La Constitución de Todos (LCdT) is the constitutional crowdsourcing platform for Chile. The platform aims to promote public discussion about the constitution - providing a virtual platform for the public to express their opinion and analyze the current constitution.

Read more about La Constitución de Todos

A web platform that serves as the centerpiece of the Basque Country’s citizen engagement strategy. The website is used to publish government data and facilitate citizen participation in three key areas: transparency, participation, and collaboration. The latter two areas allow for citizens to comment on and propose legislation.

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GovTogetherBC is an online citizen engagement and volunteerism portal for British Columbians. Through GovTogetherBC, citizens can identify consultation opportunities by topic/interest area through the Engagements and Dialogues feature. Users can learn about various ways they can join consultations initiated by government agencies. Citizens can elect to participate through a wide variety of channels, including by email or phone, through the GovTogetherBC web portal (voting, forums), or at in-person meetings. Often their votes decide components of the policies and projects.

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Now defunct, ePart was an online platform that allowed Israeli citizens the opportunity to comment, vote, and voice concerns on upcoming committee hearing topics about to reach the Knesset, Israel’s national legislature. Users could track topics as they progressed through hearing stages and tag particular interest areas – e.g. environment, energy, etc. – to receive notifications when those topics came up for discussion. System administrators reported back on the outcomes of hearing discussions, linking outcomes to specific user comments or trending hashtags where applicable.

Read more about ePart

The online platform enables citizen groups in Athens to submit projects to a central server where they connect and develop solutions with like-minded groups and the corresponding government agencies. The resulting programs are then tracked on a publicly accessible map that also highlights best practices. SynAthina also has a physical location (the Kiosk), where groups and government officials can meet in person. Government agencies and civic organizations can also post on the ‘Open Call’ page to solicit ideas, participants, etc. for projects.

A citizen engagement platform operated in the Autonomous Community of Aragon. Consultations during the process are carried out through a blend of online and offline mechanisms, including a web portal and face-to-face workshops, to the end of encouraging greater citizen participation in the development and assessment of public policies.

Read more about Aragon Participa

Rahvakogu (People’s Assembly) was a digital initiative to crowdsource policy proposals for improving the state of democracy in Estonia. Five specific issues were selected beforehand; the online platform provided an opportunity to comment, support, or criticize submitted proposals for those five themes. Sessions were held where political representatives, SMEs, and citizens who contributed to the original proposals deliberated on proposals. Finally, 18 of the most crucial ideas were presented at Citizen Assembly Day. 15 were selected by the Estonian parliament; 3 of the proposals turned into actual laws and 4 more were redefined and partially implemented.

Though a now complete, Sunlight had created an online ‘bill’ called the Transparency in Government Act 2008. The foundation used a blog-like format, which allowed the public to submit their own ideas and commentary on the proposed legislation. The project’s overarching goal was to make the whole process of government more transparent and accountable by making information about congressional lawmakers, as well as the federal government, available in a more timely manner. The Sunlight Foundation wanted public feedback on its effort: “as this is our first stab at creating such comprehensive transparency legislation, we want others to tell us if we aren’t being aggressive enough, or are too aggressive in our initial approach to these issues.”

An independently run citizen engagement platform that coordinates consultations with the Taiwanese government. Although offline consultations are key element of the process, vTaiwan also relies heavily on technology: the vTaiwan website serves a central hub for relevant information, discussion forums, and user surveys.

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This Government of Mexico initiative posts documents, projects, policies, and programs, seeking citizen comments. Participa also posts challenges to solicit citizen proposals.

Youth Lead the Change is participatory budgeting (PB) process where young Bostonians decide how to spend $1,000,000 of the City’s budget. Bostonians submit ideas online through and through social media. Volunteer ‘Change Agents’ turn the most popular, feasible ideas into projects for the public to vote on. Bostonians can vote online and in-person for their favorite PB projects.

San José launched Unleash Your Geek, a series of competitions that invited citizens to submit innovative solutions to some of the city’s biggest challenges. The city also engaged partners to help the winning team develop and market its solution. In the first year, the competition focused on graffiti removal from areas that are difficult and expensive to reach, including overpasses, freeway signs, and tall buildings. The challenge resulted in 140 submissions from individuals, small businesses, corporations, and teams at local universities.

This 2007 initiative launched a wiki to give New Zealanders a direct platform to suggest wording for a new Policing Act. The Goal was to provide an online space, similar to a whiteboard, where anyone can post their ideas on what a new Policing Act should say. The Act was viewed by New Zealand parliamentarians, before an official bill was introduced into Parliament.

