Supporting Participation: Building an effective European civic tech hub

Hi everybody who's just joining us. Thank you so much for coming along today. As you'll be used to by now, we just need to do a few minutes of letting people in. So, please do if you're interested, if you'd like to while you're waiting, introduce yourself in the chat. Say who you are and why you've come along. Really appreciate you being here with us this lunchtime, or lunchtime in the UK at least. And yeah, really excited to talk you through our new report. I'm here in Leeds and actually the sun is trying to come out, so yeah. Please do say hello in the chat. I'll just give it a couple of minutes and then we'll get started. Yeah, really nice to see you all. Thanks for coming along. Please do say hello if you'd like to. Hi Anna. I wish I was in this room right now. April. Hi Michael, nice to see you. Hi Cheng, hi Claire, hi Gajendra. Thanks so much for coming along. I always love to see where people have come from because it reminds me that even though I'm sitting in my house, this work is really global. Brilliant. Yeah, I'll just maybe give it one or two more meetings. Hi David. Hi Rosalind, nice to see you. Hi Ray. And hi Joseph. Thanks for coming along. Um, yeah, we've just got a one-hour session today. Really excited to talk you through some of our findings and our recommendations from the report. And yeah, we're pretty strict at my society, so we won't be going over an hour and there should be time for questions at the end. So, yeah. Okay, I think we might as well get I know that people are still arriving, um but I will say a big hello and welcome again to the launch of our latest research, which is uh supporting participation building an effective European Civic Tech Hub. My name's Julia Cushion. I'm the policy and advocacy manager here at MySociety and yeah, I've been really lucky to be working with my lovely colleagues Alex and Gemma and brilliant Kerttu from Sitra on this project. Um so, uh this is our agenda for the day. Sorry, I'll just move my bits around. Um and this is what we have planned for the next hour or so. Um these are obviously UK times and so, yeah, that's what we're working with, but uh we've got the uh next hour together. Firstly, I'm going to do a quick overview of who we are at MySociety and our interest in this project and how we come to came to work on it. Um then I'll pass over to Kerttu, who will give us introduction to Sitra and explain why the research was commissioned um by them and some important background information to kind of set the scene. And then we'll get to the meat of it. We'll go to our um brilliant Alex and Gemma from MySociety, who are going to share our key findings and recommendations from the research. And then there'll be some time for questions and answers at the end um talking about what's next. And yeah, we'd love to hear your thoughts and where um where you're thinking with all of these exciting things. So, um please do yeah, um use the chat throughout. I'll do a bit of housekeeping. Um we are recording today's event and it will be published on the MySociety YouTube channel and the Tech Tech Knowledge Hub so that other people who can't join us today can watch back afterwards. Um but yeah, do be aware of that if you ask questions um and yeah, have your camera on um you may be in the recording. Um please use the chat to contribute your thoughts as we go along and post any questions for our speakers. We won't answer questions until we get to the end, but it's nice to sort of see them coming through. And through the chat function, you can, you know, emoji react on to people's questions and things that you want to um ask. So yes, we'll come to the questions at the end. And there is a live transcript available. So you just need to click the transcript button if you would like that. Brilliant. So if you don't know my society, it's my job to give you a little bit of an introduction. Why do we care about civic tech adoption and the development of the EU civic tech hub? Well, we are a charity that was formed in 23 2003 23 years ago now. And this is a little video. There's a page on our website about our history and it's just a quick scroll. Don't expect you to be able to read it so quickly, but just to show all of the things that we've been up to over the years. We've been creating, running, researching and sharing civic tech tools to help people engage and participate in democracy. All sorts of things in there. And yeah, our biggest civic tech services are UK based, which is where Alex Jemar and I are. But yeah, you can see some of them there from all sorts of areas of civic tech. So what do they know is access to information. They work for you as parliamentary monitoring. But we don't just work in the UK. The um code bases are all open source and have been reused by organizations all around the world. We think around 44 countries worldwide. Um helping to make democracy more accessible. And yeah, really really nice to see people from all over the world on this call today. And yes, another little video here just of our research site. So yeah, if you're interested in the other research we've done over the years, that's research.mysociety.org. And our new paper that we're launching today is up there now as well. So yes, research is a really key part of what we do and it's been such a nice project to work on. Just one to add to that kind of collection. Um and that also this this research project in particular sits in our TicTec stream. So I'm sure and I can see some names here of people who have come to Tech, both in person and when we've done it online. Um and TiK Tech, the impacts of civic technology, is a series of conferences, convenings, research, and grant projects that actively bring together people interested in civic and pro-democracy technology from all around the world. Um so yeah, we're trying to prove and improve the impact and effectiveness of civic tech. And so I think this research project sits really, really nicely within that broader scheme of work. Um and yeah, we're all united here today trying to bring citizens together to kind of help um help everybody engage more effectively in democracies around the world. Um and yeah, I like to see some of those pictures of in-person um things. Although I do, you know, a webinar works really well, too. It's nice to get to see people um over lunch time. And yes, um the research we present today is the latest TiK Tech initiative to help increase the impact of civic tech around the world. And we're just really grateful for you to giving up a little bit of your time to spend it with us today while we talk through this research. Um I'm now going to pass on to Kirsikka from Sitra, who's going to give us a bit of an overview of their work and how they came to commission this research. So I will stop my share. Um and hand over to Kirsikka. >> Mhm. Thank you. Just a second. I will >> [clears throat] >> try my best to um get that slides going. Um Are you now seeing the slides in the presenter mode? >> No, actually we're not. Um sorry, we've still got the the border around it, which happened once in our practice and once Okay. >> [clears throat] >> Um so if it's