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Designing Decidim together
Postal access code verification for anonymous survey responses
Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
The current verification methods are quite labor intensive, either for participants or for administrators. They usually achieve a level of verification valid for longer periods of time and intended for uses in multiple processes. They are not really useful for scoping smaller sample sizes (e.g. verifying that you are from a certain neighbourhood, street or any other smaller target group). Lastly, they may require data not available (i.e. email addresses).
Describe the solution you'd like
We would like to develop a solution where project manages can determine a sample size of participants (e.g. inhabitants in a street) and create a limited amount of acceses to a component. These links could then be sent by post as a QR-code and automatically allow participation for that session.
As a participant I would recieve a letter, open the QR-code and automatically be directed to the survey, which I would be able to fill out. Access to the survey is only granted when coming from a code, which would be valid until the survey is submitted. This allows for starting the survey multiple times (i.e. when I switch devices), but only submitting survey responses once per code.
In a first phase, we would develop this for the survey component, as it allows non-registered participation. Additionally, we would primarily focus on codes that could be used once. A setting allowing X-amounts of uses per code could be developed in later phase.
Describe alternatives you've considered
So far, we have considered:
- Using private processes: we do not know the email addresses of the users at the beginning of the process, so we can't invite them. Additionaly, we want anonymous participation to be possible
- standard verifications: do not work as mentioned in the problem statement
- Decidim Access codes: Does not work because we do not know the email addresses
Additional context
We must consider dependencies when starting development on ephemeral user registration according to the roadmap (https://github.com/orgs/decidim/projects/22?pane=issue&itemId=34383439).
Does this issue could impact on users private data?
Additional user data (i.e. postal adresses) would not be handled on decidim. Decidim just handles the codes, so there is no impact on user data. Any additional data would be covered in the terms of the survey component.
Funded by
City of Zürich, development probably in the Q1 2024
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Hi @larskaiser, regarding your comment about the verifier not being able to extend to neighborhoods and/or streets, it's indeed possible. What's needed is that the census have this information. For example, the city of Getxo has implemented it (https://github.com/GetxoUdala/decidim-getxo/blob/main/app/services/census_action_authorizer.rb), as has the City Council of Barcelona. You just need to be familiar with the documentation: https://github.com/decidim/decidim/blob/develop/decidim-verifications/lib/decidim/verifications/default_action_authorizer.rb and have the necessary information in your census. In the case of organizations, it is quite common to have sub-censuses. For example, if you have a CIVI CRM, we have also developed this solution: https://github.com/openpoke/decidim-module-civicrm/blob/main/lib/decidim/civicrm/verifications/membership_types_action_authorizer.rb. Moreover, you can go a step further and create "custom groups" that group various typologies allowed by the census: https://github.com/openpoke/decidim-module-civicrm/blob/main/lib/decidim/civicrm/verifications/groups_action_authorizer.rb. This is very useful because you can even synchronize a private assembly with a group without needing to make participants private. Therefore, when answering the survey, only individuals with verification from the selected street/area administrator would participate. That covers the first part.
As for the second part, sending a code to access a component is already possible with Decidim, and the link can be shared as a QR code (easily generated with any free program). Perhaps there is room for improvement, but there's no need to start from scratch. What should be improved is the ability to provide more than one response in a survey.
Bests!
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