Lisbon’s participatory budgeting law allows citizens to propose and subsequently vote on potential line items in the City of Lisbon’s budget. Proposals are solicited across thirteen thematic areas covering science, culture, agriculture, and education, and citizens are invited to participate both through physical meetings and an online web portal. After the submission period has elapsed, government officials conduct a review of the submissions, combining similar ones and ultimately selecting the most meritorious to be put to a final public vote.

Read more about Lisboa Participa

This 2015 hackathon was hosted by a public institution in Romania, namely the central Government, with the support of the Prime Minister. The event attracted 28 high school students; in 14 hours of programming in 2 days, they created 5 ambitious online platforms including date.gov.ro (for open datasets) and petitii.gov.ro (for e-petitioning). This event was to encourage the Romanian civil service to seek alternative methods for interacting with citizens and raising accountability.

Mexico City leaders created a citywide campaign to collect citizen opinions and proposals for the city’s constitution. The city used Change.org to capture citizen petitions for the constitution. The mayor created a working group to draft the constitution, consisting of academics, activists, former mayors, and other citizens representing a diverse cross-section of the population. Petitions that received 10,000 signatures were presented to representatives of the working group. Petitions that exceeded 50,000 signatures were presented directly to the mayor, who committed to including them in a draft of the constitution for approval by the constitutional assembly. Citizens submitted 341 proposals, receiving over 400,000 votes. Four petitions surpassed the 50,000-signature threshold and 11 received 10,000 signatures. The new constitution, which goes into effect in September 2018, will include 14 articles based on citizen petitions.

Mazinām Slogu (Let’s share the burden) is a Latvian internet platform for direct civic participation in rating and improvement of state services, delivery of information to citizens, and reduction of bureaucracy. The users can rate and comment on their experience at a state institution and suggest changes to agency processes. Suggestions are reviewed weekly by employees of the State Chancellery, replies are issued and changes are made if feasible.

BFO is a collaborative budgeting process to responsibly allocate funds and align resources with community priorities. The city also created other avenues for citizens to provide their input. Using online and in-person approaches like mobile budget booths and online budget simulations, the city worked with staff, volunteers, and partners to target a variety of communities, including low-income households, seniors, and Spanish speakers. The city set up mobile voting booths at a variety of locations throughout the community, including libraries, public transit centers, and schools.

Launched in 2009, the first draft phase of a collaborative process was to build the draft for the Marco Civil. The Marco Civil is aimed at protecting privacy rights, net neutrality, safe-harbors for internet service providers and online service providers, open government, and setting forth that access to the internet is a requisite to the exercise for civic rights. More than 800 substantive contributions were received, including comments, e-mails, alternative drafts and references.

The project is intended to enhance the level of accountability and participation in the implementation of the education reform “La Buona Scuola,” introduced by Law 107/2015. An app was launched in May 2016 to monitor projects on school buildings. This app enables students and families to rate facilities and submit other metadata. Citizens are given an easy to use interface to assess and report the impact/efficacy of funds and school projects.

Ley 3de3 is a comprehensive reform about the management rules of the public administration and the ethical principles that must follow any government official. It asks all officials, including the President himself, to make three declarations public: their assets, potential conflicts of interest and taxes. It was the first citizen bill to be discussed and approved by Mexican Congress, after receiving 634,000 citizen signatures.

Read more about Ley 3 de 3

A draft citizen participation law for the Region of Madrid that would institutionalize six public participation mechanisms; five of which would impact the legislative process, and one which initiate a participatory budgeting program.

Kialo is simple yet powerful web platform that enables users to engage in debates and decision-making. Topics have included debates over Catalonia’s secession and Confederate statues in the United States. Founder Errikos Pitsos has said that cities have reached out to run their own version of Kialo for agenda-setting.

Járókelő is the Hungarian translation for “passer-by”, it refers to any citizen who is walking by and can be able not only to see a problem or malfunction, but also to report it in an easy and efficient way. Járókelő is a platform for citizens, either by web software or mobile application to report local problems to government officials. The submissions are tracked as “solved”, “unsolved” and/or “in progress” on the website. Anyone can follow the progress of a submission as all official answers are made public.

Involve is an advisory group that supports active public involvement in NHS, public health and social care research. Among many projects, including a digitally-accessible expert network, Involve participants support the development and coordination of effective regional public and patient involvement (PPI) networks.

Taiwan’s Shezidao Development Project engaged in a local participatory democracy experiment. Through the I-Voting (online voting) process, participants directly voted on four proposals for urban development. Even if the vote is not officially decision-making, but simply for reference, it is the first project of it’s kind in Shezidao.

A mobile phone app, available on iOS and Android devices. Via the app, users have access to attendance and voting records for all their elected representatives. Push notifications alert users to when live plenary sessions are scheduled to occur so that they can provide their feedback and vote on bills in real-time.