better, I could maybe share them, Kirsikka. Up to you. >> That's fine. We can do that. >> Brilliant. Okay. >> Um my organization belongs to the Teams tribe. So I'm a bit clumsy when it comes to using any other any other service. No, not at all. >> How does that look to you? >> This looks fine. Great. So, um so now let's get started. So, um welcome all on on my behalf as well. Um my name is Kilti Hurtula and I come from the Finnish Innovation Fund called Sitra. Um we can go to the next slide. So, um I was first asked to to tell just a little bit about Sitra. I won't bore you with a lot of details, but I believe that many of you probably have not heard of Sitra before. So, um instead if you have heard of uh the UK-based Nesta, uh you can think of us being something similar to to them with two important exceptions though. So, um Sitra is actually uh supervised by our national parliament. And also um we mostly find finance our activities with the dividends of our investments. So, that gives us a little bit of sort of financial leeway >> [clears throat] >> to to the Finnish parliament as well. Um personally, I work in a program called uh Democracy Innovations. Um in this program, we've been working for a few years now. Uh mostly piloting um a couple of citizen participation methods. Um and these [clears throat] methods being deliberative citizen panels uh and some um digital participation tools. My own expertise lies in the [clears throat] side of digital participation. Uh until recently, I was leading this uh, team that was tasked to uh, scale the use of a particular um, digital participation platform platform called Vox it. Um, outside of Vox it this platform is most most often known as Polis which I think a lot of you probably uh, uh, familiar with. So, uh, next next slide, please. Uh, in this program um, recently we've often been uh, looking at this particular picture. Um, and the reason being that while we've been working with scaling these um, these particular um, citizen participation methods, we've noticed that um, there seem to be this recurring common barriers that uh, currently exist and and make it harder uh, for these methods to to really be integrated um, within uh, decision-making uh, uh, processes in uh, public administrations for instance. And um, due to this you can click again, Julia. And again. Due to this um, we've decided that that um, our current uh, focus uh, goes more and more into projects that we think will uh, help to sort of bridge this gap between uh, the early adopt adopters who already believe that these types of methods are valuable and and and do have a benefit and between the rest of the people who still uh, are not on the same page with with uh, people like us in this call. Um >> [clears throat] >> yes, and um um I think there are also um some simultaneously we see that there are also these um sort of stronger winds that are also blowing in the European level. Um uh it seems like there is a a bigger pull uh for digital participation as well because there are all these um European level initiatives that have to do with with um strengthening the um democratic resilience or maybe improving um our technical sovereignty. Um and one of these initiatives is um the EU Commission's Democracy Shield uh which was announced uh this past October. And as part of this uh initiative the European uh Commission has already announced that it will set up a CivicTech Hub and this hub uh will be supporting um the uh providers of of citizen participation platforms as well as uh other uh CivicTech uh platforms and also trying to to engage with public administrations uh trying to make sure that that the demand for these types of uh tools is increasing. So um um based on all this uh etc. we think that within the coming months or so the European Commission along with uh the other actors uh that are active in the field of CivicTech will probably jointly have to um decide uh what are the the biggest service needs that that currently exist within the ecosystem. And uh while they do this, they also need to think about how the Civic Tech Hub ought to be um um placed uh within this uh these larger European narratives that have to do with digital sovereignty or democratic resilience. Um because of this uh Sitra decided to commission uh MySociety uh this uh study from MySociety. Um we thought that it would be very valuable to to uh truly dive into um the landscape of of uh uh the current uh European uh Civic Tech ecosystem and and [clears throat] truly hear their points of views. Um and while MySociety has been doing this, we have actually also been um doing interviews on our own and we have been um conducting interviews with people who represent public administrations or organizations that that closely collaborate with public administrations within the field of digital participation. So uh I'll be really interested in hearing what Alex and Gemma have to say um because I think that we will certainly find out that there are a lot of things that that um have come up in both of these interview streams. So um now I think it'll be time to to give the floor to Alex and Gemma. Thank you. [clears throat] >> Thank you so much, Kirsy. Uh I will share my slides. Hang on a second. There you go. Can you see that everybody? Can you hear me okay? Yeah. Oh, well, hello everybody. So nice to see you all and see so many familiar faces from Tic Tac's over the years and people that we interviewed for this research. So thanks a lot for coming along. So yeah, I'm delighted to to give you an overview today of the research we've been doing and talk through our recommendations. Um so as Kirsty says one of the main goals of the EU Civic Tech Hub and of the EU Democracy Shield is to increase European democratic resilience by creating infrastructure and methods of participation that enrich democracy. So our research focuses on the the use of tech for increased civic participation in this in decision-making and how it can be adopted and used more. So our core question for this research was what is needed from an EU Civic Tech Hub to increase the use of participation tech across Europe. And you'll notice that we're using participation tech rather than civic tech more broadly as we sort of the scope of the EU Civic Tech Hub is primarily focused at participation. So helping people to participate in democratic decision-making. Um and as Kirsty said we've been tasked with doing the engagement and the research with the Civic Tech and democratic innovation practitioner side and Sitra have conducted research with civil servant government side. So we over the last couple of months we've interviewed 19 people from 12 countries and a mix of they've been a mix of open source, commercial and non-profit participation tech providers and democratic innovators. Um and the results we've got 14 recommendations for EU Civic Tech Civic Tech Hub activities separated into short and long-term ambitions. Uh so, next slide. So, from the findings from our research show that to achieve increased use of participation tech across Europe requires three mutually reinforcing shifts. So, we need increased demand of participation tech. So, at the moment um not that many public authorities really uh