[Panel 3] Participation in practice (II): public space, data, empowerment

A digital public space for citizen participation: the case of the French Parliament

The objective of this presentation is to share the French Parliament's experience on implementing digital tools to enhance democracy and citizen engagement. We want to mix theoretical analysis we have produced in the last two years on digital participation, deliberative democracy, citizen engagement and digital sovereignty as well as practical input on the implementation of digital tools, the development of new communities and digital experimentation. Since 2017, we have implemented an Open Parliament initiative, which includes concrete tools and projects for accountability, transparency, citizen participation and collective experimentation. At the crossroad between deliberative, representative and participatory democracy, our experience showcases the possible bridges between those different types of citizen engagement and the needed dialogue between policy makers and the tech communities. Finally, we will present our Decidim case study applied to the parliamentarian context.

Teaching municipal open data for community empowerment in on-line and off-line environments.  

For the past six years, BetaNYC has been building popular education workshops that teach every-day residents about civics, data, technology, and how wield these things together. In this presentation, Noel Hidalgo and Kate Nicholson will summarize our open-source teaching methods, tools, and values. This presentation will showcase the core elements on how to teach open data, while contextualizing history and tools. We will also address how to teach technology and open data in bandwidth contained environments. Through this brief presentation we will highlight five classes BetaNYC has developed with Mayor’s Office of Data Analytics, the Manhattan Borough President, Queens Public Library, City University of New York, and Pratt Institute to build up data and civic literacy for all.

Increasing citizen participation for those with least power in local decision making

The aim of the project is to increase participation in municipal decision making processes for those groups that according to the Swedish Democracy Investigation are underrepresented in decision making in Sweden: women, immigrants and young people. This is achieved by applying and developing practices and methods for inclusive processes and by creating the conditions to scale up and increase efficiency by using digital participation platforms. Digidem Lab works together with four districts in Gothenburg and Stockholm and one social housing company to develop their participatory processes: participatory budgets, citizens proposals and collaborative meetings places. With the help of a reference group from underrepresented groups and cooperation with representatives from the local civil society, we develop inclusive methods and apply the digital participation platform. Sanna Ghotbi from Digidem Lab will share key findings in combining methods for equal power distribution with digital platforms.