• Case

  • Citizenship

  • Commons

Decidim, a digital community for citizen participation

Published on 11 September 2019
Update on 26 September 2022
Download in PDF

Summary

Launched in 2017, Decidim ("we decide" in Catalan) is a free and open digital platform for democratic participation , maintained and developed by a community of users, it is also disseminated under terms that allow its use, copying and modification by all.

Its creation was driven by the Barcelona City Council, which wanted to have a digital infrastructure that would allow it to co-construct its actions with citizens at all territorial levels. Today, any organization or group - government, local authority, association, citizen's group, university, company, cooperative, etc. - can freely deploy and configure its own digital infrastructure. - can freely deploy and configure its own platform by adapting it to its needs. Decidim can be used to collectively create action plans, consult the public, manage a community, organize participatory budgets, etc.

Decidim is not only a digital platform: it is above all a social and political project, built on a robust legal foundation in response to the main contemporary crises. Researchers, politicians and citizens have built this common base in a transdisciplinary approach, with the will to propose a framework in which the digital platform could be built in a coherent way. From the outset, it was decided that Decidim would be open source software, with the source code and all the information necessary for its use made public.

Thus, the actors at the origin of the project have, since its inception, designed and organized the project in order to ensure its sustainability by combining an open source distribution and an open and participatory governance.

Référence :

Decidim is now a true digital common. As a proof, a growing number of public actors use Decidim internationally (in France, Finland, Belgium, Mexico, etc.) and adapt it to their uses, also seduced by the great modularity of the digital platform and the range of participatory features offered. In France, more than thirty organizations use Decidim for one-off, recurring or permanent participatory processes of varying sizes

Référence :

. All of these specificities, as well as the speed with which the project has become established, make it a particularly interesting object of analysis: the digital commons model for responding to new societal challenges, the mutualization in the design of a solution that evolves according to the diversity of its users' needs, the role of the public actor in a collective governance, etc.

A. An innovative framework for an ambitious technopolitical project

1. The will to invent new democratic models!

Seize the potential of digital technology to experiment with new forms of participation and collaboration

In May 2015, the list formed by the political party Barcelona en Comu (Barcelona in Common) won the municipal elections with more than 25% of the votes and Ada Colau, the first candidate on the list, became mayor of Barcelona. In a context of crisis, the campaign had the double characteristic of focusing on ultra-localized issues and going beyond the city itself to create links with other related spaces, thus underlining the need for effective means, especially digital ones, to facilitate the exchange of information on a multi-level scale. Once in power, the municipality wished to strengthen this collaborative dynamic by opening up the construction of the city's Municipal Action Plan to everyone, wishing to fully mobilize the opportunities offered by digital technology to create links within a network logic. This is where the Decidim project was gradually born.

At the same time, another soil has been conducive to the emergence of Decidim and strongly constitutive of its identity: the growing recognition of new models of organization, production and sharing of knowledge, specific to the digital world. These models, theorized and experimented by certain hacker cultures, digital communities and actors of the commons, strongly inspire the Barcelona City Council team. This human-centered approach has naturally imposed itself on Barcelona, complementing the community's stated focus on Smart City, combining a strong digital component and the Internet of Things.

It is at the crossroads of these two major phenomena (crisis of representative democracy and distrust of digital giants) that Decidim was born, with the will to propose new democratic models thanks to collective intelligence.

Références :

Adopt an open, needs-based digital approach

Conceived as a necessary prerequisite to meet its ambitions, Barcelona designed its project with an open digital approach from the outset. The tools and development methods were a natural fit.
  • 1. The functional and non-functional needs expressed by the municipal team were mainly to have a tool that was: inclusive, designed to accommodate all types of audiences; modular and adjustable to facilitate implementation by different local levels; standardized to facilitate communication and reuse of information; transparent to build trust throughout the participatory processes; and flexible enough to combine digital and physical participation devices.
  • 2. The team considered the use of different digital tools already in use in several European countries (United Kingdom, Iceland, Basque Country) and tested the Consul tool used by the city of Madrid, not excluding the possibility of contributing to an already existing tool in order to bring in the missing functionalities for its own use. However, very quickly, the existing tools were considered insufficient to cover the minimal needs identified as necessary to meet the goals of such a participatory device.
  • 3. On this basis, Barcelona City Council decided to invest several million euros to develop a platform that would meet its needs, knowing that this was necessary to achieve its objectives in a sustainable manner. Decidim is therefore a project born in response to specific needs, expressed and analyzed, which has had the advantage of facilitating its adoption by users once it is available.
  • 4. Still with the aim of ensuring the sustainability of the project, the public contract published by the City Council was split up in such a way as to call upon several local SMEs to collaborate in an ecosystem to develop the platform. This choice is not insignificant, because it has the advantage of not making the software development rely on a single provider - creating a gap with the other non-selected providers that could have limited their involvement - and of establishing a "by design" collaboration mode for the project.

2. A digital commons for an ethical resource at the service of the general interest

While it could have perfectly well turned to the scalable solutions offered by certain software publishers, or even entrusted the economic players with the responsibility of marketing and developing the solution according to orders, Barcelona remained particularly involved in the project. Such a presence had a double interest: to ensure the adequacy of the solution with its own needs and those of its partners, and to ensure that the development of the platform reflects both the collective interest of the stakeholders (public and private) and the general interest sought by Barcelona.

Thinking about the project for the benefit of a community

Another fundamental choice was made during the preparation of the public contract: that of making Decidim an open source software designed as a digital commons (governed collectively by rules that ensure its collective and shared character). In fact, in the introduction to the technical conditions to be met by the platform it wants to set up, the municipality of Barcelona states that "only platforms based on free software that are open, transparent, secure and managed as public-commons offer the guarantees to meet [its] expectations and to build better democratic processes. These same concerns have been reflected in the contract recently published by Barcelona to further develop the tool.

