Decidim Fest 2023

Opening of the conference with our institutional partners:

• Jaume López (Government of Catalonia)
• Andreu Francisco (Localret)
• Representative of Barcelona City Council

Artificial intelligence is already everywhere, it has been socialised both in the public sphere and in our lives as a whole through direct or indirect applications within our daily digital diets. At the same time, major alarm bells have started to ring about its deployment and implementation because of the intrinsic risks that come with AI, be it the violation of fundamental rights or its impact on social and political life, and consequently on the ways of organising and governing society, therefore democracies.

The debate on the impact of AI on society must be opened up, but mechanisms must also be established to provide guarantees for society as a whole in order to preserve all its rights, establishing risk mitigation strategies. At the same time, AI inherits a large part of the open debates surrounding the big technology companies and the great concentration of power they monopolise, as they have done with the infrastructures that support digital or the main social networks that operate on a global scale. It will also be necessary to open the debate on public leadership and commitment to regulate and proactively guarantee new models of AI deployment at the service of the people, as well as to underpin the role of a demanding civil society that asserts the urgency of these debates and puts the citizenry as a whole at the centre.

However, it is worth opening another debate that we consider to be central, which has to do with the origin of the knowledge on which AI feeds, a universal and collective knowledge that in no case should be appropriated, and which must open up possibilities to be put at the service of society as a whole and the common good. What opportunities does AI offer us to understand and think about 21st century democracy, understanding its collective dimension? Can it be an instrument to strengthen democracies and people's capacity to take part in the management of common things? Can AI help to build more democratic societies?

Furthermore, in this session, the latest developments in the platform's development, redesign, and a presentation of the planned roadmap for the next two years, as well as monitoring and engagement tools to track progress, will be presented.

Language of the session: Catalan, with simultaneous translation into English.

In recent years, the use of the Decidim platform has spread beyond local governments. In this session we will learn how Decidim is being implemented in different contexts and realities, through the conversation with the invited experiences we will explore the challenges of using Decidim at other scales, as well as what strategies have been designed to create quality processes that seek to generate an impact by redistributing power to citizens.

• Carla de Paiva Bezerra (Brasil Participativo)
• Antonio casado (Gi2030)
• Romy Grasgruber-Kerl & Daryna Sterina (EMVI Project)

Moderator: Elisenda Ortega (Ajuntament de Barcelona)

This session will be held in English.

A time for coffee and networking

In this session we will address a fundamental debate for the current Decidim Fest edition, that of the intersection of AI and Collective Intelligence with digital platforms for participation. Two of the most relevant free software experiences in terms of democratic participation and their founders reflect on the challenges, powers and limits of this interaction, and at the same time jointly discuss possible shared paths to follow. An exciting debate of incalculable relevance for the future of these platforms.

• Róbert Bjarnason (Citizens Foundation)
• Xabier Barandiaran (Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea)

Modera: Ali González (Codeando México, Decidim)

Language of the session: English, with simultaneous translation into Catalan.

Lunch break

Artificial Intelligence has become a technological paradigm with great power to transform our society. For this power to be exercised in a democratic way, it is essential to raise and face a series of ethical challenges. In this session we will have two researchers who study the advances in Artificial Intelligence and examine how this type of technology is addressed in the scientific community and in the public sector.

• Ashwin Singh (Queer In AI)
• Sara Suárez (Internet Interdisciplinary Institute - Universitat Oberta de Catalunya)

Moderates: Pablo Aragón (Wikimedia Foundation, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Decidim)

Language of the session: Spanish and English, with simultaneous translation into English and Spanish.

This panel aims to explore the governance of data and AI from a feminist and decolonial perspective. To this end, it aims to make visible the advocacy work of feminist organisations from the Global South working with affected communities in relation to these technologies. Similarly, it aims to introduce reflection on the impact of AI and the appropriation of data from feminist and decolonial coordinates in order to broaden the debate about who should participate in the governance of this type of technology and why. Finally, it aims to introduce and show different typologies of practices and projects of technology appropriation, so it can be imagined from different coordinates.

• Nandini Chami (ITForChange, A+ Alliance)
• Rayén Jara Mitrovich (Radical Data & Landecker Democracy Fellow)
  

Moderates: Sofía Trejo (Barcelona Supercomputing Centre, A+ Alliance)

Panel curated by: Thais Ruiz de Alda & Judith Membrives i Llorens - (Algorights, DigitalFems & Lafede.cat).

