Brussels 17th October

The European Citizens Action Service (ECAS) assemble 100+ to a central Brussels venue to celebrate digital democracy.

• An Estonian diplomat opens the day and praises participatory budgeting…
• A Canadian working in Ireland talks about her new forms of citizen participation …
• A Portuguese market researcher working for a major Brussels firm shares data on its study of the values of the ‘Millennium’ generation.
• An Italian MEP awards six young people a prize for innovative projects in digital engagement
• An Institute Associate (Fraser Henderson) explains how social listening tools can be used to analyse young people’s opinions…
• A German technocrat invites providers of online participation tools to a Conference in Germany

Does any of this make a difference?

Well, in the short-term, no,

But longer term, we need to worry about the weaknesses of our democracy and there is plenty of evidence that disillusionment is widespread among young people. They use technology to broadcast their views on all kinds of subjects but are far less willing or confident to have a dialogue with politicians.

Happily, there is a growing industry of innovative developers building online tools to make these conversations easier.

One such civic engagement start-up is called Apptivism, set up earlier this year by two refugees from what was once the ‘Nudge’ unit at 10 Downing Street! Their app runs through Facebook Messenger and aims to give consultees a quick and easy way to add their voice to government consultations ‘without having to attend a meeting’.

 Multiply this kind of initiative tenfold and we still get an inadequate picture of the scale of interest in finding ways of revitalising democracy. The last time we looked the forthcoming World Forum for Democracy in Strasbourg (Nov 8-10) had 184 speakers. Whether this is a response to Trump, Brexit or whatever, there is a clear emphasis now on supplementing traditional forms of democracy with new ideas or better forms of the old ones.

Consultation is just one of those tools that have been around a long time, but not implemented very well. It is why the Institute thinks it is important to participate fully in all discussions on the future directions of democracy.

One small project was Deep-Linking Youth – the name for the social listening exercise outlined by Fraser Henderson this week. An interview between Fraser and myself can be found in the linked article here.