 

Références :

First of all, Decidim is composed of a set of complementary digital resources, all distributed under a free and open license:

  • The software itself and its specifications are available under the GNU Affero GPL ;
  • the documentation produced to accompany its installation, its administration, its use;
  • design elements that create and recall the identity of the project, help users to orient themselves, contribute to the dissemination of the project outside;
  • the data sets ;
  • training materials to accompany the use of the software.
Today, Decidim is supported by a community of heterogeneous actors that includes local authorities - starting with Barcelona City Council, but also all the other Spanish and non-Spanish authorities that use and contribute to Decidim -, governments, other public actors, companies, associations, citizens, etc. This community is organized around commonly accepted rules of governance to support and sustain the development of the resources that make up Decidim. This community is organized around commonly accepted rules of governance to support and sustain the development of the resources that make up Decidim. They are transparent and made public on multiple online media.

Article that might interest you

2016 : un tournant pour l’ouverture des données d’enquêtes relatives aux usages numériques

L’ouverture des données du Baromètre du numérique, principale étude de référence sur l’équipement et des usages numériques des Français (et fruit d’une collaboration entre le CGE et l’Arcep qui remonte à 2003) va permettre aux chercheurs, consultants, sociologues, développeurs, mais aussi aux journalistes ou aux entreprises de produire de nouvelles analyses avec un regard neuf. « L’ouverture des résultats a nécessité un travail minutieux d’harmonisation des bases de données annuelles, pour en faire un ensemble cohérent. Les libellés des variables ont par exemple dus être réconciliés, afin de faciliter les analyses inter-temporelles ». Ces jeux de données sont désormais disponibles sur la plateforme nationale data.gouv.frPlusieurs acteurs publics avaient entrepris dès 2015 de placer en open data les données issues d’enquêtes. Tableau de bord des services publics numériques (SGMAP) Le secrétariat général pour la modernisation de l’action publique (SGMAP) a mis au point un tableau de bord pour suivre l’évolution du recours aux services publics numériques.. Ce tableau de bord contient, pour 25 démarches courantes, le pourcentage 2012, 2013 et 2014 de démarches réalisées de façon dématérialisée. Il a été réalisé par le SGMAP en coordination avec les administrations.Les resultats de l’année 2015 sont disponibles sur data.gouv.fr. Baromètre des usages biens culturels sur Internet (Hadopi) L’Hadopi (Haute Autorité pour la diffusion des œuvres et la protection des droits sur internet) a publié sur data.gouv.fr 18 jeux de données. Parmi ces jeux de données figurent, notamment, les éditions 2012, 2013 et 2014 du Baromètre des usages biens culturels sur Internet . Ce baromètre dresse un état des lieux des pratiques de consommation licite et illicite de biens culturels des internautes français : usages d'internet sécurisation de la connexion consommation de biens culturels (musique, vidéos, logiciels, livres, séries TV, photos, jeux vidéo) Dépenses mensuelles pour des biens culturels dématérialisés Types de sites fréquentés pour la consommation de produits culturels en ligne Ces enquêtes sont réalisées par l'IFOP et portent sur un échantillon national représentatif (selon la méthode des quotas) de 1502 internautes français âgés de 15 ans et plus. Les Enquêtes de l’INSEE sur les TIC auprès des ménages L’INSEE réalise tous les ans une enquête auprès de 4000 ménages pour mesurer l'équipement des ménages, leurs usages et fréquence d'utilisation, le recours à l'administration et au services de commerce en ligne. Cette enquête, coordonnée par Eurostat, s'inscrit dans le cadre du règlement n°808/2004 du 21 avril 2004 par le concernant la mise en œuvre du plan d'action eEurope 2005 consacré aux TIC.En 2016, l'échantillon de l'enquête téléphonique est composé de 3500 ménages en métropole et d'une centaine de ménages dans chacun des quatre DOM.L’INSEE a mis en ligne, sur son site, 33 jeux de données pour les années 2007-2014, dans un format réutilisable. Les données d’audience du web gouvernemental (SIG) Le Service d’Information du Gouvernement (SIG) a entrepris en 2016 de rendre publiques et réutilisables les statistiques d’audience quotidienne  des principaux sites web gouvernementaux. Observatoire du marché des noms de domaine en France (AFNIC ) L’Afnic publie tous les ans des données sur le marché français des noms de domaine : noms de domaine déposés en France, dépôt de .fr, part de marché du .frPlusieurs  jeux de données offrant un aperçu exhaustif de l’activité du .fr sont disponibles sur data.gouv.fr. Les données relatives aux noms de domaine avec leurs principales caractéristiques - Données géographiques, date de création, nom du bureau d’enregistrement, etc. Les principaux indicateurs d’activité du .fr (parc, créations, renouvellements, etc. suivant les principaux axes d’analyse (temps, géographique, type de titulaire, etc. Baromètre INRIA-TNS Sofres : Les Français et le numérique L’INRIA a conçu en 2011 un baromètre qui porte sur les représentations que les Français se font du numérique. En 2014, la méthodologie du baromètre a été conservée afin de pouvoir comparer les résultats des deux éditions. Certaines questions ont été mises à jour ou complétées en 2014 ; un tiers des questions a été renouvelé pour intégrer deux focus thématiques sur "l'éducation au numérique & le numérique dans l'éducation", et sur "l'économie numérique & l'attractivité du secteur". 1145 personnes de 14 ans et plus ont été interrogées fin 2013 en face à face, dans toute la France. Les données de l’enquête 2014 dont disponibles sur data.gouv.fr

  • Data

Involving the public sector for the benefit of the general interest

The main benefits of designing Decidim as a digital commons are to:
  • 1. Ensure that the future of Decidim does not rest on a minority of actors;
  • 2. Ensure that Decidim evolves in line with the needs expressed by its users;
  • 3. Improve the quality of the tool by welcoming contributions from a community with heterogeneous skills;
  • 4. Build confidence in the project by providing guarantees of transparency and inclusion;
  • 5. Encourage its wide dissemination and adoption.
In this model, the involvement of public actors is crucial to ensure that the general interest, which characterizes the actions carried out by such actors, is present - and even central - to the development and evolution of the tool. Such participation and pooling of resources between a diversity of public and private actors is only possible, however, because of the free and open source nature of the project, thereby ensuring free and healthy competition for the benefit of economic actors.