Language of the session: English, with simultaneous translation into Spanish.

Time to relax with a drink

How can physical modeling, data analysis, and data visualization facilitate collective decision-making?

Dialoguem is a project by Heurística in collaboration with UBICS (University of Barcelona Institute of Complex Systems) aimed at exploring the potential of a socio-physical approach to improve collective decision-making processes. Specifically, to understand what cognitive biases and other factors affect the evolution of opinions in group dynamics and to develop situated and participatory socio-technical supports for facilitation. In this workshop, we will test how a real-time data collection, analysis, and visualization environment, based on socio-physical modeling, can facilitate deliberation by visualizing biases and misunderstandings.

Introduction (15 min)

• What is socio-physics?
• Models of opinion dynamics

Blind assembly (45 min)

Participants will discuss a topic anonymously through an instant messaging tool

Data analysis and visualization and augmented democracy (30 min)

• Analysis and visualization of data from the blind assembly
• Open debate: collective decision-making supported by real-time data

Held by: Heurística, Luce Prignano, Emanuele Cozzo & Joan Massachs

Language of the workshop: English

As European cities and institutions increasingly adopt artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, it becomes crucial to ensure transparent and participatory decision-making processes in AI procurement. Decidim offers a powerful solution to facilitate inclusive and collaborative decision-making. This workshop aims to provide participants with hands-on experience and practical insights on leveraging Decidim to streamline and democratize AI procurement processes.

Learning Objectives:

• Understand the importance of participatory decision-making in AI procurement
• Learn how to design and implement a Decidim-based workflow for AI procurement
• Gain practical insights from real-world case studies and success stories
• Discuss challenges and best practices for using Decidim in AI procurement

Questions:

• How can procurement innovation serve as an incentive and platform to arrive at clear definitions of AI technologies and related procedures, such as risk assessment and audits, that work across agencies? 
• What are the changes needed in the procurement process to prioritize the public interest, not stakeholder interest? 

Agenda:

1. Designing a Decidim-based workflow

2. Hands-on exercise: Creating an AI procurement workflow in Decidim

3. Real-world case studies and success stories

4. Challenges and best practices

Made by: Nadia Nadesan (Platoniq Foundation)

Language of the session: English

Decidim isn't alone in the field. Other platforms have been there for years, each with its own take on features and user experiences. And whether you treat them as competition or not, they're a chance for us to learn and improve.

This is why at Open Source Politics we would like to suggest a workshop to take a clear-eyed look at what others are doing right and wrong. We'll assess, discuss, and find inspiration.

We won't tiptoe around tough questions. If a platform has a feature we lack, we'll ask why, and whether we need it. If their user interface does something better than ours, we'll see what we can change. This isn't about flattery or imitation. It's about understanding our space better.

The end goal? Come out of the workshop with real, concrete ideas for how to make Decidim better. No vague concepts or grand visions—just actionable strategies we can work on right away.

Agenda:

1. Exposition by OSP (30 minutes): This past summer (and for the past few years), our team at OSP conducted a comprehensive benchmarking analysis of Decidim, taking a deep dive into a selection of competing platforms. This rigorous exercise allowed us to identify a number of intriguing practices that diverge significantly from Decidim's approach. In the initial segment of our workshop, we will guide you through these noteworthy contrasts one by one.
2. Team Assembly (5 minutes): Following the exposition, we will segment participants into three distinct breakout groups. Each team will be tasked with delving into a subset of the major deviations identified during our benchmarking process.
3. Collaborative Analysis (30 minutes): Each group will embark on an in-depth exploration of their assigned contrasts, teasing out potential learnings and implications for Decidim.
4. Interactive Insights Sharing (15 minutes): Post-analysis, each group will take center stage to share their insights and recommendations. We request each group to cap their presentations at a maximum of 5 minutes, allowing time for a quick transition between groups.
5. Conclusion and Path Forward (10 minutes): To conclude, we will all synthesize the key points discussed during the workshop, distill the crucial takeaways, and chart a course for future action based on the collective insights and recommendations. Our aim is to transform these discoveries into clear, actionable inspiration for Decidim's continued evolution.