demand use of these tools. We need more public authorities to believe that participation processes actually do lead to better outcomes. We also need strengthened supply of participation tech. So, we need a range of tools that can effectively support uh participation processes uh being available to officials who are actually able to procure and use them. And we need optimized implementation. So, we need these tools to really be impactful and be the best they can be. Um and that involves things like closing the feedback loop uh and making sure we know the impacts of these. So, more uh there's more confidence, more political confidence uh that participation can be an excellent governance tool uh and used to um solve problems. So, we structured these uh our 14 recommendations uh around these three shifts and separate them into short and long-term uh activities and and ambitious ambitions as per this slide. So, yeah, we will talk through each of these recommendations uh and each of these mutually reinforcing shifts. So, firstly, um in order to sort of increase demand of participation tech, we think the EU Civic Tech Hub should develop a lightweight front door to signpost to existing networks and resources. As a lot of us know on this call, there's already amazing resources out there. Places like the People Powered uh People Powered does amazing guides, Civic Tech Field Guide. Um there's loads of interesting uh networks already doing stuff. So, these e-civic tech hubs should simply, you know, signpost to the those and become an official, you know, visible source to help authorities interested in learning more about participation tech and be that connective infrastructure to strengthen the existing ecosystem. Uh, next slide. Uh, we also think the e-civic tech hub could provide more authority-focused case studies um demonstrating impact. And not only that, demonstrating impact, but showing really, you know, what are the conditions, the decisions, the mechanisms that make um you know, participation processes using technology really successful, uh sustainable, adopted. So, not just, you know, saying these are the tools that you can use, um but really going into delving into the depth of, you know, how did they actually get procured? You know, what decisions had to be made to in order to for these processes to work well. Uh, it was my Alex. >> Well, so one of the reasons we split this over into short-term and long-term ones is cuz in all of our interviews we kept running into problems that were really important, but also really big. And so, what we sort of felt was important was to sort of take this take the hub on a on a path from doing useful things immediately, but making it even like tap towards the long-term goals. So, one of them was this sort of sense that a lot of the obstacles people described were in part a feature of the market not yet being fully mature. So, that there's a lot not enough demand to properly support all the existing actors or indeed the new ones there. And so, some of these scaling and financial issues are actually all part of this problem. So, as one of our long-term goal and ambition, the hub should aim towards trying to build demand for that participation participation as a broader goal. Sort of grow that sustainable market at the same time as for the moment sort of getting those short-term activities like these case studies, like these stuff to support that goal without fully moving away from technology aspect of it. So, that's about sharing success stories. That's about trying to sort of integrate the idea of participation tech into the network of civil service and civil service politicians. So, basically should try to be a bridge between participation tech and those wider networks. Uh yes, Jim, next slide, please. >> That's the next slide. >> Cool. Thank you. Uh so, the next section is about strengthening the supply. This is about the how do we improve um the uh make more sustainable the services and providers that are existing and can exist in the future. So, uh from new entrants and to meet different needs in different places. So, again, we're splitting this into short-term and long-term perspectives. We'll talk about this a bit more later, but procurement difficulties were a consistent problem along our interviews. Uh both from those who do it a lot and have frustrations, uh but also actually those who don't do it at all because it's so difficult because of all those obstacles. So, here we found providers who may or may not who may or may not intend to work with governments later on, but right now are aimed at alternate markets in the community or educational sectors. And we think this is really interesting in terms of helping new entrants uh talk to customers or or um users sooner um and helping sort of make make the product fit work better. And so, we think a useful short-term thing the hub can do is help provide more information about these alternate outlets for participation software to help people sort of build a build uh build their products, build their markets without it being such a big barrier to go from I've got an idea and also need to figure out the procurement system. So, it's a way to clear avenues to those first customers or tenants. Uh next slide, please, Gemma. So, there's a there's a pause there, so I'm just making a note. But, it's it's all good. Um Um so, the next few recommendations sort of relate to the open and closed debate, and we've got similar short- and long-term views on this. Uh so, in this there's a lot of interesting overlapping arguments perspective, and our recommendations aim to untangle a few different parts of that. From the democracy for sure perspective, the goal is democratic sovereignty and resilience, but for some practitioners, open source is also just more of an expression of the same philosophy that led to an interesting participation software in the first place. Whereas for others, participation can be facilitated without a strong requirement for open source. And we'll come back to this a bit later in terms of thinking about wider democratic innovation. Is this idea and what different groups sometimes disagree on which ideas have to go together at the same time? And part of what the hub needs to do is sort of navigate those different arguments. The first recommendation here is what we should consider low-hanging fruit in terms of understanding of open source technology from both sides of the problem. So, this is difficulty for new entrants, people who just participation but maybe haven't done a lot of software development before. In understanding what open source does and doesn't mean, to be people who are like aspirationally open source, as I think we describe in the in the report, who wants to do it at some point but don't do it at the start. And you know, why? What what are the what are the obstacles to that? And how can resources help them understand more about, you know, not necessarily making that as the only choice, but making an informed choice sooner. And similarly from the other side in terms of understanding from government civil servants about what open source means, confusion about whether that is just means, you know, software should be completely