B. A modular digital infrastructure for "tailor-made" participatory devices

1. A multitude of possible use cases

Decidim can be used by any type of organization or group and can accommodate a wide range of participants.

Modularity for unique approaches, in response to the needs expressed

When installing and setting up its own Decidim platform, an organization can choose to configure several main types of participatory spaces. The main spaces are "Assemblies" (permanent spaces, for example to organize the participatory life of an organization in the long term), "Participatory processes" (spaces structured in successive and/or parallel steps, for example used in the framework of a participatory budget), "Initiatives" (spaces dedicated to the organization of collective initiatives) and "Consultations" (spaces used to ask specific questions).

These different types of spaces can be made more or less public or private.

Once these choices have been made, it is possible to build customized participatory processes. Within each space, several participatory features can be combined. Hundreds of options can therefore be considered.

A range of participatory features to combine

The participatory features (designed as combinable, activatable and deactivatable modules) cover many needs: allowing participants to formulate proposals, share comments, vote (using different voting methods), access the results once the proposals have been analyzed (their official acceptance or rejection must be published - several proposals can lead to a common result), follow the implementation of the decisions taken in a transparent and progressive way, organize physical meetings (and publish the content produced during them and follow up on it online), co-author texts, etc.

Organizations also have tools to animate their community, for example by organizing conferences, animating a blog and creating information pages, sending personalized notifications and newsletters, or sharing surveys.

This permanent enrichment of Decidim by its community is one of the great benefits resulting from its nature as a digital commons: the list of functionalities as proposed today is by no means definitive and limiting (any functionality that appears to be missing in the context of a use can be freely developed) and each functionality can itself evolve or be completed if it does not meet the need.

Référence :

2. Major features of Decidim

In addition to the modularity and variety of functionalities offered, Decidim presents a set of key orientations that are reflected in its functional architecture.

Complementarity between physical and digital

Référence :

Convinced that digital technology is not meant to supplant physical exchanges, but rather to complement them and extend their impact, the Decidim founding team chose to finely articulate these two dimensions in a functional manner. On several levels, the platform allows to match physical exchanges and online participation in a logic of transparency, equal access to information and opportunity for participation, and collaboration. Thus, proposals shared by participants can be linked to one or more physical meetings, which themselves have been the occasion to publish minutes and full reports at the discretion of the contributors.

 

These features are enhanced by the social and fun nature of the platform, which aims to encourage participation by offering it in an engaging and entertaining format.

Accountability and monitoring of results

Any participatory process implies transparency of the resulting decisions and follow-up in the implementation of actions. Decidim offers its users several functionalities to concretely apply these methodological principles, which are necessary to give confidence in the process and create a recurrent commitment. Results modules allow the contributors to be notified of the treatment (favorable or not) of the proposals they have made. It is also planned to inform users clearly and in detail about the implementation of the decisions made and to interact with the teams in charge of the realization.

Référence :

Modularity carried in its legal components

One of the main assets of Decidim is the great modularity it offers because of the sharing of all its components under free licenses. Thus, the software code is released under the AGPL v3 license, while the other contents are released under the Creative Commons By-SA license and the databases under the OdbL license. These three free licenses are called "copyleft", which means that they authorize the use, copying, modification and redistribution of the works they protect, provided that the derivatives thus created are shared in the same way. This allows users to develop modules that perfectly fit their needs, and then to share them with the entire user community. Thus, the more users adapt Decidim to their needs, the more the software offers modularity possibilities, which could be decisive in its use by new actors, and thus potentially factors of new enrichments. The choice of licenses that are particularly restrictive in terms of sharing thus translates into practice the will to make Decidim a digital commons, by engaging a virtuous circle by which the beneficiaries of the resource become in return its maintainers. It is also justified by the nature of the commons that is Decidim: as a participatory democracy application that is intended to be as modular and adaptable as possible, its development and maintenance as a digital commons requires both a significant dissemination, but also an enrichment by its users. Through the game of licenses, the more users adapt Decidim to their uses, the more the software offers modularity possibilities, which could be decisive in its use by new actors, and thus potentially a factor of new enrichments.

C. Open governance to ensure the sustainability of the project

1. Participatory and transparent governance rules

The community that contributes to Decidim's growth is heterogeneous: local authorities - including Barcelona City Council, which initiated the project - public institutions, companies, and citizens. Such heterogeneity implies the adoption of an effective and transparent governance framework, resulting from collaborative work. In 2019, the community debated (offline and online) the relevance of creating an independent legal structure to orchestrate the development of the project, coordinating its developments by further mutualizing. After having collectively agreed on the relevance of having such a structure, the community used the Metadecidim platform to collaboratively draft the statutes of the association and plan the first constitutive General Assembly. A proposal of statutes was submitted to a vote on February 16, 2019, and adopted via an online procedure. Thus, an association was formed to structure the community. The statutes of this association organize a strong structure, based on the general assembly, the coordination committee, the thematic committees, the democratic guarantee committee and the office. The powers and internal operating rules of each of these bodies are precisely detailed in the statutes. This makes the functioning of the association more fluid, but also reassures potential future members. However, the community is not limited to this one association, and other communities exist alongside it. For example, the Lab Team brings together researchers from several universities to produce scientific content and disseminate knowledge, while a coordination group bringing together several user communities organizes the sharing of experiences as well as reflections on the sustainability (especially financial) of Decidim. The Decidim community is thus itself composed of a set of communities that come together to develop the digital platform, but also to support the Decidim project as such. To organize the collaboration between actors with different interests and skills, several tools have been created and complement each other.