Read more about Mi Senado

Forum Virium Finland develops new digital services and urban innovations in cooperation with companies, the City of Helsinki, and Helsinki residents. Helsinki residents can select to participate in smart city pilots and experiments which are done through challenge-based open calls or collaborative projects.

Evaluación De La Ley collects the opinion of Chileans regarding the application of pre-existing laws and policies. Citizens and social groups can can express their opinions, share information, make suggestions and raise their concerns regarding the law in evaluation. These comments can be submitted online and/or face-to-face in meetings facilitated by the Department of Evaluation of the Law of the Chamber of Deputies. This Department was created in cooperation with the OECD to increase knowledge of the effects of existing laws.

PHW involves the public in recording cases of illegal hill clearing by developers, enhancing public awareness and foster cooperation between civil society and the state government in evaluating/improving current policy and enforcement. Observers take a photo of the activity and send it via WhatsApp or Facebook with a GPS location. Reports of the latest cases are periodically submitted to the authorities for their response and action. PHW also actively works with the state and local government to proactively taking action against the responsible parties and to mitigate future damage.

Developed by, Democracia en Red, a nonprofit organization based in Buenos Aires, Argentina, DemocracyOS provides a platform for citizens to digitally engage with legislation. When a bill is brought to congress in Argentina, DemocracyOS is used to immediately translate and explain it in plain language. Citizens are also able to discuss and directly “vote” on these new bills using the website or mobile app. In 2012, DemocracyOS founded a political party, the Net Party, whose elected representatives will vote in accordance with citizen views via DemocracyOS.

In this process, the Government of South Australia poses challenges that tackle social issues faced by the community. For each challenge, D3 runs an information session, two problem definition workshops, and finally a pitch night where ideas are presented to the judges. The team with the best idea is awarded a $15,000 grant to test their idea with citizens over a four week period. There have been 6 D3 challenges, with citizen groups launching pilot programs for kids’ health, violence against women, and more.

A civic council of 200 Israelis began drafting a Declaration of Human Dignity. By hosting a series of town hall meetings, and having 200,000 participate in virtual deliberations through social networks and other platforms, Israelis were able to crowdsource opinions for a preliminary draft which they presented to the Declaration of Human Dignity President in 2014.

In 2016, the Comptroller General of the Federal District (CGDF) launched an initiative called the Projeto Controladoria na Escola (Controllership in Schools) to engage public school students in the process of auditing school infrastructure. The pilot included 10 schools. Students collected data about their local school environments, reporting the major issues they faced, identifying the root causes of those issues, and proposing ideas to fix them. They identified over 600 issues ranging from burnt out light bulbs to missing fire extinguishers and broken chairs. The CGDF compiled the issues identified into a report detailing the findings, which they later presented to the department of education. The comptroller-general visited each school later that year to monitor the results of the project and to oversee if the issues were resolved.

Three bills were made available online for public comment in advance of a vote. A web-based commenting platform made it easy for users to comment and mark-up legislation that was included in the pilot. Although the pilot was not ultimately adopted as a permanent program, the experience of the pilot program informed the government’s future citizen engagement strategies.

Read more about Public Reading Stage Pilot

Colab.re is a digital and mobile citizen-to-government engagement platform, where citizens socially interact with their local government to report city’s daily issues, suggest urban improvements through polls, and rate public services. They currently have +150k users in Brazil and +100 clients including municipalities, state governments, federal departments and utility companies.

City Tech involves Chicagoans in the design and delivery of new urban services and infrastructure. City Tech executes projects with funders and the city government as well as academics, community groups, and startups. City Tech then prepares these solutions into best practices for other cities. Projects include creating methods to ease subway congestion during large events and building a digital directory of public health services in Chicago.

CityScan helped the city government in Bridgeport and other municipalities collaborate with the local community to rescue derelict land-use sites. The organization secured a promise from each city to assist with the cleanup of land parcels. Senior citizens and young people used digital cameras and handheld devices to photograph and track the progress of the work in their own communities. They mapped conditions on a website. The community groups communicated local information about land use that the government would not otherwise have had. The government also worked with the CityScan teams, taking action based on their input and giving relevance to those volunteer efforts.

“CityScore” is a single number to indicate Boston’s overall health. It combines 24 different metrics, from 311 reports and resident satisfaction surveys to Wi-Fi availability, energy consumption, and grants for the arts. A value above 1 means that things are going better than planned. Bostonians can check it online. The Mayor of Boston has used these identify policy and implementation issues.

