For the second instalment of the 2026 SDI Digital Democracy Report, we took a deeper look at Episdemos, a new American platform that utilizes AI to summarize legislation and provide real-time translation.

Also in this newsletter: SDI Managing Director Dr. Roslyn Fuller sat down with Prof. Dr. Joseph Henrich to discuss how culture can shape democracy.

SDI Digital Democracy Report - Episdemos

For the second instalment of the 2026 SDI Digital Democracy Report, we took a closer look at US-based voting application Episdemos.

Episdemos is currently utilized by US political movement TRM (True Representation Movement) and features significant innovative functionality which we explore in detail in our report:

• Episdemos uses AI to summarise upcoming parliamentary bills and similar decision items, including predictions on which political groups would be likely to endorse it

• It provides links to the original documents to allow users to dig deeper into the decision item

• Participants can vote on decision items and comment on them in 20 different languages, all of which are translated in real-time by the platform’s AI engine

Take a look at our Publications Page to download the review

Joseph Henrich & The Culture of Democracy

As part of our ongoing series of interviews, this time we are exploring how our cultures can shape how we practice politics and what type of a culture democracy requires to thrive.

For this, we interviewed Prof. Dr. Joseph Henrich, the Ruth Moore Professor of Biological Anthropology & Professor of Human Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University and author of The WEIRDest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous.

While Prof. Henrich’s areas of research are extensive (including evolutionary approaches to psychology, decision-making and culture, leadership, religion and the emergence of complex human institutions, to name just a few), he is perhaps best known for his ground-breaking analysis of what he calls WEIRD societies, or societies which are “Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic”.

In our interview, Prof. Henrich talks about his book, the challenges of exporting democracy to other cultures, the role of family and kinship bonds, how different understandings of morality can shape society, and why the concept of “trustworthiness” is in decline in the West.

You can read the full interview with SDI Managing Director Dr. Roslyn Fuller here.

For more on the status of digital democracy, check out our website at

http://www.solonian-institute.com

Sincerely,

Solonian
Democracy
Institute

For the first instalment, we took a deep look at Milan-based Italian vendor Eligo, whose voting application is used by companies, cooperatives and universities across Europe to decide on matters as varied as board elections, company by-laws and university bodies.

Eligo has impressed us in a number of areas

• the ability for organisations to integrate Eligo into their existing workflows (e.g. Zoom or Webex meetings)

• their strong focus on both security (in particular the separation of voting data from voter information) and accessibility

• their commitment to customer satisfaction, as evidenced by the very positive reviews from customers we spoke to as part of our research

Take a look at our Publications Page to download the review.

Philanthropy & Democracy

As part of our ongoing series of interviews, this time we are shining a spotlight on non-profit organisations and their economic and political impact.

To this end, we sat down with Brooklyn Law School Professor Dana Brakman Reiser and Boston University School of Law Professor Steven Dean to discuss their book For-Profit Philanthropy: Elite Power, the Threat of Limited Liability Companies, Donor-Advised Funds, and Strategic Corporate Giving.

In our interview, Prof. Brakman Reiser and Prof. Dean share their knowledge on how modern giving currently works in the United States, how not-for-profits operate increasingly as limited liability companies (LLCs), the rise of donor-advised funds (DAFs), and why the US Tax Code is in need of an update to better regulate the activities of NGOs.

You can read the full interview with SDI Managing Director Dr. Roslyn Fuller here.

For more on the status of digital democracy, check out our website at

http://www.solonian-institute.com

Sincerely,

Solonian
Democracy
Institute

Bringing Parliaments and People Together in the South Pacific

In early 2025, we received an exciting opportunity to support the UNDP Pacific Office in Fiji with the Knowledge Exchange Workshop for Pacific Parliaments. Many South Pacific nations are dispersed across a vast geographic area and struggle to include all residents in face-to-face participation. At SDI, we worked with experts in the region to identify software that could help them achieve their goals to increase citizen involvement in the legislative process. This culminated in a workshop where participants were introduced to Citizens' Foundation and TRM/Episdemos. Some of you will recognize Citizens' Foundation from our previous reports, where the Icelandic software has often scored highly across a wide range of functionality. TRM/Episdemos may be less familiar as a promising new project that is currently beta testing its app and that aims to field candidates in the 2026 US Congressional elections (if you wish to participate in testing, you can join the waitlist at the bottom of the link provided).

In addition, our Managing Director, Dr. Fuller, advised the UNDP on principles of digital democracy, the capabilities of artificial intelligence vis-a-vis decision-making, and how to deepen the level of participation with their citizens.

Overall, it was a fascinating experience that provided us with an insight into life and challenges in the South Pacific, and gave us the opportunity to meet some of the passionate and far-sighted people who make it their home.

To find out more about this initiative you can read the full post on the SDI website here.