Metadecidim: the digital space where the future of Decidim is decided

Like many Open Source projects, the Decidim project uses its own platform to organize its community. The Metadecidim platform is thus the digital space where the different contributing communities converge to make decisions concerning the future of the project, including from a technical point of view. This platform gathers Decidim users beyond the eponymous association.

On this platform, it is possible to report bugs, to help each other and to propose new features. This last possibility is particularly interesting, as it concretely translates Decidim's will to progress according to the evolution of the users' needs. The platform also allows to decide collectively on the developments to prioritize concerning the software, before sending them to the developers via GitHub.

The Metadecidim platform is also the place where Decidim's governance evolutions are decided and where the community's high points (events, etc.) are organized. In addition to the Metadecidim digital platform - which remains the place of reference for understanding the history of the project and participating in the writing of the next lines - several online and offline devices animate the Decidim community. SOM Decidim offers the opportunity for the community to meet physically on a regular basis (the results of the discussions produced are systematically shared on the digital platform to ensure a fluid and homogeneous flow of information). Events (the Decidim Jam) are organized annually to gather the community around the future of the project. A Telegram group allows to be informed of the platform's news and upcoming meetings, just like on social networks.

Concerning the organization of the collaboration from a technical point of view (source code), the developers contribute to the development of the project on the Github code repository platform, ensuring the bridge between the orientations taken on the Decidim platform and their effective realization.

The social contract, to frame the development of the project

In order to frame the development of the platform in accordance with Decidim's founding political project, its creators have drafted a social contract which they describe as "a code for democratic guarantees and open collaboration". This social contract proposes a set of principles and values that the members of the community commit to respecting in their involvement in the development of the project. When an organization chooses to use Decidim, it can choose to bind the participants to the social contract by imposing it through the General Terms of Use (GTU) of the platform. However, they are not constrained to respect this social contract in the context of their use, nor to impose it to the users: the software being made available under a free AGPL 3.0 license, they are free to use the software without being constrained by the social code. Conversely, anyone who wishes to join the "Decidim community" and contribute to the development of the software must adhere to the social contract.

 

Decidim's social contract: what guarantees does it impose?

This document proposes to the community commitments regarding the openness of the code (Decidim will always remain free software), of the contents produced (made available under a CC BY-SA license), and of the data collected (published under the ODbL license), as well as requirements regarding standardization and interoperability to facilitate the reuse of the elements produced. The social code also contains commitments regarding transparency, traceability and integrity of "documents, proposals, debates, decisions and any other participatory object, mechanism or process" that must be ensured by "the platform and its current and future configurations, developments, deployments and uses". The social contract invites to act imperatively in favor of equal access and opportunity of participation on the platform, erasing any form of discrimination in access and use of the features. It also encourages the production of qualitative indicators from the content generated, accompanied by the publication of the methods used to generate them. Data confidentiality provisions aim to protect participants. In order to establish a relationship of trust and commitment of the participants in the participatory processes implemented through Decidim, the Social Contract proposes methodological commitments in terms of accountability and monitoring of results, which must be functionally translated into the platform (e.g. in terms of processing proposals, notification of decisions taken, progressive monitoring of the implementation of decisions taken, etc.). Finally, Decidim is intended to be collaborative "by design" by enshrining a principle of continuous improvement of the platform to adapt to the needs of users, including through effective, inclusive and ongoing inter-institutional collaboration.

2. towards a European governance?

Barcelona's political impetus: a real catalyst for Decidim

There is no doubt that the impetus given by Barcelona City Council is one of the major factors in the success of the project and in particular in the speed of its development. This support was firstly in the form of funding for the platform as such (the development of the first version is still ongoing and funded). The support of the Barcelona City Council has also materialized through the provision of means to concretely experiment the project on a local scale (through training, the organization of physical meetings, the deployment of a communication strategy, the increase in competence and the mobilization of teams dedicated to the deployment of the process, etc.). Benefiting from a strong political backing, the project was deployed with a certain speed, going beyond the Barcelona area from the start, thanks to the willingness to collaborate with other local authorities.

Between impetus and inertia, the need to become autonomous and international

If the strong impetus given at the outset by the public authorities to such commons projects is fundamental, it is also likely to generate contradictory effects. For example, the preponderant place given to this actor by the extent of its capacity to support the project can have the effect of phagocytizing the community and slowing down its development. The difference in means between the driving forces can affect the balance of the governance that is being structured. Too much institutionalization of processes can also slow down the project in a phase where agility can prove to be a major asset. Finally, the instability of the political contexts in which the project operates can jeopardize its sustainability, if the support is not continuous (for example, in the case of Decidim, the possible non-re-election of Ada Colau has raised questions about the sustainability of the project). In the case of Decidim, although the effect of inertia caused by the size of the role of Barcelona City Council in the project and the political risk inherent in electoral cycles is real, it would seem that the foundations for a balancing of forces have gradually been laid within the framework of formalized governance. One factor that accelerated this trend was the need for internationalization of the project: as more and more actors took up Decidim at the international level, it became urgent to translate all the documents necessary for its free appropriation by all. From Catalan to Castilian and then to English, this first transition allowed the governance of the project to be opened up little by little, in application of the founding principles of Decidim. These transitions are not necessarily obvious since they take place within different communities in parallel: developers, policy makers, scientists who do not use the same codes, practices and tools. But Decidim contains these principles of open and inclusive governance in its DNA and therefore naturally tends towards this dynamic, progressively addressing the different obstacles encountered in the real world. One of the most tangible proofs is the creation of the Metadecidim association. Today, with the growing adoption of Decidim by international actors, a logical evolution would be for this progressive transformation of governance to accelerate and strengthen for the benefit of more openness and mutualization, and thus for the benefit of society at large.