CityMart runs challenges to help cities use procurement as a tool to source innovative, transformative solutions from SMBs, startups, and others. CityMart helped Melbourne find creative partners to solve transport congestion. Participants submitted statements about their solution’s feasibility, impact, and inclusivity. Submissions were reviewed and two startups were chosen by a “Challenge Panel,” gaining the opportunity to discuss wide-scale implementation with council leaders. When San Francisco wanted new streetlights, CityMart helped the City find a company that designed environmentally-conscious lights that followed open standards and can be remotely controlled.

Launched as a prototype in 2012, Citizens Voice was an e-petition platform. Every adult citizen of Montenegro or a foreigner with permanent residence will be allowed to submit an e-petition in any field within the Government’s remit on the website. If supported by at least 6,000 signatures, the relevant ministry will be required to turn such a petition into a formal motion, which will be considered by the Government, and, if necessary, submitted to the Parliament.

TransGov is leveraging on Ghana’s Open Data Initiative (GODI) to enable citizens to monitor and comment on the implementation and progress of developmental projects in their local communities and nationwide.

Tú Evalúas is a digital platform evaluates the performance of federal public programs through citizen participation. Through Tú Evalúas, Mexicans can rate the processes followed by each program and comment on their satisfaction/dissatisfaction with the products and services offered by the government.

The Evidence Check programme ascertains “what evidence underpins which policy in specific areas, how robust that evidence is, what the gaps are, and to determine how closely based on the evidence policies are.” The program uses a basic web forum to collect submissions and evidence from contributors; once the forum is closed to submissions, the committee publishes next steps on the issue.

Read more about UK Parliament’s Evidence Checks

We the Citizens was created to test whether a citizens’ assembly might be an effective public participation mechanism in Ireland. The program had three key components: a series of regional meetings, a trial Citizens Assembly, and a comprehensive survey to identify citizens’ views and opinions regarding the participation process. Citizens wishing to participate in the regional meetings could indicate their interest by signing up online. Regional meetings offered a number of general themes to provide a starting point for group discussions, but otherwise left space for participants to discuss matters most important to them. The Citizens Assembly was also focused on specific issues rather than general themes; participants were provided with briefing documents, and then asked to propose recommendations after engaging in group deliberation. No results were binding.

Read more about We the Citizens

Brazilians can submit questions in real-time to representatives during policy hearings that are live-streamed to the website. Users can support/upvote questions as well; the most voted questions will be forwarded to the Bureau to be answered.

Launched in 2012, the Government of Mongolia began live, direct communications with its citizens through free telephone line: 11-11. Citizens can call to provide their thoughts and opinions on a wide array of issues ranging from everyday life to the current government policies. This trend of mobile political engagement has continued in Mongolia with the Mayor of Ulaanbaatar soliciting citizen SMS input on 3 occasions and the former Prime Minister asking citizens to text their vote between two directions for Mongolia’s Development Path for 2015-2016.

ZenCity is a data analytics platform that leverages artificial intelligence (AI) to help cities understand citizen feedback for better governance and data-smart decision making. Using AI algorithms, ZenCity collects interactions from several sources including social media networks and city hotlines, and provides insights to cities on citizens’ opinions.

#LavaJota is a website with crowdsourced data regarding Brazil’s Lava Jato corruption investigation. The dynamic website provides a space for civilians and journalists to contribute information about institutional transparency and judicial security. That information has provided evidence in the investigation. The data, converted into searchable resources, has been used to journalists to detail the various processes of the investigation, individuals involved, videos of plea-bargain testimonies, and data-visualization graphics.

The European Citizens’ Initiative allows EU citizens to shape Europe by calling on the European Commission to make a legislative proposal. A “citizens committee” composed of at least 7 citizens from 7 different member states can register any initiative online, which will then have one year to gather 1 million signatures (with minimum thresholds reached in at least 7 different EU countries). The EU Commission decides on what follow-up action to take which may include an examination and public hearing, after which the Commission will either take action or publish a report with the reasons for not doing so.

Active Citizen is an e-referendum platform allowing citizens to influence urban transformation in Moscow. Their votes directly select things like new speed limits, construction of bike lanes, expansion of pedestrian zones, and free Wi-Fi in the metro and parks. Voters are required to submit their name, telephone number, and email address. As of 2017, votes are made secure through blockchain technology. To incentivize widespread participation, Muscovites get points every time they cast a vote, with more points afforded for city-wide votes than district-level ones. Those points can be used to pay for parking tickets and metro fares or to enter ticket lotteries. The most active citizens can get special privileges, like breakfast with Moscow’s mayor.