Impact Investing & the Evolution of the SDI Digital Democracy Report

Impact Investing

For the past several years, like many grassroots organizations, we have struggled with the rise of a new phenomenon: impact investing. Impact investing describes a new type of philanthropy that differs widely from conventional ideas of giving. Impact investors are typically extremely wealthy individuals who make targeted investments in both for-profit and non-profit enterprises with the explicit goal of forcing societal change by starving 'undesirable' activities of capital, while simultaneously providing 'desirable' activities with unrealistic levels of capital that could never be raised on the open market.

This profoundly anti-democratic approach has caused a severe skewing or market distortion, not just of the economy, but also of 'civil society'. By our estimates, ca. 80% of NGOs overall and 95% of NGOs cited in media are funded by 'impact investors'. These organizations often lack member support and are largely staffed by employees.

NGOs, thinktanks and 'experts' in the area of democracy are no exception to this rule, and this has had a disruptive impact on our work (much as impact investors promised it would). The chief root of this disruption has been the fact that funding for many democracy organizations comes almost exclusively from sources that themselves take extreme stances on partisan politics (often American), with funders often also donating to political parties. Unsurprisingly, this has subordinated all aspects of these organizations to various 'causes', all of which are seen as 'objective reality' despite the existence of significant and obvious levels of disagreement in the wider population around these causes. These organizations, in other words, are no longer devoted to democracy, but rather to achieving the policies their funders believe democracy should be delivering - a very different thing.

Relevantly for us at SDI, this funding complex has had catastrophic consequences for many NGOs and producers of 'democracy' software, who came to take a stance that explicitly privileged one side or the other of the very specific political divide so important to their funders. Again, this meant that some organizations that were supposed to provide the infrastructure for participation, and thus had a duty to be neutral so far as this provision went, were instead pursuing their own objectives under a veneer of 'engagement'.

This isn't particularly surprising, because it is what impact investing is meant to achieve - to 'invest' in civic activities in order to guarantee the outcome of those activities.

However, it did create an issue for us, because our mission as an organization is to research and educate in the areas of participatory and digital democracy. At the very least, we need to capture the effects of impact investing in our data in the interests of fully informing our readers. Going further than that, in many cases, we also need to assess whether the software in question is still active in the pursuit of democracy at all.

At SDI, we are therefore changing our criteria for judging software to reflect whether or not it truly supports democracy or is merely a cover for the imposition of pre-decided outcomes.

In the meantime, we recommend readers who are seeking to understand the dimensions of the modern giving complex to read this Report produced by The Institute for Policy Studies. This is, itself, an American 'left' organization, with its own policy bent, but the data in the Report provides a good primer on the scale of the giving complex and its frequently negative consequences.

Our New Criteria

We will continue to use many of our previous criteria for the SDI Report - these have actually served us surprisingly well in identifying successful software. However, in addition to the problems presented by providers abandoning policy neutrality, breakthroughs in advanced machine learning (otherwise known as artificial intelligence), create new challenges around security and the utilization of prediction models, while also opening up new possibilities for language use, and we will be taking these changes into account as well. Furthermore, despite all of the challenges, the field of digital democracy has grown to the point where we can begin to more precisely compare like-with-like software (e.g. voting-only software, participatory budgeting software, etc.). Our new criteria will thus be more precisely adapted to these use cases, rather than the one-size-fits-all criteria we previously used.

Our New Publication Schedule

As part of this re-orientation, we will be publishing the SDI Digital Democracy Report sequentially, by featuring one to two vendors at a time, on our website and in our newsletter, before releasing an overall report at the end of the review cycle.

We will be starting with Italian software Eligo and American project TRM/Episdemos and plan to share these reports with you later this year.

If you wish to suggest other vendors or if you have any other feedback, please email us here.

For more on the status of digital democracy, check out our website at

http://www.solonian-institute.com

Sincerely,

Solonian
Democracy
Institute

NEW INTERVIEW

Direct Democracy in Australian Power Cooperative and Trade Union

In our latest interview, Mihajlo Jakovljev speaks with Godfrey Moase, chair and co-founder of CoPower, a non-profit energy cooperative, an executive director at United Workers Union, writer, and activist based in Melbourne, Australia.

Read the full interview here.

WEBSITE REDESIGN

Solonian Democracy Institute Website 2.0

Visit and explore our redesigned SDI Website 2.0 here. Find out more about our research, publications, and insights from the world of Digital Democracy. We hope you like our new look as much as we do!

RESEARCH

New Research Project on Philanthropic Funding

Following the successful publication of the 2024 edition of our Digital Democracy Report, we are turning our attention this year to the role that NGOs and civil society organizations are playing in promoting, influencing, or even funding the technology offerings in the democracy industry. 

While organizations in the democracy tech space were previously generally either cooperatively funded or run as private enterprises with paying customers, organizations are increasingly turning to philanthropic funders and NGOs to finance the development and promotion of e-democracy tools. This can be both a good thing (where e.g. democracy tech vendors are not under immediate pressure to monetize their tools) and a bad thing (where NGOs are influencing how such tools are used).