Sources

Decidim, a digital community for citizen participation

Launched in 2017, Decidim ("we decide" in Catalan) is a free and open digital platform for democratic participation , maintained and developed by a community of users, it is also disseminated under terms that allow its use, copying and modification by all.

Its creation was driven by the Barcelona City Council, which wanted to have a digital infrastructure that would allow it to co-construct its actions with citizens at all territorial levels. Today, any organization or group - government, local authority, association, citizen's group, university, company, cooperative, etc. - can freely deploy and configure its own digital infrastructure. - can freely deploy and configure its own platform by adapting it to its needs. Decidim can be used to collectively create action plans, consult the public, manage a community, organize participatory budgets, etc.

Decidim is not only a digital platform: it is above all a social and political project, built on a robust legal foundation in response to the main contemporary crises. Researchers, politicians and citizens have built this common base in a transdisciplinary approach, with the will to propose a framework in which the digital platform could be built in a coherent way. From the outset, it was decided that Decidim would be open source software, with the source code and all the information necessary for its use made public.

Thus, the actors at the origin of the project have, since its inception, designed and organized the project in order to ensure its sustainability by combining an open source distribution and an open and participatory governance.

Référence :

Decidim is now a true digital common. As a proof, a growing number of public actors use Decidim internationally (in France, Finland, Belgium, Mexico, etc.) and adapt it to their uses, also seduced by the great modularity of the digital platform and the range of participatory features offered. In France, more than thirty organizations use Decidim for one-off, recurring or permanent participatory processes of varying sizes

Référence :

. All of these specificities, as well as the speed with which the project has become established, make it a particularly interesting object of analysis: the digital commons model for responding to new societal challenges, the mutualization in the design of a solution that evolves according to the diversity of its users' needs, the role of the public actor in a collective governance, etc.

A. An innovative framework for an ambitious technopolitical project

1. The will to invent new democratic models!

Seize the potential of digital technology to experiment with new forms of participation and collaboration

In May 2015, the list formed by the political party Barcelona en Comu (Barcelona in Common) won the municipal elections with more than 25% of the votes and Ada Colau, the first candidate on the list, became mayor of Barcelona. In a context of crisis, the campaign had the double characteristic of focusing on ultra-localized issues and going beyond the city itself to create links with other related spaces, thus underlining the need for effective means, especially digital ones, to facilitate the exchange of information on a multi-level scale. Once in power, the municipality wished to strengthen this collaborative dynamic by opening up the construction of the city's Municipal Action Plan to everyone, wishing to fully mobilize the opportunities offered by digital technology to create links within a network logic. This is where the Decidim project was gradually born.

At the same time, another soil has been conducive to the emergence of Decidim and strongly constitutive of its identity: the growing recognition of new models of organization, production and sharing of knowledge, specific to the digital world. These models, theorized and experimented by certain hacker cultures, digital communities and actors of the commons, strongly inspire the Barcelona City Council team. This human-centered approach has naturally imposed itself on Barcelona, complementing the community's stated focus on Smart City, combining a strong digital component and the Internet of Things.

It is at the crossroads of these two major phenomena (crisis of representative democracy and distrust of digital giants) that Decidim was born, with the will to propose new democratic models thanks to collective intelligence.

Références :

Adopt an open, needs-based digital approach

Conceived as a necessary prerequisite to meet its ambitions, Barcelona designed its project with an open digital approach from the outset. The tools and development methods were a natural fit.
  • 1. The functional and non-functional needs expressed by the municipal team were mainly to have a tool that was: inclusive, designed to accommodate all types of audiences; modular and adjustable to facilitate implementation by different local levels; standardized to facilitate communication and reuse of information; transparent to build trust throughout the participatory processes; and flexible enough to combine digital and physical participation devices.
  • 2. The team considered the use of different digital tools already in use in several European countries (United Kingdom, Iceland, Basque Country) and tested the Consul tool used by the city of Madrid, not excluding the possibility of contributing to an already existing tool in order to bring in the missing functionalities for its own use. However, very quickly, the existing tools were considered insufficient to cover the minimal needs identified as necessary to meet the goals of such a participatory device.
  • 3. On this basis, Barcelona City Council decided to invest several million euros to develop a platform that would meet its needs, knowing that this was necessary to achieve its objectives in a sustainable manner. Decidim is therefore a project born in response to specific needs, expressed and analyzed, which has had the advantage of facilitating its adoption by users once it is available.
  • 4. Still with the aim of ensuring the sustainability of the project, the public contract published by the City Council was split up in such a way as to call upon several local SMEs to collaborate in an ecosystem to develop the platform. This choice is not insignificant, because it has the advantage of not making the software development rely on a single provider - creating a gap with the other non-selected providers that could have limited their involvement - and of establishing a "by design" collaboration mode for the project.

2. A digital commons for an ethical resource at the service of the general interest

While it could have perfectly well turned to the scalable solutions offered by certain software publishers, or even entrusted the economic players with the responsibility of marketing and developing the solution according to orders, Barcelona remained particularly involved in the project. Such a presence had a double interest: to ensure the adequacy of the solution with its own needs and those of its partners, and to ensure that the development of the platform reflects both the collective interest of the stakeholders (public and private) and the general interest sought by Barcelona.

Thinking about the project for the benefit of a community

Another fundamental choice was made during the preparation of the public contract: that of making Decidim an open source software designed as a digital commons (governed collectively by rules that ensure its collective and shared character). In fact, in the introduction to the technical conditions to be met by the platform it wants to set up, the municipality of Barcelona states that "only platforms based on free software that are open, transparent, secure and managed as public-commons offer the guarantees to meet [its] expectations and to build better democratic processes. These same concerns have been reflected in the contract recently published by Barcelona to further develop the tool.