This experimental project aims to explore how technology can foster youth participation in democracy to help policymakers understand youth opinion and strengthen decision-making. A large part of the initiative was creating the Digital Dashboard, which “listens” to the opinions voiced on Twitter, Facebook, blogs and other social media sites. They have produced several reports with their findings, including guidelines and recommendations on how to improve learning mobility programs.

This Tuscany law was designed through a meta-participatory process in which local stakeholders (e.g. authorities, interest groups, associations, academics, citizens) helped to define the content, features, and goals of the law – all culminating in a “21st Century Town Meeting.” The law focused not on processes of participation, but that institutions promote “methodological pluralism” for engaging the public in public policies. The law is a prime example of institutionalizing crowdlaw practices and is the first law in the world passed at the regional level to proactively promote citizen engagement.

Read more about Tuscany Regional Participation Policy (TRPP)

Reforme was a platform encouraging public participation in Morocco’s legislative process. Moroccans could register with a Facebook account. Anyone could propose legislation for editing on the platform, which fell under the stewardship of a law facilitator (i.e. the stakeholders who propose and oversees the legislative process). Reforme.ma was used by the public to provide opinions on Morocco’s proposed constitutional changes; for that process, the platform received 200,000 visitors and over 10,000 proposals.

Read more about Reforme.ma

The ruling political party in Montevideo, Uruguay, implemented this program in 1990 after winning the 1989 election. The program entailed the transference and distribution of social, political and economic power, allowing citizens to make decisions on matters of interest to the community. The program consists of several offline council meetings.

Read more about Montevideo Decide

Parlement & Citoyens is an online platform which brings together representatives and citizens to discuss policy issues and collaboratively draft legislation. On the platform, representatives can host a consultation consisting of three to five different participation opportunities. For instance, a representative poses a problem that citizens help define, generate solutions for, and for which they then help evaluate the proposed solutions. Citizens may also engage in video discussions with the representative. At the end of the process, a conclusory report explains if, when, and how citizen input was incorporated into the resulting draft law.

Read more about Parlement & Citoyens

Madame Mayor, I Have an Idea is a participatory budget program enacted in the city of Paris. Parisians can submit budget proposals online, and the proposals are subsequently refined both in offline citizen working groups as well as through the program’s web portal. After the submission period elapses, the City selects qualified proposals based on a number of criteria (including public benefit, technical feasibility, and budgetary scope), and then puts those proposals to a final citizen vote.

Read more about Madame Mayor, I Have an Idea

e-Democracia provides multiple participatory mechanisms for Brazilian citizens to engage members of Congress during live meetings (Interactive Audiences); identify and discuss possible solutions to policy problems (Expressions); and comment on and draft legislation (Wikilegis). The most success so far has come from the youth statute community.

Read more about eDemocracia

An online portal, launched in 2015, which allows citizens (limited to Madrid residents further in the process) to submit and vote on proposals for draft legislation, participate in public dialogue, engage in participatory budgeting, and vote on processes posed by the City Council. All proposals that gather signatures from 1% of the city’s population with the right to vote (currently ~27,000) are reviewed by the Council and either implemented or a report is published providing reasons for its rejection.

Read more about Decide Madrid

Following the end of apartheid, the newly instituted South African government initiated a participatory constitution drafting campaign. The government endeavored to make the campaign as inclusive as possible with participatory workshops and outreach involving a telephone talk-line and an internet home page.

Read more about the Constitutional Assembly Public Participation Programme

MindLab is a cross-Ministry innovation lab that enables collaboration by involving citizens and businesses in developing solutions to public problems. These stakeholders collectively participate in decision-making and the development of prototypes and large scale experiments. MindLab facilitates the exectution of every step of these projects and undergoes research to learn what worked and what did not.

e-Savjetovanja’s platform allows Croatian citizens to be directly involved with the drafting of laws, regulations, and other acts by directly commenting on them and being notified of any new consultations, which are visible to everyone. Amendments to the Right to Access Information Act established the legislative framework for the system, which also allows citizens to track government responses to their submitted comments and suggestions.

Read more about Croatia’s public consultation policies

Started through The Citizens’ Initiative Act, Open Ministry helps people crowdsource law proposals into Finland’s parliament. Initiatives submitted must acquire a 50,000 vote threshold to be considered further. Selected proposals are considered by Ministry’s volunteer professionals (researchers, professors, lawyers, etc.) to evaluate potential impact of the initiative. Once the proposal has been furthered to the Parliament for consideration, citizens can also obtain a detailed information of how their representatives have commented and voted on the proposal. Finland’s same sex marriage initiative was signed on Open Ministry by more than 100,000 people and passed by parliament in 2015.