free and whether that is given a poor um a poor understanding of what the software can do and how it's useful. So, similarly education aimed at that direction about how open source achieves those wider goals at the same time as what it does and doesn't mean, so there's no misunderstandings from that point of view. And that's likely to Gemma. The next part of this is sort of thinking about business model diversity. So, in the long run, the hub has interest in both promoting participation tech and you're open source, but our view is it doesn't have to do both at the same time initially. It should take a broad view on business model diversity to better actually existing participation groups while trying to tackle some of those obstacles to open source adoption. So, on the one side of things is helping people sort of share those share those case studies, working out you know, those obstacles to participation in general, but also the sort of things where you can queries about open you know, difficulty with open source um in terms of a disconnect between that big strategic picture about how open source helps uh strategic independence uh at the same time is how that isn't reflected in local procurement policy. Uh so, and but one of our sort of intermediate bridges there is thinking about Sorry, next slide, please, Gemma. Uh practical interoperability. Uh so, where as a sort of bridge between these different perspectives uh where this where processes might help better interrelation both between participation tech and more foundational digital public infrastructure, but also interoperability between uh different providers where that can help different products work as a suite for different kinds of solutions. And we think this might be especially useful in terms of like feeding back to that case for having big impact in terms of making it easy for them to flow both ways, you know, to be able to pass back to your participants um here is what we did in the end with this is a useful way of sort of thinking about how these processes can work together. And I think I hand back to Gemma at this point for the next section. >> Thanks. Um so, yeah, I'll move on to the next uh sort of shift needed. So, we need optimized implementation of participation tech. Basically, participation tech that works really well and has the most impact possible. So, how can the EU Civic Tech Hub help with that? So, uh our first recommendation is supporting pilots in what we're calling participation thin areas. So, we've read that one of the hub's goals will be to support pilot projects. Uh and our recommendation would be to do these in what we're saying in participation thin areas. So where democratic culture, digital access, and local tech options are weaker. Um, as therefore these sort of projects represent the highest learning opportunity and fills an equity gap that the the hub should sort of actively try and fill and actively close. Um. So that's our first recommendation in this shift. Uh, otherwise, um, as highlighted in the research and a previous Tic Techs, there is there are currently can be quite a divide between sort of more general uh, democracy and participation networks where some can even be quite pessimistic about the use of tech. Um, so a divide between sort of those types of organizations, networks, and civic tech providers. We recommend the hub sort of tries to close tries to bridge this gap. Uh, which we you know, tried to do a bit of Tic Techs in that in the past and there's some really good initiatives um, outside of Tic Tech trying to do this at the moment, but we think this is really important because you know, participation technology will be more effective when it is closely connected to democratic innovation practitioners, to researchers, to sort of local participation networks. Um, you know, in terms of you know, a lot of democratic innovation is talking about deliberation so smaller uh, smaller groups of people participating in uh, participation process processes. How can tech you know, help with that? Um, it'd be good to sort of connect all of these groups with universities so you know, the impact of these tools can actually be um, more you know, system systemically sort of proven, worked on, um, shown. Uh, so therefore you know, the technology gets better and more people uh, invest in it and start using it more and believe in it. Um So, I think I've talked through that one. And then otherwise, yeah, we recommend uh the hub sort of providing some risk mitigation guidance. So, as Alex touched upon, um you know, throughout the interviews, we heard how difficult and complex procurement and compliance processes can be uh for civic tech uh providers. Uh cuz these are often shaped by public authorities concerned around concerns around security, you know, accessibility, data protection. Um So, they make the processes really quite hard to um to uh engage with uh if you're not a huge big organization. Um so, we thought the hub could provide uh you know, bring together practical guidance, case studies, standards to help um authorities manage these risks proportionately in their procurement processes. So, it, you know, doesn't exclude smaller organizations. Um So, we think that would help. And over to Alex, I think. >> So, on a long-term approach to this area, one of the areas I think it's worth exploring is sort of sandbox approaches, which is basically trying to think about this as structures to make it easier for people on both sides who want to who fundamentally are interested and want to explore and connect to do so more effectively. Uh from the government and civil service side, it can be hard to understand in practice what a platform looks like when going through a sales process, but this can make it difficult for the likely interested person to dig further. So, we think there's real merit in opening this up a bit and having a process where like, you know, fake data can be a bit more made more available on a central centralized platform to help people really explore and play around with software to understand like, "Oh, I understand how this applies to my problem." Uh from the other side of things, there are new entrants who would benefit a lot from contact with potential users earlier and uh especially sort of build on the idea of hackathons, where like building panels of interested civil servants and politicians who are fundamentally, you know, have been convinced already about participation and want better tools for it. Could be useful in helping provide earlier feedback about how these things will line in the long run. So, just basically try to help encourage software that better meets everyone's needs and that builds these better connections across the software. And the final one, which is tucked down here at the bottom, is regulation procurement reform. Is a very big one. So, this is a very hard or potentially very rewarding problem in the long run. So, this came up so much in some of our interviews. One of those things where somebody just said, "You stop doing everything else and do procurement reform." They said, "No, you should do the short-term things first." But, this is one of those sort of very big problems that's really worth