Made by: Open Source Politics

Language of the session: English

🔵 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

🔵 Simplifying to Reach Millions

Speaker: Carla Rocha (Universidade de Brasília)

Engaging people with the most diverse backgrounds in participation platforms is a global challenge. This challenge involves offering participatory processes where the rules of the game are clear and make sense considering people's everyday problems. In addition, it is necessary to model the choice architectures in a simple and direct way so that the participants can easily visualize what they need to do in order to leave their contributions, reducing the participation barriers as much as possible, like number of clicks and the complexity of the interfaces.

During the experience of using the Decidim platform in the process of participatory planning of the priorities of the Federal Government of Brazil for the period 2024-2027, adaptations and simplifications of the Decidim standard interface were developed and are being packaged in a plugin to be made available to the global community.

The objective of this talk is to outline the main elements present at this work and a brief summary on how it was carried out.

Language of the session: English

🔵 Apropriação CosmoTécnica: A Importância das Experiências de Decidim na Amazônia para a Reconstrução da Democracia Brasileira

Speaker: Jader Gama (Confluências Amazônicas)

In this lightning talk, we want to share with the global community how Decidim arrived in the Amazon, its role in the constitution of the social participation ecosystem, and its implications for the agenda in defense of democracy and environmental and climate issues. We will present how the first approaches to use the tool were made through the Confluências Amazônicas movement, the Popular Participation Program Tá Selado, and Plantaformas Amazônicas.

Language of the session: Spanish and English

🔵 Configurations of Digital Participatory Budgeting

Speaker: Pablo Aragón (Wikimedia Foundation, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Decidim)

Participatory budgeting is a democratic innovation increasingly supported by digital platforms. Like any technology, participatory budgeting platforms are not value-free or politically neutral; their design, configuration, and deployment display assumptions and configure participant behaviour. To understand what kinds of configurations occur and what kinds of democratic values they hold, we study 31 digital participatory budgeting cases in Spain, France, and Finland. These cases were all supported by the same technical platform, Decidim, allowing us to focus on the variations in its socio-technical configuration. We examined the data from these cases and identified 25 different technical configurations and 15 socio-technical configurations on the platform. These configurations exhibit individual and collaborative assumptions about expected state-society interactions, as well as citizen-driven and controlled approaches to participatory budgeting. Based on these findings, we highlight a dilemma for the designers of these technologies: to what degree should platforms be open to configuration and customization, and which political values should be enforced by platform design?

Language of the session: English

🔵 Study on Participatory Budgets in Catalonia: Extension throughout the Territory, Use of Participatory Platforms and Citizen Evaluation.

Speakers: Laia Márquez (Universitat Oberta de Catalunya) & Joel Peiruza (Universitat de Barcelona)

The municipal participatory budgets in Catalonia have increased in recent years. Putting citizenship at the centre, by decision-making, is being a priority for municipal governments following a crisis of representative democracy that has been present since the end of the 20th century and especially since the outbreak of the crisis of 2008.

Citizens' participation has been able to adapt to new technological changes. Public administrations are using digital platforms, as in the case of Decidim, with the aim of improving the citizen-administration relationship.

One of the winning projects of the DEMOC2022 call, carried out by the research group CNSC of the IN3 of the UOC, is intended to evaluate the participatory budgets carried out in Catalan municipalities, especially since 2016 and Decidim, in order to identify where we are and where we are going.

Language of the session: Catalan

🔵 Building a Digital Platforms Network

Speaker: Carola Castellà (Diputació de Barcelona)

In front of the diverse needs of local administration to assume the management and maintenance of their own Decidim platform, the Diputació initiated the Participa311 project in 2017. This project aimed to create a multi-tenant architecture for Decidim platforms, offering it to municipalities that wish to join.

This system allows for the efficient creation of multiple instances, optimizing technical and economic resources. The Participa311 platforms empower public administrations with limited resources to take advantage of the opportunities that digital participation offers to citizens. Currently, over 115 local entities are part of the network, each having their own digital participation platform, potentially reaching a population of 2,216,093 individuals.

The Participa311 policy goes beyond providing economic and technical resources to local administration. Each of these platforms is considered a node in a network that fosters collective knowledge and learning. This collective intelligence is evident in the meetings, training sessions, and studies conducted in recent years, which materialize in the Comunitat311.

Language of the session: Catalan or Spanish

Description:

Decidim has recently hosted two participatory spaces where young people have been the leaders and mental health the main issue. During the Mindset Revolution process in Manchester and the Youth Forum in Barcelona, young people have been involved in deliberation and proposal making to reach a set of policy proposals and recommendations regarding mental health.