Read more about Open Ministry

The Better Reykjavik platform is used to stimulate civic engagement in the decision-making process by giving citizens the opportunity to upload ideas on issues regarding services and operations of the city and vote (up or down) ideas that are appealing or unappealing. Following the success of Better Reykjavik, My Neighbourhood (formerly Better Neighbourhoods) was launched as an e-participatory budgeting platform, allowing participation in the allocation of funds for projects.

Read more about Better Reykjavik/My Neighbourhood

ManaBalss.lv is a digital petitioning platform that enables the user (any person age 16 and older) to post both broadly grasped initiatives and concrete law amendments to be voted on by other such users. When a post reaches 10,000 signatures, the initiative is submitted in the Parliament (Saeima) and must be reviewed as a collection submission according to the Rules of Procedure of the Saeima. As of 2016, 8 initiatives from ManaBalss had become law or amendments to the law though several popular initiatives were also rejected by the Latvian parliament.

Partnering with asl19.org, MySociety set up Majlis Nameh to allow Iranian citizens to ask questions of their MPs, online, in public, and anonymously.

Decidim Barcelona is a platform which aims to to allow city residents to make proposals for the Municipal Action Plan (PAM) for Barcelona and keep up-to-date with the debate on the program from 2015-2019. Users can comment on, support, argue against, and share proposals, as well as attend in-person meetings about the proposals.

Read more about Decidim Barcelona

A number of Filipino netizens, on publicly-viewable and editable Google Docs files, began laying down the framework of what they began to call the Magna Carta for Philippine Internet Freedom, or #MCPIF. Members of the Facebook group provided suggestions, discussed positions, and gained consensus over the fundamental principles of the draft as it was taking shape. Communicated with Filipino Senators during the drafting process.

This pilot enabled citizens to submit comments and debate on a draft of the Broadcasting Bill. The website included background information on the pilot, broadcasting, and the submission process. A large number of submissions from interest groups and members of the public were received in a format that allowed them to be evaluated quickly and to have a significant impact on the Hearings.

This platform allowed the New York community to co-draft the “The Anti-Tenant Black List” bill with the New York City Council. There was also an opportunity to discuss priorities and strategies in person with Council member Ben Kallos. This was Legislation Lab’s first project at the local level.

Gobierto is an open-government platform for Barcelona with tools for transparency and resident participation. Gobierto provides modules to view politicians and their agendas; examine government statistics and budgets; and track planning progress. For participation, Gobierto allows government offices to define their participatory processes and launch polls. Residents can also ideate on discussion forums. Gobierto operates in a number of cities including Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, Alcobendas, Getafe, Sant Feliu, and Catalonia.

The 6 laboratories serve as hubs of collaboration and innovation, where Bolognese city staff connect with residents and co-design initiatives driven by the talents and ideas of citizens. The city has a number of tools to develop citizens’ ideas that are unearthed through the laboratories, including a participatory budgeting process and IncrediBOL, a competitive program that supports creative startups with free space from the city, or consulting services from staff and partners.

After the 2008 financial crisis, the country named 25 citizens to a Constitutional Council. The council used Twitter, Facebook and other sites to crowdsource provisions for a new Icelandic constitution. A first draft was made available online in April 2011 and citizens could comment through a Facebook page. Iceland held a referendum asking voters if they agreed to using the crowdsourced document as the frame for the new constitution — 66% voted yes. Half of Iceland’s 235,000 eligible voters took part in the referendum, according to reports.

Since 1988, the Brazilian Constitution has permitted grassroots citizen proposals to be presented in a legislative class. However, with the great difficulty of collecting and verifying paper signatures, no proposal has ever reached the legislature. Mudamos allows citizens to e-sign popular initiative bills in a simple, free and secure way, revolutionizing the relationship between voters and their representatives. Users can also propose their own popular initiative bill.

MyGov is a citizen engagement platform founded by the Government of India to crowdsource governance ideas from citizens. Users discuss policy issues and propose ideas in topical “Groups” connected to their respective national agency. Users can directly ask questions and demand action from politicians on the “Talk” feature. In “Creative Corner,” users can submit to online and offline challenges in government projects. Lastly, users can also participate in government polls. A mobile phone application for MyGov is currently under development.

In 2007, the Melbourne city government set up “Future Melbourne,” a wiki for residents to collaboratively read, edit, and discuss the draft of the city’s official ten-year plan. The Future Melbourne team, along with key experts, reviewed the contributions and organized/incorporated the range of ideas into a formal draft. This plan was then considered by the the City of Melbourne’s Executive Team and the Future Melbourne Reference Group before finally selected in September 2008.

This 2012 initiative allowed users to submit ideas, add comments, or vote on existing ideas to strengthen transparency, participation, and collaboration at the National Archives.