engaging with in the long run. That basically the hub should try to adopt the approach that aligns these high-level strategic goals that we want, you know, we think democracy would be better with more participation, that really needs, you know, engagement in how that is provided and can be provided at scale. And those strategic strategic goals about stronger democracy and about independent independent tech with the reality on the ground of how the market currently works, about difficulties in local procurement as General talked about, about risk mitigation that makes it hard for some people to to compete. So, just trying to like have you have an eye on in both directions, both in helping shape local local approaches, but also how new approaches at the EU level affect and relate to this sort of idea of of participation tech. So, that is a very big problem, but it's one that's really worth engaging with and have a big impact over the long run. And our last set of steps to our cross-cutting themes across these three areas. You should always You should always have a list of three, and then you should have a cross-cutting one to cheat and have a fourth. So, here are the two important areas where the importance of building political, not just administrative, buy-in. So, like one of the sort of key concerns about this is the theory of how this is going to work is that there are people are in a stronger democracy because they can see the impacts on how things are happening and changing their lives. But for that to happen, things have to really have an impact. And so that requires I don't know like well, why would we have participatory next size? Do they not always make a difference? And I try to understand more about this idea of political buying to how how do we make sure these things go forward and have a result? So this is both So there's three studies we were talking about way back at the start in terms like how is this how has participatory tech helped solve problems the politicians have? And how does that scale up to similar problems that other people have? We did some research a few years ago looking at local councils in the UK and this is really interesting in the sense of different There are certain political situations where there were you roadblocks or where there were specific reasons why progress couldn't be made where participation really I helped unblock obstacles. And so I understand like participation is a solution to problems people currently have. And similarly, we found that attitudes to participation increase just got a lot more friendly the first time someone tried it. So you have that sense like what is the first step to take people along that road and then how can you grow from there? Would really sort of help across all these areas grow that market, get people solutions that benefit those first problems and move on from there. Um the second part of this is the impact of AI. A lot of chat from AI but from different perspectives. I view this didn't need a specific um function but was one in which it's really connected across these different areas. So sort of three different things that have came out of this uh that um AI potentially change what civic tech is in terms of changing how things are coded and developed. More mass availability of AI creates new problems for public participation platforms in terms of authenticity of users. Uh but also participation technology is itself strongly interwoven with AI in terms of using LLMs to code responses or to create synthesis positions. So basically, it's less that this has a specific AI function but more about you can companies want to how these AI issues relate to other foundational streams of work. Uh so if there's an instance that revolve around participation to the use of AI itself, it's both around regulation, compliance with the AI Act, and set tech sovereignty. So how the difficulties in deploying AI in the European cloud that effectively at the moment a lot of tokens are effectively subsidized by big American providers. Uh what does that look like in the long run? And similarly, some of the issues around uh authenticity and public uh participation that relates to issues around digital public infrastructure, validation of users. Uh these are not fundamentally different kinds of problems, but they are both intensified and new areas created by the existence of AI. So it's just something that throughout this it needs to be sort of addressed through those different themes. And I think that is the end of my stuff. >> Brilliant. Thank you so much. Oh, I just need to turn my camera back on. Um thank you so much Alex and Gemma and for the questions that are already coming through in the chat. Um yeah, it's been such an interesting research project, and as you can see we we thought a bit about how to try and like map it all out and um and give it a format, and so hopefully um that has been useful. Please do um put any more questions in the chat, and thank you to everyone already has. We can go through those. Before we do that, Kersti, I wondered about passing back to you if you had any reflections on on this research, if it was what you expected, or um uh oh yeah, any key themes that emerged for you, and any connections with the research that you at Sitra have been doing. >> Uh yeah, yeah. Thank you, Julia. And I I applaud the the wonderful work you did. I think it's really really uh good. And I love the fact that it does uh such a wealth of of practical uh ideas um that uh could and should should be done to to lower some of these barriers that currently exist. Um having done all of the interviews uh that we did uh by Sitra during this project. So, so I feel like I have a pretty good sort of uh chance to to reflect on some of the uh findings that I um did while while conducting these interviews with with um public officials. So, uh one of the sort of key findings that I have is the fact that um the main obstacles that you've listed are largely the same. So, they are equally painful on both sides. Uh uh having said that, I do think that there are some sort of um um minor differences that have to do with with um the perspectives of each party. So, um I think um um in my interviews, I think the absolute key barrier that nearly everybody talked about was uh the lack of uh leadership support, leadership gap. And and this was not only um uh the lack of sort of political buying, but but also the lack of leadership leadership amongst top civil servants. And uh quite a lot of people uh pointed out that that um it seems that um um there's still a mismatch between these sort of um more personal uh incentives of of uh political and and and political leaders and also top civil servants. And uh uh and digital participation that and and also that that uh they felt that um maybe um the impact of these platforms could be bigger if if these platforms could be integrated better in better in in um decision-making processes. So, I think there's still something to to be done in that area. Another thing that strongly resonates with my findings is uh um all these procurement-related challenges. And I actually personally found it a bit surprising that it came across so strongly also in my interviews. Um