In 2025, SDI will present a special report on the NGO funding of this industry. To this end, we are currently gathering information on which software vendors and NGO or civil society organizations to include.

So, if you know of any NGOs operating in this space, big or small, please get in touch at contact@solonian-institute.com to ensure that our report captures this evolution holistically and across multiple regions.

We wish you plenty of relaxing summer holidays but for more on the status of digital democracy, you know where to find us: 

http://www.solonian-institute.com

Sincerely,

Solonian
Democracy
Institute

The report tracks the development of digital democracy technologies and seeks to provide an overview of the various fields of application (e.g. voting, participatory budgeting, public consultation, etc.). The goal is to provide a repository for policy makers, NGOs and academics, as well as for the democracy software industry itself. This year, we have evaluated 21 eDemocracy tools from 17 countries. 

Despite some significant challenges in the industry - you can read more about these in our introduction here - many of the profiled vendors have continued to expand their functionality, including in the areas of electronic identification and participatory budgeting. In addition, many vendors have improved the back-end component of their software to facilitate the administrator experience.

The Report is available to download here under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 4.0 License and can be shared freely with attribution. Physical copies of the report can also be obtained - please contact us for pricing (all proceeds are used to fund the work of the institute).

For more on the status of digital democracy, check out our website at 

http://www.solonian-institute.com

Sincerely,

Solonian
Democracy
Institute

We have also corrected this in the post below.

Please accept our apologies!

Solonian Democracy Institute

In this edition of our newsletter, we invite you to join SDI Advisory board member Brook Manville for a virtual event, celebrate the publication of SDI Director Roslyn Fuller’s new book and give you an update on the 2024 SDI Digital Democracy Report.

Rebooting Democracy in the Age of AI

The Burnes Center for Social Change at Northeastern University is organising a lecture series on Democracy and AI, in partnership with The GovLab. We are proud to announce that Brook Manville, advisory board member of SDI, is launching the series with a virtual event titled “The Civic Bargain: How Democracy Survives”, a discussion of his book of the same name, co-authored with Stanford historian Prof. Josiah Ober.

In their book, Manville and Ober trace the long progression toward self-government through four key moments in democracy’s history: Classical Athens, Republican Rome, Great Britain’s constitutional monarchy, and America’s founding. Comparing what worked and what failed in each case, they draw out lessons for how modern democracies can survive and thrive.

The event is happening on September 21st at 5pm EST - you can sign up for free at

https://rebootdemocracy.ai

Principles of Digital Democracy

We are delighted to announce the publication of Principles of Digital Democracy by SDI Founder and Managing Director Dr. Roslyn Fuller. Drawing on both her academic background and her work at SDI, in particular the SDI Digital Democracy Report, Principles of Digital Democracy features numerous case studies from around the world, from carbon budgeting in Canada, to voting on legislation in Italy and policy consultation in Taiwan. Principles of Digital Democracy explains not just what is possible to achieve with digital democracy tools today, but how to assess the life-cycle of democracy, as well as different approaches to security and policy implementation.

Written as a textbook for educators and practitioners alike, Principles of Digital Democracy shows that the realisation of democracy at any level - in its original people power sense - requires the implementation of strict principles to deliver real agency to its participants.

The book will be published in October and is available from deGruyter for pre-order at https://www.degruyter.com/document/isbn/9783110794465/html

Praise for the book

"You can read Principles of Digital Democracy both as a contemporary history of democracy or as a flight manual. Regardless, I think Fuller’s book will become a modern classic in democracy theory."

Peer Norbäck, founder of Demoex (2000)

"Principles of Digital Democracy shows how technology is a source of hope and a powerful tool to be harnessed. The book provides powerful case studies of how tech is being used in different settings, not just to protect democracy, but to reimagine democracy as a rolling iterative collaborative process of active citizen engagement."

Máirin Murray, Impact Innovator and Co-Founder of Tech for Good Dublin

"In a field dominated by superficiality, Principles of Digital Democracy never fails to dig deeply into why we practice democracy the way we do. As comfortable with Rousseau and elections systems, as with mix-nets and blockchain, Fuller is the rare author who truly understands both tech and politics. Her insights are invaluable for anyone seeking to implement digital democracy today."

Adam Bennet, CEO, Red Piranha, Cybersecurity

2024 SDI Digital Democracy Report

Work is now underway on the 2024 SDI Digital Democracy Report, which will once again assess the leading vendors of digital democracy technology around the world. With many new vendors already at the assessment state, the report - now in its 4th edition - promises to maintain its status as a leading reference on the present and future state of digital democracy tools, from Participatory Budgeting to Online Elections, from Digital Civic Engagment to Online Petitions.

You can download previous versions of the SDI Digital Democracy Report here.

Finally, submissions are still open for existing or emerging democracy technology vendors to submit their information - please contact us for details.