Osoigo is a web platform creating bridges between political representatives and citizens. Users can ask questions to politicians, political parties, and government bodies who have committed to the platform. Users can directly seek responses from one individual or post to the ‘Agora’ for politicians to debate. Users can also ‘support’ other users’ questions, encouraging politicians to address the topic at hand. The platform further allows political stakeholders to use Osoigo’s API on their respective webpage. Osoigo has achieved the participation of more than 670 Spanish politicians with 13,000 answers and more than 20,000 questions from citizens.

Petitti empowers Romanian citizens to get involved in the decision-making process by informing the Government on what the main concerns and issues are and by thus obliging it to issue an official response.

DesafíosSP, or Challenges, launched in 2016 to invite the public to collaborate in the creation of better policies and services with the municipality. With the help of Codeando Mexico and the GovLab, Desafíos sought online proposals to solve the mobility crisis, pollution, government inefficiency, and enhanced public spaces. The public formed teams and were encouraged to use open data to develop their proposal. The commitment from the government was to implement the 10 best rated proposals from a team of experts, and to help develop the selected ideas through online coaching and mentoring from academics and leaders in the region. The success of the pilot led San Pedro legislate civic challenges into a new Citizen Participation Law.

PlaceSpeak empowers residents to make a meaningful impact on the communities where they live, work, and exist by participating in public consultations. The City of Calgary has used the platform to ask for residents to vote on sites for a future skatepark and evaluate new flooding plans. Vancouver polled its residents on ways to become a more equitable, efficient and affordable city.

Plebiscito Digital allows Colombians living abroad to cast symbolic votes. Around 7,000 people in 76 countries contacted participated in their first project - the Digital Referendum. In this use case, Plebiscito Digital tested for liquid democracy. Instead of giving a voter binary options, each voter had 100 votes that they could distribute towards any of the 7 open decisions on the referendum. Votes operated in the system as tokens.

Politicopia presents a wiki-based forum for the compilation and presentation of information on actual bills pending before the Legislature. If a citizen wants to learn about an issue and shape the dialogue, Politicopia will provide a quick and solid handle on the process. And if a legislator wants to hear unfiltered suggestions from interested citizens — instead of mainly hearing from organized special interests — Politicopia will give him or her a new source of input.

In 2015, three Kurdish civil society organizations (The Alliance of Iraqi Minorities, the Kurdish Instutute for Elections and the Brave Youth Organization) engaged Kurdish citizens on the constitutional drafting process using Legislation Lab’s platform. Each of the three organizations had their own dedicated website for citizens to vote and comment on the draft constitution. While each organization focused on specific topics, all the feedback was integrated and centralized by Legislation Lab. This enabled an unprecedented way for CSOs to collaborate as they mined citizens feedback from different angles.The findings were submitted to the Kurdish parliament as a contribution on the drafting process.

Crowd.mos.ru is a platform that gives citizens the opportunity to offer their ideas how to improve life in Moscow. Experts select the most effective, which they bring to the discussion of the project participants. Citizens vote for the projects they like and, according to the results of crowdsourcing, put the best proposals into practice. The crowdsourcing platform has already implemented 13 projects, which involved more than 131,000 residents.

People in Estonia can submit legislative ideas to parliament. Rahvaalgatus.ee enables citizens to directly create, discuss and vote on legal initiatives, bypassing more traditional, roundabout methods of lobbying for legal change. Any initiative with at least 1000 pro votes is sent to the national parliament, Riigikogu, which is legally obligated to discuss it. Numerous initiatives have been passed to the parliament, with many dozens under discussion.

Revision Tracker allowed Moroccan citizens to participate in reviewing Morocco’s penal code in 2015. Through the online platform, citizens could vote and comment on the changes related to every article of the penal law. The votes and comments were submitted to the Ministry of Justice. One of its main innovative features allowed users to compare the old version and the new version of the law articles using color-coding (green for the new text, and barred red for the removed text).

CitizenOS platform is a digital platform for Estonian citizens to discuss and propose solutions to pressing community issues. Anyone can add their own proposal; users can vote, comment, make suggestions and list pros and cons on the proposals in question. CitizenOS aims to galvanize the public to advocate for proposals discussed on the platform at a state and community level.

Cities of Service is a nonprofit organization that helps mayors build stronger cities by changing the way local government and citizens work together. Their coalition of over 250 cities includes Anchorage, Boston, Detroit, El Paso, Richmond and more. Their Citizen Engagement model and Impact Volunteering strategy help cities tap into the knowledge, creativity, and service of their citizens to help identify and solve pressing local challenges. Methods include citizens contributing policy ideas, leading community groups, and providing feedback to improve existing city programs and services.