This workshop aims to create a safe space for young people involved in these experiences to share learnings and outcomes, and to collectively explore how culture can be used to communicate the results to other young people and citizens, using tools like Theater of the Oppressed and Legislative Theater. We will also pay attention to the accountability component and how it can facilitate the follow-up of policy proposals and recommendations.

Objectives

1. Learn about the Mindset Revolution process and the Youth Forum, the tools used and the resulting recommendations and policy proposals regarding youth mental health
2. Explore how culture can help translate recommendations and policy proposals into an accessible format to reach citizens, especially youth and schools
3. Discuss how the design of the accountability component could be improved to include the diversity of elements and how to make it more approachable and user-friendly for monitoring and evaluation

Methodology

The workshop consists of two parts, the first will be a presentation of the work done so far and the second half will be practical. In the first part, young people involved in the participatory experiences will explain the processes and their outcomes. Then, participants will work in small groups to explore and brainstorm on the communication of results using various cultural expressions and its integration to the accountability component. The session will end with a sharing and discussion in the plenary session.

Introduction (15 minutes)

1. Welcome and introductions
2. Overview of the workshop objectives and agenda

Experience Sharing (20 minutes)

1. Explanation of the Mindset Revolution and the Youth Forum participatory spaces by participants, and the tools used to reach these recommendations/policy proposals (Legislative Theatre, Decidim)
2. Policy proposals and recommendations: commonalities and differences

Culture, accountability & communication (45 minutes)

1. Participants will be divided into groups
2. Brainstorming on cultural formats to translate recommendations, reflecting on their simplicity/complexity, impact, cost, shareability and potential
3. Exploring ideas to make the accountability component more adaptable, useful and user-friendly for participatory policy tracking
4. Group presentations and discussion on the outcomes

Wrap-up and Conclusion (10 minutes)

1. Recap of the workshop highlights and key takeaways
2. Evaluation and feedback collection

Workshop conducted by: Marta Anducas, Cristian Palazzi, Enric Senabre (Platoniq Foundation) & Sonia Bussu (University of Birmingham).

Language of the session: English, with translation into Spanish/Catalan if needed.

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 potential resulted in Decidim 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.

This workshop aims to outline the integration process of the free tool EJ (Pushing Together) with Decidim in order to offer the possibility of using multi channel poll with opinion groups in initiatives carried out via Decidim. We are going to use a hands-on methodology to detail the integration process to bring together enthusiasts for the kind of use that EJ enables as well as people interested in the integration process itself for use with other free tools in the future.

The workshop will have a duration of 1 hour 30 minutes and a hands-on methodology, divided as follows:

• 20 minutes: Approaching EJ opinion gathering tool
• 30 minutes: Technical details of the integration and demo
• 45 minutes: Using the integration at local instances simulating a participation process
• 25 minutes: Discussions about the experience and joint roadmaps

Workshop conducted by: Henrique Parra Filho

Language of the session: Spanish and English

Description:
Socio-technical and eco-social transitions toward more sustainable and democratic societies require specific postures and mindsets, new ways of designing, theories of change and visions for transitions.

Decidim is the result of an ever-extending community of practice, a participatory governance infrastructure, a design and organizational culture, and the crystallization of visions of desirable futures.

This session is oriented to test a toolkit that allows to elicit, explore, and expand such visions. Considering Decidim as a prefigurative technopolitical project (and movement) made out of matter and meaning, this toolkit aims to design with expectations for technopolitical transitions. Expectations are semiotic-material and political forces. They are collective visions of the future that coordinate behaviour, meaning and affect in the present.

Objectives:

1. Understand what kind of promises and expectations are managed within the Decidim community
2. Stimulate promises and expectations of technopolitical transition

Methodology:

Introduction (15 minutes)

• Welcome and introductions
• Overview of the project and brief introduction to sociology of expectations and promises

Toolkit testing (60 minutes)

• Identify socio-technical promises and expectations within Decidim community
• Understand how these promises and expectations are sought to be realised
• Find what are the limitations of these promises and expectations
• Use fiction to stimulate promises and expectations to challenge assumptions and objectives
• Designing actions to shift the promises and expectations from the niche of the Decidim community to other areas of society

Wrap-up and conclusion (15 minutes)

• Key highlights and takeaways
• Evaluation and improvement proposals

Workshop conducted by: Becoming with Holon and Tecnopolitica (IN3-UOC)

Language: English with Catalan or Spanish translation if needed

Lunch break