 

Références :

First of all, Decidim is composed of a set of complementary digital resources, all distributed under a free and open license:

  • The software itself and its specifications are available under the GNU Affero GPL ;
  • the documentation produced to accompany its installation, its administration, its use;
  • design elements that create and recall the identity of the project, help users to orient themselves, contribute to the dissemination of the project outside;
  • the data sets ;
  • training materials to accompany the use of the software.
Today, Decidim is supported by a community of heterogeneous actors that includes local authorities - starting with Barcelona City Council, but also all the other Spanish and non-Spanish authorities that use and contribute to Decidim -, governments, other public actors, companies, associations, citizens, etc. This community is organized around commonly accepted rules of governance to support and sustain the development of the resources that make up Decidim. This community is organized around commonly accepted rules of governance to support and sustain the development of the resources that make up Decidim. They are transparent and made public on multiple online media.

Article that might interest you

2016 : un tournant pour l’ouverture des données d’enquêtes relatives aux usages numériques

L’ouverture des données du Baromètre du numérique, principale étude de référence sur l’équipement et des usages numériques des Français (et fruit d’une collaboration entre le CGE et l’Arcep qui remonte à 2003) va permettre aux chercheurs, consultants, sociologues, développeurs, mais aussi aux journalistes ou aux entreprises de produire de nouvelles analyses avec un regard neuf. « L’ouverture des résultats a nécessité un travail minutieux d’harmonisation des bases de données annuelles, pour en faire un ensemble cohérent. Les libellés des variables ont par exemple dus être réconciliés, afin de faciliter les analyses inter-temporelles ». Ces jeux de données sont désormais disponibles sur la plateforme nationale data.gouv.frPlusieurs acteurs publics avaient entrepris dès 2015 de placer en open data les données issues d’enquêtes. Tableau de bord des services publics numériques (SGMAP) Le secrétariat général pour la modernisation de l’action publique (SGMAP) a mis au point un tableau de bord pour suivre l’évolution du recours aux services publics numériques.. Ce tableau de bord contient, pour 25 démarches courantes, le pourcentage 2012, 2013 et 2014 de démarches réalisées de façon dématérialisée. Il a été réalisé par le SGMAP en coordination avec les administrations.Les resultats de l’année 2015 sont disponibles sur data.gouv.fr. Baromètre des usages biens culturels sur Internet (Hadopi) L’Hadopi (Haute Autorité pour la diffusion des œuvres et la protection des droits sur internet) a publié sur data.gouv.fr 18 jeux de données. Parmi ces jeux de données figurent, notamment, les éditions 2012, 2013 et 2014 du Baromètre des usages biens culturels sur Internet . Ce baromètre dresse un état des lieux des pratiques de consommation licite et illicite de biens culturels des internautes français : usages d'internet sécurisation de la connexion consommation de biens culturels (musique, vidéos, logiciels, livres, séries TV, photos, jeux vidéo) Dépenses mensuelles pour des biens culturels dématérialisés Types de sites fréquentés pour la consommation de produits culturels en ligne Ces enquêtes sont réalisées par l'IFOP et portent sur un échantillon national représentatif (selon la méthode des quotas) de 1502 internautes français âgés de 15 ans et plus. Les Enquêtes de l’INSEE sur les TIC auprès des ménages L’INSEE réalise tous les ans une enquête auprès de 4000 ménages pour mesurer l'équipement des ménages, leurs usages et fréquence d'utilisation, le recours à l'administration et au services de commerce en ligne. Cette enquête, coordonnée par Eurostat, s'inscrit dans le cadre du règlement n°808/2004 du 21 avril 2004 par le concernant la mise en œuvre du plan d'action eEurope 2005 consacré aux TIC.En 2016, l'échantillon de l'enquête téléphonique est composé de 3500 ménages en métropole et d'une centaine de ménages dans chacun des quatre DOM.L’INSEE a mis en ligne, sur son site, 33 jeux de données pour les années 2007-2014, dans un format réutilisable. Les données d’audience du web gouvernemental (SIG) Le Service d’Information du Gouvernement (SIG) a entrepris en 2016 de rendre publiques et réutilisables les statistiques d’audience quotidienne  des principaux sites web gouvernementaux. Observatoire du marché des noms de domaine en France (AFNIC ) L’Afnic publie tous les ans des données sur le marché français des noms de domaine : noms de domaine déposés en France, dépôt de .fr, part de marché du .frPlusieurs  jeux de données offrant un aperçu exhaustif de l’activité du .fr sont disponibles sur data.gouv.fr. Les données relatives aux noms de domaine avec leurs principales caractéristiques - Données géographiques, date de création, nom du bureau d’enregistrement, etc. Les principaux indicateurs d’activité du .fr (parc, créations, renouvellements, etc. suivant les principaux axes d’analyse (temps, géographique, type de titulaire, etc. Baromètre INRIA-TNS Sofres : Les Français et le numérique L’INRIA a conçu en 2011 un baromètre qui porte sur les représentations que les Français se font du numérique. En 2014, la méthodologie du baromètre a été conservée afin de pouvoir comparer les résultats des deux éditions. Certaines questions ont été mises à jour ou complétées en 2014 ; un tiers des questions a été renouvelé pour intégrer deux focus thématiques sur "l'éducation au numérique & le numérique dans l'éducation", et sur "l'économie numérique & l'attractivité du secteur". 1145 personnes de 14 ans et plus ont été interrogées fin 2013 en face à face, dans toute la France. Les données de l’enquête 2014 dont disponibles sur data.gouv.fr

  • Data

Involving the public sector for the benefit of the general interest

The main benefits of designing Decidim as a digital commons are to:
  • 1. Ensure that the future of Decidim does not rest on a minority of actors;
  • 2. Ensure that Decidim evolves in line with the needs expressed by its users;
  • 3. Improve the quality of the tool by welcoming contributions from a community with heterogeneous skills;
  • 4. Build confidence in the project by providing guarantees of transparency and inclusion;
  • 5. Encourage its wide dissemination and adoption.
In this model, the involvement of public actors is crucial to ensure that the general interest, which characterizes the actions carried out by such actors, is present - and even central - to the development and evolution of the tool. Such participation and pooling of resources between a diversity of public and private actors is only possible, however, because of the free and open source nature of the project, thereby ensuring free and healthy competition for the benefit of economic actors.