For more on the status of digital democracy, check out our website at 

http://www.solonian-institute.com

Sincerely,

Solonian
Democracy
Institute

Rebooting Democracy in the Age of AI

The Burnes Center for Social Change at Northeastern University is organising a lecture series on Democracy and AI, in partnership with The GovLab. We are proud to announce that Brook Manville, advisory board member of SDI, is launching the series with a virtual event titled “The Civic Bargain: How Democracy Survives”, a discussion of his book of the same name, co-authored with Stanford historian Prof. Josiah Ober.

In their book, Manville and Ober trace the long progression toward self-government through four key moments in democracy’s history: Classical Athens, Republican Rome, Great Britain’s constitutional monarchy, and America’s founding. Comparing what worked and what failed in each case, they draw out lessons for how modern democracies can survive and thrive.

The event is happening on September 21st at 5pm EST - you can sign up for free at https://rebootdemocracy.ai

Principles of Digital Democracy

We are delighted to announce the publication of Principles of Digital Democracy by SDI Founder and Managing Director Dr. Roslyn Fuller. Drawing on both her academic background and her work at SDI, in particular the SDI Digital Democracy Report, Principles of Digital Democracy features numerous case studies from around the world, from carbon budgeting in Canada, to voting on legislation in Italy and policy consultation in Taiwan. Principles of Digital Democracy explains not just what is possible to achieve with digital democracy tools today, but how to assess the life-cycle of democracy, as well as different approaches to security and policy implementation.

Written as a textbook for educators and practitioners alike, Principles of Digital Democracy shows that the realisation of democracy at any level - in its original people power sense - requires the implementation of strict principles to deliver real agency to its participants.

The book will be published in October and is available from deGruyter for pre-order at https://www.degruyter.com/document/isbn/9783110794465

Praise for the book

"You can read Principles of Digital Democracy both as a contemporary history of democracy or as a flight manual. Regardless, I think Fuller’s book will become a modern classic in democracy theory."

Peer Norbäck, founder of Demoex (2000)

"Principles of Digital Democracy shows how technology is a source of hope and a powerful tool to be harnessed. The book provides powerful case studies of how tech is being used in different settings, not just to protect democracy, but to reimagine democracy as a rolling iterative collaborative process of active citizen engagement."

Máirin Murray, Impact Innovator and Co-Founder of Tech for Good Dublin

"In a field dominated by superficiality, Principles of Digital Democracy never fails to dig deeply into why we practice democracy the way we do. As comfortable with Rousseau and elections systems, as with mix-nets and blockchain, Fuller is the rare author who truly understands both tech and politics. Her insights are invaluable for anyone seeking to implement digital democracy today."

Adam Bennet, CEO, Red Piranha, Cybersecurity

2024 SDI Digital Democracy Report

Work is now underway on the 2024 SDI Digital Democracy Report, which will once again assess the leading vendors of digital democracy technology around the world. With many new vendors already at the assessment state, the report - now in its 4th edition - promises to maintain its status as a leading reference on the present and future state of digital democracy tools, from Participatory Budgeting to Online Elections, from Digital Civic Engagment to Online Petitions.

You can download previous versions of the SDI Digital Democracy Report here.

Finally, submissions are still open for existing or emerging democracy technology vendors to submit their information - please contact us for details.

For more on the status of digital democracy, check out our website at 

http://www.solonian-institute.com

Sincerely,

Solonian
Democracy
Institute

Also in this newsletter: A new contributor at the Solonian Democracy Institute and the Theory of Negative Voting

2023 Global Forum on Modern Direct Democracy

We are excited to announce that SDI will host a panel on The State of Digital Democracy at the Global Forum on Modern Direct Democracy, which will be held in Mexico City from the 27th of February to the 4th of March 2023

The panel includes Israeli Civic Engagement organisation ZenCity and Canadian eDemocracy platform Ethelo, with additional panelists to be announced over the coming weeks.

Both the panel and the Global Forum are free to attend. You can register for the forum here:

https://www.democracy.community/registration-mexico

The panel itself is scheduled for the 2nd of March, the first full day of the main conference, at 4:10pm local time.

We hope to see you there!

A New Contributor at SDI

We are delighted to announce that Mihajlo Jakovljev will be working with SDI in his role as Research Associate on a freelance basis.

We came across Mihajlo when he sent us his brilliant Masters thesis The use of digital tools for political participation in digital democracy: Qualitative analysis of 10 case studies.

Mihajlo will work with us on the upcoming 2023 Interim Digital Democracy Report, featuring new vendors that have not yet been included in our annual Digital Democracy Report before we return to the full report in 2024.

