The digital participatory process that fed into the French Climate Assembly

The online contributions from the wider public on the Decidim platform enriched the work of the in-person assembly

Participatory digital processes are increasingly being designed as a complementary component of representative deliberative processes like Citizens’ Assemblies. Near the outset of the French Citizens’ Convention on Climate (CCC), Open Source Politics (OSP) was commissioned to deploy the Decidim online platform to collect input from the broader public. This was then considered, among other evidence, by the Citizens’ Convention members.

The platform was organised according to the CCC’s six themes: mobility; food; housing; work and production; consumption; and cross-sectional contributions. Any citizen or group (NGO, firms, trade unions) could publish up to one idea per theme per phase. Unlike citizens, organisations had to follow a pre-defined format for their contributions. All inputs were then exported and treated through a mix of human and Natural Language Processing methods (using the software Iramuteq) to synthesise them. Throughout the participatory process, we produced three documents synthetising the online contributions. These were distributed to the 150 citizens during their working sessions and published online.

Three important choices for designing the online process and platform:

1) Choose quality over quantity

The success and impact of a digital participatory process is usually measured by the number of participants, votes, engagements, or entries on the platform. It’s rare for an institution to limit the number of contributions, or deactivate the possibility to vote or comment. Nonetheless, the CCC governance committee decided to limit the number of contributions published by platform users to one per theme, while comments and votes were deactivated. Why? It was important that the platform’s success was not defined by numbers, but instead by the quality of the content and its interaction with the face-to-face work led by the 150 citizens.

2) Prioritise the in-person exercise rather than digital participation

The CCC process could have simply resulted in a compilation of two final syntheses, one stemming from the online contributions and the other from the in-person citizens’ assembly, with no connection between them. However, sequencing is important when designing a process that combines a participatory element and representative deliberation. The online contributions were translated into intermediary syntheses to enrich the work of the in-person citizens’ assembly. The digital tool was a means to an end, not an end in itself.

3) Ensuring transparency as a core principle of the digital process

Randomly selecting 150 citizens and reuniting them every 2–3 weeks to discuss the challenges of climate change in the prospect of presenting a comprehensive agenda of measures to President Emmanuel Macron is an ambitious democratic exercise, to say the least.

Following the French National Debate, lessons were learnt about the requirements for organising a nation-wide representative deliberative process. Transparency, for instance, needs not only to be respected in regards to the selection method, the steps of the process, and the expected outcomes, but should also to be a core principle of the tool(s) used in the complementary digital process as well.

The two software used in the process (Decidim and Iramuteq) are open source, which means that any person is able to investigate and understand the algorithms used. This is crucial, particularly for producing the synthesis. Any tool that is used to prioritise or suggest areas for discussion, and hence influence the overall direction of a debate, must have its algorithm published and should be governed by democratic principles (cf. Decidim’s social contract).

Digital for deliberation beyond the CCC

The pandemic’s imposition of physical distancing has accelerated the use of digital and online tools for civic, professional, and personal uses. It sparked greater demand for online participatory practices so that policy makers could keep involving citizens in their decision making.

Recently, both the greater public awareness of the societal impacts that technology entails and the demand for greater participation could meet halfway in a potential Citizens’ Convention on Digital Transition. If this deliberative process does take place in the upcoming or following year, its design and governance will be crucial elements to consider.

Eloïse Gabadou is a Civic Tech Project Manager at Open Source Politics (OSP).

OSP is a Civic Tech company specialised in the deployment of open-source digital deliberation tools like Decidim and the design of all-scale online participatory processes. In the face of declining participation and trust in our representatives, OSP believes that participatory practices need to take on a more prominent place in our society. Not only in the political world, but also in the functioning of our companies, the governance of our associations and the conduct of our collective projects.

Are you a practitioner delivering a representative deliberative process fully or partially online? The OECD has put together this survey for practitioners about what they are doing, how, and why. Answers are publicly available from the moment they are submitted in this viewable Airtable database (except for the name, job title and email of the individual filling out the form).

This post is part of the Digital for Deliberation series. Read the other articles:

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We are opening a discussion on the use of digital tools for deliberative processes, in collaboration with our colleagues working on digital government and public sector innovation.

How can digital tools support deliberation? Join the conversation!

The series will focus on three overarching questions: (1) How can digital tools support representative deliberative processes? (2) What are the limits of using digital tools for representative deliberative processes? (3) In what other contexts could these learnings be applied?

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Understanding and measuring the influence of certain features on the quality of online text-based deliberations can help us make better design decisions.

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Digital solutions can complement real world participation — but mustn’t exclude

After public meetings can resume, digital participation will likely grow as a complement to offline events. This will broaden citizen engagement — but we have to be careful it doesn’t freeze people out.

Digital parliaments: Adapting democratic institutions to 21st century realities

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Reflections from government on the challenges of digital engagement by Niamh Webster.

Digital tools to open the judiciary: A perspective from Argentina

Pablo Hilaire writes that by promoting conscious uses of digital technologies in favour of open justice, we have learnt that to facilitate and promote deliberation and participation online, we need to put citizens at the centre, from the design to the collection of data and feedback.

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