming publication on the use of digital tools and infrastructures for democratic participation.

Language of the session: English

🔵 Front for Digital Sovereignty: Decidim as a Platform for Collaborative Governance

Speaker: Movimiento FeliciLab

In this lightning talk, we want to tell the story of how the concepts and practices of Collaborative Governance from the FeliciLab Movement integrate with the PLANTAforms of the Amazon Cosmotechnics Movement, and wrapped by common dreams of inclusion with Digital Collectives and confluences of baobáxias and mucuas in the black lands of the Mocambos Network, resulting in the proposition of a Front for Digital Sovereignty.

The Collaborative Governance implemented by FeliciLab is carried out through digital policies, enabling new dynamics of network collaboration in the elaboration, development, and monitoring of public policies. This process begins with the citizen, who presents their pains, which are welcomed for decision-making that guides the practice of workers. This entire process is analyzed by specialists, who point out indicators of the results.

In the Plantaformas Movement, people can participate and decide on different topics, through the spaces they see in the top menu: Processes, Meetings, Initiatives, Consultations, which allow different options to participate: make proposals - individually or with other people -, participate in debates, prioritize projects to be implemented, participate in face-to-face meetings and other actions.

The Front for Digital Sovereignty is a political initiative of people and collectives, which from their territories, are building their own sovereignty collaboratively and communally. The discussion to be held is not about the internet, data, or codes, but about purpose and worldview, about the identity of being and co-living in this digitally hyperconnected world.

At Decidim Fest, we want to present this combo of policy, practice, concept, proposal, and network action. We call on everyone to organize in their territories and together face the harmful dominance of big tech with generosity, network collaboration, open knowledge, and a lot of love in their hearts.

Language of the session: Portuguese and English

🔵 Modelo +Digital: Recuperando la Confianza Ciudadana por medio de la Gobernanza Colaborativa en Argentina y Colombia

Speakers: Tatiana Cárdenas & Ana Doria (Asuntos del Sur)

Asuntos del Sur's +Digital Model proposes to be an option that, through the promotion of spaces for deliberation, consultation and citizen co-creation, fosters virtuous experiences of participation, with conditions of transparency and legitimacy, promoting collaborative governance in complex contexts of inequality, a wide digital divide and citizen distrust of institutions.

Following a diagnosis of digital platforms for participation, carried out in 369 Class 1, 2 and 3 municipalities in Argentina, the need to design a hybrid model for participatory management at the subnational level became evident. In addition, a network of municipalities that share good practices and ways of doing things was formed.

In this space we will share the details and obstacles of this process, which is currently being carried out in six municipalities in Argentina and ten municipalities in the Metropolitan Area of Medellín, Colombia, with the support of multilateral organisations and various local and regional actors.

Language of the session: Spanish