Mihajlo was born in Smederevo, Republic of Serbia. He earned his second master’s degree in European and Global Studies at the University of Padua (Italy). Before going abroad, he earned his first master’s degree in US Studies at the Faculty of Political Sciences, University of Belgrade (Serbia) where he also completed his bachelor’s in International Relations. Mihajlo has previously worked as an Intern at the Institute for Politics and Society in Prague (Czechia) and was a president of Team Youth Initiative, student organisation at the Faculty of Political Science, University of Belgrade (Serbia)

Negative Voting & The Future of Taiwan

In our latest interview, SDI’s Managing Director Dr. Roslyn Fuller speaks with Sam Chang about the idea behind Negative Voting, its implications for democracy and the future of Taiwan.

Mr. Chang is the founder and President of the Negative Vote Association, an NGO in Taiwan dedicated to the improvement of democracies by allowing voters to have the option to vote Against instead of For. Mr. Chang has sponsored citizens' initiatives to implement this reform in Taiwan and in El Cerrito, CA, U.S.A. He also serves on the boards of several companies in Taiwan.

Read the full interview here.

For more on the status of digital democracy, check out our website at 

http://www.solonian-institute.com

Sincerely,

Solonian
Democracy
Institute

Also in this newsletter: A Ugandan Perspective on Democracy & Digitalisation

While preparing our annual SDI Digital Democracy Report we come across countless examples of e-democracy platforms inspiring communities, driving innovation, championing diversity & inclusion and impacting nations.

The SDI Digital Democracy Awards, now in their second year, seek to recognise these achievements by awarding category winners across Inspiration, Innovation, Inclusion & Impact. Lastly, we also want to highlight those who took part in our report for the first time in our Newcomer Award.

Winner: Novoville

Originally founded in Greece, Novoville has now set up its headquarters in London, where its team helps local authorities throughout Europe accelerate and simplify local community tasks, such as logging local issues (think potholes), managing parking tickets and organising online citizen consultations.

We are awarding Novoville the 2022 SDI Digital Democracy Inspiration Award for their Shared Repairs tool which allows residents to pool their resources to carry out repairs to jointly-owned housing (e.g. apartments), including the ability to solicit quotations, vote on the repairs and ultimately hire and pay the chosen contractor.

Honourable Mention: PlaceSpeak

PlaceSpeak is a public consultation platform that uses geo-spatial authentication to identify location-specific user groups. The company started in Vancouver, Canada and now serves over 30 communities across Canada, the United States and Northern Ireland.

We are recognising PlaceSpeak for its “Seed” functionality, which uses publicly available council data (e.g. planning applications, council meeting minutes, etc.) to automatically create a discussion topic on the PlaceSpeak platform. Once enough people express interest, PlaceSpeak contacts the relevant council to propose an online consultation.

Shortlist: Novoville, PlaceSpeak, Ethelo

Winner: Ethelo

Canadian company Ethelo was founded in 2011 by mathematician John Richardson to facilitate complex decision-making processes that contain multiple, potentially interdependent, questions. The technology was originally used during a referendum in the Canadian province of British Columbia and has since evolved to provide a complex decision engine to both public and private organisations.

We are awarding Ethelo the 2022 SDI Digital Democracy Innovation Award for continuously expanding its offering to new use cases including Participatory Budgeting, Carbon Budgeting and decision-making for Decentralised Autonomous Organisations (DAOs), all utilising its central engine which calculates thousands of possible outcomes in real-time.

Honourable Mention: SkyVote

SkyVote is an electronic voting solution developed by Italian tech company Multicast srl. Originally developed to facilitate voting at board and shareholder meetings, SkyVote's newest solution, SkyVote Cloud, is a distributed voting platform that can be used in public elections.

We are recognising SkyVote for their ability to facilitate voting for thousands of different candidates in the same election (e.g. for company or union elections) using a sophisticated list search mechanism, as well as condition-based voting (where e.g. a voter has to choose a certain number of candidates from different categories).

Shortlist: Ethelo, SkyVote, Delib, PlaceSpeak, Every Voice Engaged

Winner: Civil Space by ZenCity

Civil Space started in 2018 and describes itself as a ‘reimagined town hall’. Its consultations platform spans surveys, discussions, geo-spatial commenting, a ranking tool as well as ‘Idea Boards’ where participants can create initiatives and ideas. As of late 2021, Civil Space is part of Israeli civic tech company ZenCity.

We are awarding Civil Space the 2022 SDI Digital Democracy Inclusion Award for its translation engine which allows organisers to first use automatic translation and then to manually make corrections, saving time and ensuring full accessibility by participants in any language.

Honourable Mention: FirstRoot

FirstRoot is the brainchild of serial entrepreneur and Agile software developer Luke Hohmann. After conducting a large number of Participatory Budgeting exercises for companies and cities, Luke set up FirstRoot in 2020 as a benefit corporation to focus on the education space. Since then, FirstRoot have onboarded multiple clients in their efforts to bring Participatory Budgeting and Financial Literacy to schools across the United States.

We are recognising FirstRoot for its comprehensive PB solution for schools, which not only involves young members of society in decision-making processes but teaches them financial literacy along the way.