now, keep in mind that that the people that I interviewed were people who were mostly citizen participation experts within the public administration or or worked in such organizations that that work in the area of digital participation. So, they felt equally that that um uh procuring citizen participation platforms is currently very difficult. And oftentimes they felt that um within public administrations, there isn't enough um capacity or expertise to uh make these procurements to go more smoothly. So, oftentimes the burden of of trying to to get the procurement process um finalized is is placed on the shoulders of these participation experts who also lack the expertise of of doing these type of things. Um yeah, maybe one more thing I want to point out is um when you mentioned about um the particular problems of of uh that also uh that open source platforms are also facing. So, interestingly these questions suddenly came up in my interviews. Uh so, I think this also maybe uh underlies your point uh in the sense that that I do think that there is still um there still is not um uh very much uh expertise within public public administration uh when it has to do with with open source platforms and and their sort of um the the special questions that have to do with procuring these types of platforms and and and and special special questions that that have to do with how to maintain these platforms for instance. Or how to develop them technically. So, all of these questions I think there isn't really enough understanding within public administrations at large. But yeah, these are some of my sort of top-level uh observations, but thank you thank you. It's been really nice to work with you and and also hearing this these final insights. >> Oh, thank you. And it's been so it's been such a joy to work with you. And I do think that this dual sort of aspect that we're having both looking from the civic tech side and from um uh within authority side is giving us a really rich picture. Um before we go to questions, and thank you so much everyone putting really great questions in the chat. Um across our panel, I guess it's worth saying what do we want to happen next or what will happen next with this research? Um where is it being taken? Um uh yeah, Alex, did you want to speak to that about um about yeah, the next steps for it? >> No, I think this is just something that's so it's interesting to it's been a great opportunity to like talk to lots of people working in participation tech. So, obviously this uh feeds into our citrus work and future advocacy on things. Uh also we're sort of figuring it in terms of our future tech tech program, uh can we best uh do some of these joining up uh aspects of it. They're a good idea regardless. Um and how can better support player you know, a constructive role with whatever emerges next in terms of trying to build some of these things, but also with some of than scale beyond our participation to wider civic tech where there's there's wider obstacles. Participation take is quite interesting and it it's an unusual sort of civic tech in having a sort of commercial market in the sense that there is, in principle, there are a wide source of potential source of incomes for it. So, some of it doesn't scale cleanly, but lots of the stuff in terms of this um being able to lightly bridge different communities, I think it's deeply important to sort of help people understand get get over that sort of initial like, "Well, what what is this?" How do we talk to people who are interested in participation who don't know about the tech and vice versa? And suddenly how do we talk to people in government who are not coming from the civic side. So, I think that there's a set of lessons here that we'd try to like work into our future civic tech work. >> Yeah, absolutely. I think that's so true. A big theme was this like marrying the participation or the civic side and the tech side and and helping people, whichever role they play within the kind of relationships that are at the heart of this here, to feel more confident, I think. Um um brilliant. So, thank you everybody for all of your questions. We've got loads and we've got plenty of time to answer them, which is lovely. Um Oh, [clears throat] sorry. Um just to start us off, um to what extent was usability and accessibility, in terms of user research and design, addressed across open source civic tech? Um I think maybe that's about in our interviews and in the report. Um it's a hugely underfunded and under-sourced focus in open source and is really critical for the adoption for regular non-open source uh confident folks. Um Alex, do you want to have a go at that one? I'm just writing it >> Yeah, sure. So, I I I think this is uh is is something that we very So, we didn't discover it in a lot of ground except in sort of discussing, especially the localization aspect of civic tech in terms of uh how that can present why why to an extent it was interesting to explore if if smaller solutions work in different places to sort of as especially in sort of of that participation thing framing when is it best to have one big solution that can be customized lots of different things versus when different areas need different things. And that can sort of go both ways in terms of being very catered to a specific thing, but also as things look larger and are better supported by more clients, it's much easier to go like, "Well, let's get the accessibility right. Let's get this right because this affects absolutely everyone across all our many clients." So, I think it's yeah, a deeply important part of civic tech. Basically, I agree with the critique in in the question that yes, it's hugely underfunded, but it's also hugely rewarding in terms of making things actually accessible and useful to people. Especially given obviously a critique in general of civic technology plus participation is the accessibility of it. So, anything that can be used to sort of mitigate that in terms of making sure that it's not artificially creating obstacles that can't be filled is deeply important. >> Brilliant. Yeah, thank you so much. Um and then this next question is about maintenance burden. Um since creating open-source software, civic tech is an effort um and constantly maintaining the open source is critical, um that just can't be wasted onto local government offices or foundations. And so, this idea of the maintenance burden, it is something that came up a lot in our interviews. And you know, as open-source uh organization ourselves, we know that especially on a funding side, it can um be hard to get funding to maintain code for a long time. Um and so, yeah, I would say that that was a theme. We didn't go into loads of detail in the report partly because we didn't want the report to be a million miles long. Um but when we talk about this idea within strengthening the supply of a longer-term activity of developing open-source kind of educational resources and open-source resources, I think that that is a key part of that. Um and like helping organizations to navigate that that need there that there is um an ongoing maintenance. Um Alex, did you want to come in on on that and on the idea of maintenance