B. A modular digital infrastructure for "tailor-made" participatory devices

1. A multitude of possible use cases

Decidim can be used by any type of organization or group and can accommodate a wide range of participants.

Modularity for unique approaches, in response to the needs expressed

When installing and setting up its own Decidim platform, an organization can choose to configure several main types of participatory spaces. The main spaces are "Assemblies" (permanent spaces, for example to organize the participatory life of an organization in the long term), "Participatory processes" (spaces structured in successive and/or parallel steps, for example used in the framework of a participatory budget), "Initiatives" (spaces dedicated to the organization of collective initiatives) and "Consultations" (spaces used to ask specific questions).

These different types of spaces can be made more or less public or private.

Once these choices have been made, it is possible to build customized participatory processes. Within each space, several participatory features can be combined. Hundreds of options can therefore be considered.

A range of participatory features to combine

The participatory features (designed as combinable, activatable and deactivatable modules) cover many needs: allowing participants to formulate proposals, share comments, vote (using different voting methods), access the results once the proposals have been analyzed (their official acceptance or rejection must be published - several proposals can lead to a common result), follow the implementation of the decisions taken in a transparent and progressive way, organize physical meetings (and publish the content produced during them and follow up on it online), co-author texts, etc.

Organizations also have tools to animate their community, for example by organizing conferences, animating a blog and creating information pages, sending personalized notifications and newsletters, or sharing surveys.

This permanent enrichment of Decidim by its community is one of the great benefits resulting from its nature as a digital commons: the list of functionalities as proposed today is by no means definitive and limiting (any functionality that appears to be missing in the context of a use can be freely developed) and each functionality can itself evolve or be completed if it does not meet the need.

Référence :

2. Major features of Decidim

In addition to the modularity and variety of functionalities offered, Decidim presents a set of key orientations that are reflected in its functional architecture.

Complementarity between physical and digital

Référence :

Convinced that digital technology is not meant to supplant physical exchanges, but rather to complement them and extend their impact, the Decidim founding team chose to finely articulate these two dimensions in a functional manner. On several levels, the platform allows to match physical exchanges and online participation in a logic of transparency, equal access to information and opportunity for participation, and collaboration. Thus, proposals shared by participants can be linked to one or more physical meetings, which themselves have been the occasion to publish minutes and full reports at the discretion of the contributors.

 

These features are enhanced by the social and fun nature of the platform, which aims to encourage participation by offering it in an engaging and entertaining format.

Accountability and monitoring of results

Any participatory process implies transparency of the resulting decisions and follow-up in the implementation of actions. Decidim offers its users several functionalities to concretely apply these methodological principles, which are necessary to give confidence in the process and create a recurrent commitment. Results modules allow the contributors to be notified of the treatment (favorable or not) of the proposals they have made. It is also planned to inform users clearly and in detail about the implementation of the decisions made and to interact with the teams in charge of the realization.

Référence :

Modularity carried in its legal components

One of the main assets of Decidim is the great modularity it offers because of the sharing of all its components under free licenses. Thus, the software code is released under the AGPL v3 license, while the other contents are released under the Creative Commons By-SA license and the databases under the OdbL license. These three free licenses are called "copyleft", which means that they authorize the use, copying, modification and redistribution of the works they protect, provided that the derivatives thus created are shared in the same way. This allows users to develop modules that perfectly fit their needs, and then to share them with the entire user community. Thus, the more users adapt Decidim to their needs, the more the software offers modularity possibilities, which could be decisive in its use by new actors, and thus potentially factors of new enrichments. The choice of licenses that are particularly restrictive in terms of sharing thus translates into practice the will to make Decidim a digital commons, by engaging a virtuous circle by which the beneficiaries of the resource become in return its maintainers. It is also justified by the nature of the commons that is Decidim: as a participatory democracy application that is intended to be as modular and adaptable as possible, its development and maintenance as a digital commons requires both a significant dissemination, but also an enrichment by its users. Through the game of licenses, the more users adapt Decidim to their uses, the more the software offers modularity possibilities, which could be decisive in its use by new actors, and thus potentially a factor of new enrichments.

C. Open governance to ensure the sustainability of the project

1. Participatory and transparent governance rules

The community that contributes to Decidim's growth is heterogeneous: local authorities - including Barcelona City Council, which initiated the project - public institutions, companies, and citizens. Such heterogeneity implies the adoption of an effective and transparent governance framework, resulting from collaborative work. In 2019, the community debated (offline and online) the relevance of creating an independent legal structure to orchestrate the development of the project, coordinating its developments by further mutualizing. After having collectively agreed on the relevance of having such a structure, the community used the Metadecidim platform to collaboratively draft the statutes of the association and plan the first constitutive General Assembly. A proposal of statutes was submitted to a vote on February 16, 2019, and adopted via an online procedure. Thus, an association was formed to structure the community. The statutes of this association organize a strong structure, based on the general assembly, the coordination committee, the thematic committees, the democratic guarantee committee and the office. The powers and internal operating rules of each of these bodies are precisely detailed in the statutes. This makes the functioning of the association more fluid, but also reassures potential future members. However, the community is not limited to this one association, and other communities exist alongside it. For example, the Lab Team brings together researchers from several universities to produce scientific content and disseminate knowledge, while a coordination group bringing together several user communities organizes the sharing of experiences as well as reflections on the sustainability (especially financial) of Decidim. The Decidim community is thus itself composed of a set of communities that come together to develop the digital platform, but also to support the Decidim project as such. To organize the collaboration between actors with different interests and skills, several tools have been created and complement each other.