Shortlist: Civil Space, FirstRoot, Citizen Lab

Winner: Citizens Foundation

Citizens Foundation was created in 2008 as a non-profit civic tech organisation to involve citizens more closely in decision-making following the 2007/2008 global financial crisis. Its open-source suite of products is now used by over 100 clients across 25 countries.

We are awarding Citizens Foundation the 2022 SDI Digital Democracy Impact Award for pioneering bottom-up e-democracy projects in over 45 countries since 2008 with a seamless end-to-end democracy solution that includes ideation, deliberation, public consultation, decision-making and PB.

Honourable Mention: Polys

Polys was created by Kaspersky’s internal Business Incubator Division to address concerns surrounding the security of online voting. Over the past few years Polys has gone from providing online voting at conferences and universities to larger municipal and regional projects

We are recognising Polys for implementing a blockchain-secured voting application which gave citizens the option to vote online as part of a national election (Moscow district for the Russian Federal elections).

Shortlist: Citizens Foundation, Polys, Manabalss, Slido

Winner: Every Voice Engaged

Every Voice Engaged develops and promotes the Common Ground for Action platform, used by over 100 clients, primarily researchers and universities, to run interactive deliberation exercises for small to medium-sized groups. Active since 2012, EVE is a joint project of the National Issues Forums and the Kettering Foundation.

We are awarding Every Voice Engaged the 2022 SDI Digital Democracy NewComer Award for their advanced graphical interface which helps their deliberation solution elucidate consensus without forcing it, allowing users to engage with each other using integrated text and video communication.

Honourable Mention: Electis

Electis was founded in 2018 as an open-source e-voting solution. Primarily used by universities as part of electronic voting pilots, Electis provides an open-source voting app utilising a combination of security frameworks and applications.

We are recognising Electis for their open-source implementation of an online voting application, combining ElectionGuard, the Tezos Blockchain and the IPFS file system, creating a transparent process for securing elections online.

Shortlist: Every Voice Engaged, Electis, SkyVote, FirstRoot, Citizens Foundation

Democracy & Digitalisation - A Ugandan Perspective

In our latest interview, SDI’s Managing Director Dr. Roslyn Fuller speaks with Roslyn Fuller interviews Patricia Namakula, Head of Research and PR/Communications at the Centre for Multilateral Affairs in Uganda.

Patricia is a researcher whose academic background is in international relations & diplomatic studies, public policy & governance, and journalism & communications. Her research work centres on digital rights, forced migration, democracy & human rights, and peace & security.

Read the full interview here.

For more on the status of digital democracy, check out our website at 

http://www.solonian-institute.com

Sincerely,

Solonian
Democracy
Institute

Since its initial release the report has grown to feature 28 solutions from software vendors in 17 countries across six different functionality areas, including decision-making, participatory budgeting and public consultation.

In 2022, we were also able to increase the depth and quality of our assessment. In particular, we were able to add substantially to our stock of reference interviews. These include interviews with both end users (citizens/participants) as well as clients (e.g. civil servants, politicians). These interviews were extremely insightful and provided us with a much more complete idea of the many creative ways that these tools are being used in the field, and the impact that they are having.

The Report is available to download here under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 4.0 License and can be shared freely with attribution. Physical copies of the report can also be obtained - please contact us for pricing (all proceeds are used to fund the work of the institute).

Three of the vendors featured in the Digital Democracy Report (Estonian online petition platform Rahvaalgatus, Canadian public consultation and mass participation platform Civil Space and US-based online democracy organisation Voatz) joined SDI Founder Dr. Roslyn Fuller recently for a panel discussion on the current and future possibilities of Digital Democracy as part of the 2022 Belfast Imagine Festival. You can watch the video below:

For more on the status of digital democracy, check out our website at 

http://www.solonian-institute.com

Sincerely,

Solonian
Democracy
Institute

In our most recent interview, Roslyn Fuller speaks with Dr. Tarson Núñez, one of the architects of Participatory Budgeting in Porto Alegre, Brazil in the early 1990s, about how it all began, why PB has been so successful around the world and the key ingredients for an impactful PB excercise.

Read the full article here

Join us on the 25th of March at 7pm UK time for a 90 min panel discussion on the future of digital democracy. Dr. Roslyn Fuller will host the discussion and introduce the audience to a number of solutions across the digital democracy landscape:

• Estonian online petition platform Rahvaalgatus which has collected over 170,000 signatures and made over 140 submissions to the Estonian parliament.

• Canadian public consultation and mass participation platform Civil Space, whose sophisticated technology encourages continuous participation and even detects abusive language and nudges users to rephrase contributions.

• US-based online democracy organisation Voatz, which has enabled Blockchain-secured voting in over 70 US elections.

Attendance is free but registration is required. Click here to register and to learn more

Please also share widely with your networks and friends!