burden? >> No, I just think as a as a special I think it's something that a hub can especially do is connect uh what's obviously deeply important to us working in open source. Like, we can we can say open source is important because it supports everything else. But if you're interested in the outcomes of it at Harvard it can sort of clearly trace like what we're trying to do is high-level outcomes, but it depends on all this work back here which is poorly funded being able to have organizations that can sort of make that connection between here are the impacts of open source eventually and here are the requirements of it and here is why it's such a great deal. Um that is sort of a useful figure that Harvard can do is sort of connect that sort of the principal case with the practical problem. >> Brilliant, yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much. Um and then yeah, there was a comment from Margo in the chat about interoperability and that you know, there's the opportunities for using tools for ideation and then separate ones for discussion and voting and I think that got um support in the chat and so I don't know if you wanted to add anything to that anybody. Um but yeah, um I think a great point. Um Michael was asking how do we submit projects for support? I wish that we were the EU Civic Tech Tech Hub, but we are not. Um somebody mentioned the um uh Civic Tech Field Guide in the chat, but I wanted um I maybe we should say something about like where the Civic Tech Hub is going and that you know, there is this um uh a high-level meeting happening next week and and what we think that the next kind of steps of the development of the hub itself are going to be. Um uh yeah, Kirsty. >> Yeah. Of course, really none of us knows where the Civic Tech Hub will be going at the moment. Um but um um part of the reason why we commissioned this um study and and and also have done some work on our own uh to to hopefully uh help to to build a thorough understanding and a shared understanding of the kinds of needs that the um Civic Tech Hub ought to um to serve. Um what we know at this point is that the commission has has uh said that um it will set up the the uh Civic Tech Hub. Um how um uh big the scope of the hub will be, I think, is still a bit of an open question. Uh but it seems quite uh clear that um the hub is meant to collaborate with uh the actors that already exist within the field in in Europe. So So I don't think it the meaning is that it will start uh doing things that that already work well. So So I think there are a lot of established actors already in Europe and elsewhere that are doing marvelous marvelous job. So So I think it's uh the hub's um role should be to rather amplify their work one way or another. While also sort of uh uh focusing its own resources in in some of the more critical gaps that that currently exist. Um I can say that next week in Brussels we will uh organize um a closed um It's going to be like a closed discussion uh round table discussion uh with around 30 participants. Um some of them coming also um uh from the commission and and the idea that is that we will present these findings as well as our own and and there will be a thorough thorough uh discussion and then hopefully we can over there as well uh make sure that that these um uh needs that that currently exist are are understood um properly not only in these uh within the Civic Civic Tech communities but but also outside of it. >> Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much. And it is really nice as well as being joined by all of our lovely friends on the call today to know that this is going in a direction and hopefully getting that into the hands of people with some authority on this. And yeah, just been so great to work with you on it, Kersey. So yeah, brilliant questions and please do keep them coming in. Oh, thank you so much, Anna. So there was one here about connecting pilot tech projects with participation activities targeted at developing the most deprived and alienated communities. Yeah, really like this point, David, and I think that's something that we're trying to get at in this idea of participation thin areas. Alex, did you want to come in on that? >> Yeah, just especially especially where that aligns with either a national European level existing program is because as I was saying to this, it's unlikely to have a lot of money to like commission pilots at the you know, maybe that's a nice long-term goal. But like the thing to be doing is to look for approaches that already exist, that are already supported by some some funder or another to understand like how can we learn things from this fund that already exists? How can we understand how participation relates to this? How can we try and learn and integrate with this? So I feel especially just trying to be aligned with whatever the the local funding is or the local exploration and just being like well with the Civic Tech, we're able to like learn from this and so and support it and sort of work well with others feels like we get a nice bridge between those sort of existing funds and and programs and the participation tech world. >> Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much. Great. And then our next question is politicians like everybody else are worried by uncertainty. Is there a thought how participation, while its outcomes are uncertain, can reduce uncertainty where it matters more in the environment, in elections, these sorts of things? I think that's a really nice point and although there is obviously levels of uncertainty in participation, I think something that we try and put across in the report is we talk about authority focused case studies. So really trying to encourage people from authorities to have access to materials that show what their role could be or how it has worked in the past and what the outcomes have been, especially and even when those outcomes weren't maybe the expected ones or even let's you know the desired ones, but that they have gone on to have positive outcomes for citizens. So yes, and I think that might connect to we can get to it later, but there is a later question about research and I think research and really good well-researched, well-written case studies can be really part of the the picture here in increasing that confidence. But yeah, then Alex Jerman do you want to come in at all on that that idea of of managing uncertainty and and maybe even reducing it? >> Yes, but it's related to the questions we've been done about that why why there isn't that sort of support for the moment. I I think that really varies by experience. Like I think there is it's absolutely yes, participation is a tool that helps you start off with uncertainty by the end of the process you learn more and that's the process is only uncertain but when people have a lack of experience with it compared to other ways of resolving decisions and I think it's one of those things by supporting like supporting lessons supporting sharing of case studies between places, supporting understanding like how this does that process of like I'm unsure about what to do next, how can I go on that journey to understand what I should do next and how is