Metadecidim: the digital space where the future of Decidim is decided

Like many Open Source projects, the Decidim project uses its own platform to organize its community. The Metadecidim platform is thus the digital space where the different contributing communities converge to make decisions concerning the future of the project, including from a technical point of view. This platform gathers Decidim users beyond the eponymous association.

On this platform, it is possible to report bugs, to help each other and to propose new features. This last possibility is particularly interesting, as it concretely translates Decidim's will to progress according to the evolution of the users' needs. The platform also allows to decide collectively on the developments to prioritize concerning the software, before sending them to the developers via GitHub.

The Metadecidim platform is also the place where Decidim's governance evolutions are decided and where the community's high points (events, etc.) are organized. In addition to the Metadecidim digital platform - which remains the place of reference for understanding the history of the project and participating in the writing of the next lines - several online and offline devices animate the Decidim community. SOM Decidim offers the opportunity for the community to meet physically on a regular basis (the results of the discussions produced are systematically shared on the digital platform to ensure a fluid and homogeneous flow of information). Events (the Decidim Jam) are organized annually to gather the community around the future of the project. A Telegram group allows to be informed of the platform's news and upcoming meetings, just like on social networks.

Concerning the organization of the collaboration from a technical point of view (source code), the developers contribute to the development of the project on the Github code repository platform, ensuring the bridge between the orientations taken on the Decidim platform and their effective realization.

The social contract, to frame the development of the project

In order to frame the development of the platform in accordance with Decidim's founding political project, its creators have drafted a social contract which they describe as "a code for democratic guarantees and open collaboration". This social contract proposes a set of principles and values that the members of the community commit to respecting in their involvement in the development of the project. When an organization chooses to use Decidim, it can choose to bind the participants to the social contract by imposing it through the General Terms of Use (GTU) of the platform. However, they are not constrained to respect this social contract in the context of their use, nor to impose it to the users: the software being made available under a free AGPL 3.0 license, they are free to use the software without being constrained by the social code. Conversely, anyone who wishes to join the "Decidim community" and contribute to the development of the software must adhere to the social contract.

 

Decidim's social contract: what guarantees does it impose?

This document proposes to the community commitments regarding the openness of the code (Decidim will always remain free software), of the contents produced (made available under a CC BY-SA license), and of the data collected (published under the ODbL license), as well as requirements regarding standardization and interoperability to facilitate the reuse of the elements produced. The social code also contains commitments regarding transparency, traceability and integrity of "documents, proposals, debates, decisions and any other participatory object, mechanism or process" that must be ensured by "the platform and its current and future configurations, developments, deployments and uses". The social contract invites to act imperatively in favor of equal access and opportunity of participation on the platform, erasing any form of discrimination in access and use of the features. It also encourages the production of qualitative indicators from the content generated, accompanied by the publication of the methods used to generate them. Data confidentiality provisions aim to protect participants. In order to establish a relationship of trust and commitment of the participants in the participatory processes implemented through Decidim, the Social Contract proposes methodological commitments in terms of accountability and monitoring of results, which must be functionally translated into the platform (e.g. in terms of processing proposals, notification of decisions taken, progressive monitoring of the implementation of decisions taken, etc.). Finally, Decidim is intended to be collaborative "by design" by enshrining a principle of continuous improvement of the platform to adapt to the needs of users, including through effective, inclusive and ongoing inter-institutional collaboration.

2. towards a European governance?

Barcelona's political impetus: a real catalyst for Decidim

There is no doubt that the impetus given by Barcelona City Council is one of the major factors in the success of the project and in particular in the speed of its development. This support was firstly in the form of funding for the platform as such (the development of the first version is still ongoing and funded). The support of the Barcelona City Council has also materialized through the provision of means to concretely experiment the project on a local scale (through training, the organization of physical meetings, the deployment of a communication strategy, the increase in competence and the mobilization of teams dedicated to the deployment of the process, etc.). Benefiting from a strong political backing, the project was deployed with a certain speed, going beyond the Barcelona area from the start, thanks to the willingness to collaborate with other local authorities.

Between impetus and inertia, the need to become autonomous and international

If the strong impetus given at the outset by the public authorities to such commons projects is fundamental, it is also likely to generate contradictory effects. For example, the preponderant place given to this actor by the extent of its capacity to support the project can have the effect of phagocytizing the community and slowing down its development. The difference in means between the driving forces can affect the balance of the governance that is being structured. Too much institutionalization of processes can also slow down the project in a phase where agility can prove to be a major asset. Finally, the instability of the political contexts in which the project operates can jeopardize its sustainability, if the support is not continuous (for example, in the case of Decidim, the possible non-re-election of Ada Colau has raised questions about the sustainability of the project). In the case of Decidim, although the effect of inertia caused by the size of the role of Barcelona City Council in the project and the political risk inherent in electoral cycles is real, it would seem that the foundations for a balancing of forces have gradually been laid within the framework of formalized governance. One factor that accelerated this trend was the need for internationalization of the project: as more and more actors took up Decidim at the international level, it became urgent to translate all the documents necessary for its free appropriation by all. From Catalan to Castilian and then to English, this first transition allowed the governance of the project to be opened up little by little, in application of the founding principles of Decidim. These transitions are not necessarily obvious since they take place within different communities in parallel: developers, policy makers, scientists who do not use the same codes, practices and tools. But Decidim contains these principles of open and inclusive governance in its DNA and therefore naturally tends towards this dynamic, progressively addressing the different obstacles encountered in the real world. One of the most tangible proofs is the creation of the Metadecidim association. Today, with the growing adoption of Decidim by international actors, a logical evolution would be for this progressive transformation of governance to accelerate and strengthen for the benefit of more openness and mutualization, and thus for the benefit of society at large.

Sources

Labo Société Numérique

Labo République Française Agence nationale de cohésion des territoires
Decidim, a digital community for citizen participation