For more on the status of digital democracy, check out our website at 

http://www.solonian-institute.com

Sincerely,

Solonian
Democracy
Institute

Also in this newsletter:

• Participatory Budgeting gets a boost in Ireland

• A German perspective on Citizens’ Assemblies

• Roslyn Fuller on the impact of remote work on local democracy

2021 SDI Digital Democracy Awards

While preparing the 2021 SDI Digital Democracy Report, we came across countless examples of e-democracy platforms inspiring communities, driving innovation, championing diversity & inclusion and impacting nations.

The 2021 SDI Digital Democracy Awards seek to recognise these achievements by awarding category winners across Inspiration, Innovation, Inclusion & Impact. Lastly, we also wanted to highlight those who took part in our report for the first time in our Newcomer Award.

So get inspired and join us in celebrating the 2021 Winners and be sure to click on the vendor names to find out more about these outstanding organisations!

Category: Inspiration

Winner: politik-digital e.V.

For its innovative decision-making platform aula, which lets school-age children experiment with digital, direct democracy and make decisions for the day-to-day running of their schools.

The aula team with their award

Honorable Mention: Delib

For pioneering digital technology in public sector consultations for over 17 years, inspiring many of the technologies and processes local councils take for granted today.

Short List: politik-digital e.V., Delib, Rousseau

Category: Innovation

Winner: Polys

For the successful implementation and mass utilization of a Blockchain-based voting system that addresses many of the current challenges of creating a secure online democracy.

The Polys team receiving their award

Honorable Mention: Ethelo

For Ethelo’s ability to allow users to weight their votes in a multi-decision exercise, allocating the biggest impact to questions the user is most passionate about.

Short List: Polys, Ethelo, ManaBalss, Novoville

Category: Inclusion

Winner: Delib

For not just implementing the WCAG 2.1 standard for accessibility of its software, but for pro-actively training customers and users, via webinars and online videos, on accessible design to create a truly inclusive platform.

Members of the Delib team with their award

Honorable Mention: CitizenLab

For their commitment to accessibility, through both certification (WCAG 2.1 AA) as well as an independent audit by Belgian organization AnySurfer which validated CitizenLab’s platform against accessibility standards.

Short List: Delib, CitizenLab, Civil Space

Category: Impact

Winner: Rousseau

For demonstrating that a direct democracy system need not be limited to local decisions by operating a platform which has been used for local, regional, national and trans-national (EU-level) democracy with hundreds of thousands of active users, impacting major political decisions including two national coalition agreements, candidate selection for over 2,000 elected offices, and the drafting of national laws.

The Rousseau team with their award

Honorable Mention: Slido

For helping the vTaiwan initiative during the Covid-19 crisis understand and react to the public’s priorities in combatting the pandemic.

Short List: Rousseau, Slido, Polys, ManaBalss, Estonian Cooperation Assembly

Category: Newcomer

Winner: ManaBalss

For creating a mass-participation petition platform which has been used by over 10% of the Latvian population, with 36 petitions resulting in changes to the law.

The ManaBalss team with their award

Honorable Mention: Civil Space

For their commitment to inclusive participation, both offline and online, through comprehensive certification in multiple countries, as well as Civil Space’s ‘Skip Logic’ design principle which seeks to create intuitive participation pathways for all users.

PB in Ireland

Participatory Budgeting has recently received a major boost on the island of Ireland with the creation of Collaboration for Change (CfC), a collective of over 40 organisations and individual activists across both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland.

Anyone in Ireland who has an idea that advances what CfC in their declaration call the Common Good can apply for funding of up to 500 EUR to be awarded via Participatory Budgeting.

CfC is offering two free workshops for anyone who would like to learn more about this process - no prior registration is required.

Workshop 1: Sep 9, 2021 19:00 GMT

Join here

Meeting ID: 839 8694 4449

Passcode: 888830

Workshop 2: Sep 14, 2021 11:00 GMT

Join here

Meeting ID: 847 4560 0840

Passcode: 809022

Citizens’ Assemblies

In our most recent interview, Roslyn Fuller speaks with Sarah Händel, Member of the Board at Mehr Demokratie, regarding the movement for Citizens’ Assemblies in Germany, the selection of CA participants and how CAs can be integrated with Direct Democracy.

Read the full article here

Remote Work

How will remote work affect local democracy? What changes can we make when we commute less and spend more time in local communities? And what can we learn from Cleisthenes and the ancient Athenians?

Read SDI founder Roslyn Fuller’s article in the Irish Times here

For more on the status of digital democracy, check out our website at 

http://www.solonian-institute.com

Sincerely,

Solonian
Democracy
Institute

When we started the report two years ago, most organisations used e-Democracy tools to consult their citizens or to automate government tasks. However, partly driven by the general trend to bring government processes into the 21st century, and partly by the complications arising from the pandemic, more and more governments are planning to allow online voting in elections. This brings with it major challenges around election security and integrity.

We are therefore excited to announce that this summer we are planning to co-host a seminar on digital elections and electoral security with Polys (part of global cyber-security and anti-virus provider Kaspersky). This seminar will walk you through the process of conducting an online vote with a particular focus on the security features offered by Polys. Real-life use cases to help you understand the practicalities of conducting such a vote will also be included.