Cap Collectif’s platform offers six participatory applications: “Consultation,” to involve the public in reflecting on preexisting proposals; “Survey,” to collect information through citizen surveys or voting; “Suggestion Box,” to solicit creative ideas form the community; “Call for Projects,” to solicit potential policies and proposals from the community; “Petition,” for users to raise issues and collect the votes necessary to trigger deliberation and consideration by a government body; and “Participatory Budgeting,” for citizens to help allocate defined government funds. Cap Collectif has 80 clients including the City of Le Mans, the French Ministry of Social Affairs and Health, and France’s Startup Project.

Various LSE policy and law departments pioneered the crowdsourcing of a new UK constitution. Through their joint website, they asked members of the public to submit and vote on ideas. In the next phase, live-streamed videos on the website aimed to foster discussion and debate over the proposed content, with a draft document further honed at a constitutional carnival in spring 2014.

Vota Inteligente is a platform where any person, organization, or group of people can generate their own policy proposals. People vote on proposals to indicate and non-governmental organizations that participate on the platform can sponsor proposals. Ciudadano Inteligente will send the most popular proposals that to all the presidential and parliamentary candidates.

Bogota residents participate on the platform by responding to open challenges launched by the District Government with ideas and proposals. Points can be earned for commenting or voting on proposed ideas, as well as having the highest voted idea for each challenge. Originally, points could be redeemed for things like tickets to sporting events. More recently, rewards have been in line with opportunities to advance citizens’ ideas, such as meetings with the city’s policy formulation team. Comments are analyzed by the DPAC team and distributed to the relevant government agencies.

Assemblyman Mike Gatto of LA created a wikispaces account in order to let users participate in bill drafting. Users can log in, make changes to the bill, offer suggestions and self-police their work.

Your Priorities is an eDemocracy web application designed to help groups speak with one voice. A host of municipal governments use YRPRI for participatory projects, such as crowdsourcing ideas or participatory budgeting. The community has over 11,000 registered users, with more than 6,000 proposals generated and over 10,000 arguments for and against proposals submitted.

A concept described by MIT Media Lab’s Cesar Hidalgo during TED 2018 in Vancouver. In an AI Democracy, voters are connected to an individualized “digital agent” that would collect information on our needs, views, and politics via the data we feed into social platforms and search - essentially work as a political Spotify. Digital agents would read our data in such a way that it would be able to directly vote on issues on our behalf as an automated Congress.

YourSAy is an online consultation hub where citizens can influence government decisions. Some of the ways users can participate: GOVchat, a community engagement event where users can chat with senior leaders through digital and mobile formats about specific issues; YourSAy Engagements, to take part in online discussions; voting in polls; and Fund My Community for local participatory budgeting efforts.

#RevoluciónCR sought policy proposals from Costa Ricans via an Internet-based platform. More than 600 citizens proposed ideas and thousands voted on them; 36 finalists were selected from the most popular proposals by 39 experts. Project owners attended event and worked with experts from institutions like GovLab to improve their projects. IDEAS signed a memorandum of understanding with Costa Rica’s Ministry of Commerce to help reform key policies with input from #RevoluciónCR.

#CultureisDigital posed challenges to examine how the UK government, tech companies, civil society organizations and citizens can use digital technology to unleash the creative potential and boost the capability of cultural organisations. Users could post ideas, rate and comment as well as share case studies/examples of work already being delivered in this area.

Urna de Cristal (www.urnadecristal.gov.co), a presidential initiative, is an online platform for civic participation and government transparency with the objective to inform citizens about the government’s activity and to stimulate discussions and collect citizens’ views on a wide range of topics. Discussions are structured around specific questions that can either be brought forward by the government or by citizens and that allow for an interactive exchange between the users. Feedback received through the use of Urna de Cristal informed the development of the ‘Anti-paperwork Law’ (Ley anti-trámites) by identifying formalities that were not necessary or leading to corruption and inefficiency.

It´s a platform for receiving proposals for bills; of public policies; projects of diffusion, of creation or of support to networks, of synergy in subjects of science and technology.

Crowdfund and Crowdsource a special interest group of the people

LawMaker is a lobby for the rest of us – a platform that empowers Americans to crowdsource new laws, build voter coalitions, and engage politicians to advocate for change.

CitizenLab provides cities and local governments with a digital platform to easily consult their citizens on a wide variety of topics. Thanks to an intuitive back-office, administrators can easily respond to citizens, moderate the comments and share the input internally. The automated analysis features, based on natural language processing technology, also help administrators cut through the noise and easily access valuable, real-time insights to inform their decisions and shape better policies.

Civis helps citizens understand and co-create the laws that impact them, with the Government.