this a tool that helps me do that? That really helps that sort of shift shift it from being you want me to do a new unfamiliar thing, why? It's like for this reason because it reduces your uncertainty about what to happen next in a way that helps everyone out. >> Yeah, absolutely. >> I could add to at one point I think I personally found it really interesting when I was listening to my respondents that a lot of them pointed out that especially political leaders seem to find digital participation more risky compared to other forms of citizen participation and maybe because they are often associated with social media or something or like the images or ideas of of what it is to to engage with people come from social media. So, they feel that it's like uncontrollable and maybe there's trolling and and and you know, unpleasant things and and you cannot really as a politician or as a leader, you cannot control it. So, I think there are there's also an element of of trying to uh educate >> Mhm. >> people about about what uh digital participation truly is. >> That's a great point. Yeah, and absolutely. And for those of us who are immersed in digital day-to-day, we might not remember that that is a like a mindset and approach for people from within public authorities. And so, yeah, so helpful to see it from both sides. Um yeah, nice point from Magenda here about the the nature of power here. It's a power problem. People in power don't want power to be decentralized and the movement has to be bottom-up bottom-up. I do think yeah, obviously power has an important role here. And I think, you know, something that Matt Simpkins told us as part of the research was about, you know, the combination where civic tech has been really impactful has been in com you know, in combination with more people-led movements in and outside of the digital space. And so, I think that's a nice point. And yeah, the next question about this idea of political buying which was one of the key theme of ours and was one of the cross-cutting themes. Why isn't there political buying? Do they not know what's possible to achieve? Do they associate with transparency and run away with it run away from it? Are they against the idea of having citizens participate more? I think we've touched on this, but you know, it does feel like maybe people think that a lot of risk comes with participation and participation tech. Do they want to add any more to that? >> No, just that was the question I was sort of piggybacking on earlier that it it's about that sort of like making things less risky is sometimes about adapting technology to solve people's problems, but sometimes it is just about getting over that initial stage where like we people don't understand and that lack of understanding is the uncertainty and the risk. And so I think there's real potential for low like I I think I think there's real potential for low hanging fruits to make a big difference in how to understand people understand like our problems are you have solved in new ways and how are those new ways available and scalable. And I think that's the process will gradually unlock a lot of interesting things in this area. >> Yeah, absolutely. I think there's a In a way there's a case to be made for the like first order good of participation, but there's you know, and maybe more accessible second order case where like it will be it will deliver good results and we can show you that it has kind of thing. Um Brilliant. Okay, I know we're running out of time, but we've got so many brill questions. Um I think there's a nice one here. Um initially platforms were built by and for hackers. They could move and create there freely and equally. Platforms for non-expert users have to compromise on this idea of freedom and creativity and rail in what users can do. Um so platforms always seem to be guiding and nudging to engage in a certain way, but that you know, might lead to excluding others. How can this be addressed? And it's an interesting problem and question for civic tech and and that balance of maybe when they're designing with um public authorities, how much freedom and you know, democratic space do you want to give um a potential user? Um uh Did we have any thoughts on that? Um I'm not sure it didn't particularly come up in the interviews, but I like the the challenge. >> I think it's I think it's interesting in the sense that I think this is why it's good to have a big market that explore lots of different kinds of things cuz I think there were definitely some things where there's a real thing for like let's have a proper think through this process, but also there were some you know, things where like yes, we want a mostly structured process that goes through things. And it depends on the size of participants and stuff. So I think there is a real sort of sense like it's good to have both and it's good to have a market where people understand the options for both that sometimes you might be in a state where we're very early stage of this. We just want to be creative exercise where we understand start stages versus like we want to engage a lot of people and we need a way that can sort of what what if we constructively and I think this goes back to that initial point about interoperability where it's like you know the technology can do so many different things that it's the way it's good if all the platforms are not clones of each other where they are going like here is how we think about participation in this way and I think it's it's interesting to sort of when you have conditions that are coming up with a slightly different ideas about what democracy is trying to achieve and I think that is a useful diversity to have in the market. So yes, it's a it attention that cannot go away because it's sort of like creativity itself. So if that's good to go. >> I like that. And yeah, I have one more thought I thought of while you were speaking Alex there was that another thing that we mentioned in the report is this idea that public authorities are not the only market here that we're talking about and obviously they are a very big one but especially for new and emerging like companies and organizations that some of the people that we talked to their clients weren't just public authorities, they were educational organizations, NGOs, other people like that who may want different levels of creativity and you know and and space and freedom and that sort of thing and so some interesting stuff happening across this quite varied market. Okay, brilliant. I think we actually only have one minute left and so if you'll forgive me, I won't take another question and instead we'll just use the time to say thank you so much everybody for coming. We will be emailing both the the slides, the report and the recording of this around people and posting it on our website and social media and everything really appreciate your time and coming along and yeah, just really nice to be in this room and sharing this report. And really nice to know that it is going somewhere next week at this high level meeting. And brilliant questions, brilliant speakers. Thank you so much and hope you have a wonderful rest of your day and a lovely weekend. Thank you. Thank you.