The seminar is free of charge, but places are limited. Please express your interest by emailing us at contact@solonian-institute.com if you would like to be on the invitation list.

Also in this newsletter: Our Foundations of Democracy series continues by asking what shark attacks can tell us about democracy (spoiler alert: not that much) and why fiction can help us predict the future of citizen participation.

Read all about it below!

We speak with Professor Anthony Fowler about his research at the Harris School of Public Policy (University of Chicago), his views on the role of expertise in democracy and why shark attacks don't spell trouble for democracy.

Read the full interview here.

We interview best-selling German author Andreas Eschbach about his work, the relationship between technology and democracy and his views on the future.

Read the full interview here.

For more on the status of digital democracy, check out our website at http://www.solonian-institute.com.

Sincerely,

Solonian
Democracy
Institute

Whether you are organising a participatory budgeting project for a small community or planning a major voting exercise for a large city or even country - you will find what you need in this report.

But there’s more - we also have a new instalment in our Foundations of Democracy series as well as a long-form interview - this time with a historical twist.

Read all about it below!

Now in its second edition, the SDI Digital Democracy Report is the flagship publication of the Solonian Democracy Institute, a unique and comprehensive resource for the burgeoning digital democracy industry.

The report profiles eDemocracy vendors from around the world in order to create a detailed landscape of the tools and platforms available today to create direct democracy online. Each vendor’s products and services have been analysed across six functionality areas. In addition, we have also assessed the vendor’s ability to execute in their market, their vision and mission, customer satisfaction as well as how the vendor ensures security. We would like to thank all vendors, many of which engaged with us extensively on product demos, reference calls and by submitting surveys and data to bring the overall report to life.

You can download the full report, which is released under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), here.

As part of our Foundations of Democracy series, we asked SDI advisory board member and ecological economist Tom Hill, to illustrate the interplay between democracy and economics and how the two could be brought into closer alignment. Read the full article here.

What would an ancient Athenian, or ancient Roman citizen make of the society we have built today? And how are future historians likely to judge us? We explored these questions and many other with Dr. James Kierstead, Senior Lecturer in Classics at the Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. Read the full interview here.

For more on the status of digital democracy, check out our website at http://www.solonian-institute.com.

Sincerely,

Solonian
Democracy
Institute

We are kicking off 2021 by taking a look at the things that can drive democracy forward and the things that can hold it back. Read on to learn from the Dutch Pirate Party about election security, what we can learn from the world of mental health advocacy about Citizens’ Assemblies, and what role trust plays in enabling a meaningful, and equal, democracy.

We interview Matthijs Pontier of the Dutch Pirate Party about his views on privacy, surveillance, as well as the role of encryption in election security. Read the full interview here.

A fascinating look at Citizen Assemblies with Paul Vittles, Lead Facilitator, Suicide Prevention Transformation Projects. We explore how to drive deep and wide participation, the role of expertise and the impact of random selection on mental health. Read the full interview here.

For our Foundations of Democracy series we interview Dr. Brook Manville, Author, Consultant and regular contributor to Forbes.com. Dr. Manville explores the role trust plays in a democracy and then shares his recommendations for re-establishing trust as part of civil discourse. Read the full interview here.

Happy New Year from everyone at the Solonian Democracy Institute!

For more on the status of digital democracy, check out SDI’s 2020 Digital Democracy Report (next edition coming in February) or our website at http://www.solonian-institute.com.

Sincerely,

Solonian
Democracy
Institute

Produced by our Managing Director, Dr. Roslyn Fuller, the series aired in early October with experts from around the world sharing their insights on what the future of democratic engagement can look like.

Part 1: Participatory Budgeting

Originally practiced in Porto Alegre, Brazil, Participatory Budgeting, which allows people to decide on how part of a public budget is spent, now takes place around the world. Listen to our panel of experts outlining how PB is working in different countries and what the future looks like for Participatory Budgeting.

Panelists:

Part 2: Referenda

From the Swiss model of citizen-initiated referenda to the Brexit vote in the United Kingdom, referenda take many forms around the world and are a key component of direct democracy. Listen to our panel of experts debate how referenda can be used to empower people and deepen citizen participation.

Panelists:

Part 3: Online Deliberation And Voting

While Participatory Budgeting and Referenda are more well-known examples of democratic innovation, Digital Democracy can do so much more: From public sector task automation, to online consultation, deliberation and voting, Part 3 of the series serves as a sampling platter of what is possible today, replete with cutting-edge technology (e.g Blockchain security) and plenty of unexpected facts (e.g. the age profile of online voting). Enjoy!

Panelists:

For more on the status of digital democracy, check out SDI’s 2020 Digital Democracy Report (next edition coming in early 2021) or our website at http://www.solonian-institute.com.

Sincerely,

Solonian
Democracy
Institute