Civic Tech Reads of the Week #2
It’s Friday again! And you know what that means: we’ve made another selection of this week’s must-reads in the realm of digital democracy and civic tech. If you missed last week’s selection, there’s plenty of...
Civic Tech Reads of the Week #1
It’s Friday afternoon and — just making assumptions here — we bet you’re almost ready to leave the office. But don’t drop everything just yet, because we’ve gathered our favourite civic tech reads to wrap up...
FREE DOWNLOAD: The Beginner’s Guide To Digital Participation
Innovation and new technologies are changing the way governments foster participation and connect with their citizens. Citizens today have the whole world at their fingertips, and it has made them more empowered...
10 Easy ways to be a more engaged citizen
If you clicked this article and started reading, chances are you have the intention of being an engaged citizen and leaving a mark on your local community. But you probably feel it, too: it’s so easy to get...
Case Study: Grand Paris Sud and its triple mission
Grand Paris Sud (346.826 inhabitants), an inter-communal structure south of Paris, decided to pull up its sleeves and work towards progress. In the spirit of democracy, they chose to seek the opinions of those who...
‘Slacktivism’: Legitimate Action or Just Lazy Liking?
It sounds like a contradictio in terminis, like ‘sound of silence’ or ‘sensible Trump tweet.’ But ‘slacktivism’, a contraction of ‘activism’ and uh, ‘slacking’, has become a widespread phenomenon that urges us...
Recap: 5 Memorable E-Democracy Cases of 2018
The year is quickly drawing to a close. That brings along a sense of warmth and family, along with the pleasant prospect of lots of food and bubbles. But it’s also the perfect moment to reflect on the year that...
Why Citizen Initiatives Are Vital to Local Democracy: 4 Key Success Factors
Citizen initiatives are often presented as a potential antidote in the face of growing political disaffection in many parts of the world. However, all citizen initiatives differ from each other. We identified 4 key...
✨ Your CitizenLab participation platform is getting a facelift! ✨
At CitizenLab, we never stop improving our product. Based on our daily experience and continuous research with both customers and end users. After extensive research, we decided to give the homepage of each...
Idea Sourcing to Solve Housing Crisis in Vancouver: A Case Study
In tackling the challenges of affordable housing, the Canadian city of Vancouver put the decision-making power where it belongs: with its people. The 2,530,746 Vancouverites were encouraged to share their ideas on...
What if citizens set the city budgets?
It’s not a fantasy, it happens in an ever growing number of cities, both small and big. By 2015, citizens of over 1,500 cities worldwide were helping to decide on what their city budget should be spent. This is...
How to make digital participation inclusive?
Digital participation succeeds in approaching certain groups that are difficult or impossible to reach with traditional forms of participation. But does digital participation also exclude certain groups?...
Our Team Retreat to Rethink Citizen Engagement
We spent a fantastic three days together with the whole team in the woods around Durbuy, Belgium. Wait, why a team retreat in the first place? That was exactly the question we asked everyone on the team before...
7 conditions for a successful online engagement process
The reason why so many cities and municipalities use digital platforms? A decision-maker always strives for the greatest possible transparency, inclusiveness and responsiveness. This is not only the case for daily...
10 Must-Read Books about Digital Democracy
As winter’s coming, you might find some more time to grab a book and learn about our democracies in the digital age. We have curated our favourite list of recently released books exploring how the Internet...
Participatory budgeting: insights from more than 20 governments
As we are currently finalizing our platform’s new module for participatory budgeting, we researched this emerging domain extensively and listened to more than 20 city councils. From the Canadian Toronto (2.8...
‘Disco Sour’: a dystopian handbook for Internet democracy
What if our democracies would evolve to a Tinder-alike swipe system that promotes citizens to direct decision-makers? This all-too-imaginable techno-future makes the perfect playbook of 'Disco Sour'.
Internal organization for online citizen participation within your municipality: a practical guide
Cities and municipalities are daily looking for ways to involve their citizens in policy and decision making. Using online applications are a common practice. But how do you install such an application in your...
Introducing the smart groups: the easiest way to segment users
Our platform is getting smarter: one of our main concerns is that you should spend your time on what matters and leave some other tasks to the platform. Like manually creating groups of users for instance. That’s...
Introducing a new powerful role: projects moderators
We’re happy to announce a new feature that is going to change the way how CitizenLab is used inside your organisation. Do not longer only count on the admins to get most out of your projects. Welcome project...
Introducing invitations: an easier way to get users onboard
What use is a participatory tool if those you want to collaborate with are not using it? We decided to make it easier for you to ask them to join in by launching the invitations feature. You now have several ways...
What Makes a Good Online Citizen Participation Tool?
As you may have understood by now if you are a regular reader of the CitizenLab blog, enhancing your citizen engagement processes by adding a digital component is crucial. It is the answer to most of your questions...
CitizenLab launches its civic engagement platform in France
We are glad to finally share the news with you: CitizenLab is launching in France! Two French cities have chosen CitizenLab to help them in their online citizen participation processes: Rueil-Malmaison and...
![How to Reach 25% of Your Population at the Platform Launch [case study]](https://www.citizenlab.co/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/large_image-1.jpeg)
How to Reach 25% of Your Population at the Platform Launch [case study]
Marche-en-Famenne, a small town with 17.401 inhabitants in the Belgian province of Luxembourg, did a fantastic job at launching its CitizenLab participation platform. In less than one-week time, their e-democracy...
Launch Successful Online Participation Initiatives with the CitizenLab E-Participation Canvas
Launching a successful participation initiative online is not something that you should leave up to chance. It is essential that, even before the start of the citizen consultation, all the stakeholders sit around...
CitizenLab platform enables South Africans to share ideas with their new President
In the run up to the State of the Nation Address, the new South African president launched GovChat, a nationwide initiative to boost citizen engagement. Via the online platform, powered by the Belgian startup...
Vancouver Chose Citizenlab for its Smart City Strategy
The cities of Vancouver and Surrey, in Canada, are partnering together to submit a joint application for the Infrastructure Canada Smart Cities Challenge, a nationwide competition encouraging cities to share their...
Product Update January: Maps, Timelines & More!
We have an exciting product update to share with you! January has been a busy month for us. Let us walk you through the newest platform features. Platform updates 1) Maps One of the new methods to collect input...
Our Year in (P)review: Towards Most Impactful Citizen Participation
As we are stepping into the new year, it’s time for the CitizenLab team to look back at the past year and set the pace for the next year. Read below about our citizen participation realisations in 2017, and our...
“Citizens have one expertise: the one of their needs” – Interview with Stephen Boucher
During the Interconnectés Forum 2017 in Lyon (France), we met up with Stephen Boucher, professor at the Solvay Brussels School of Economics and Management of the Université Libre de Bruxelles and author of the book...
3 Creative Ways the New CitizenLab Cities Are Using Their Platforms
In the last three months, the CitizenLab team accompanied more than ten cities and municipalities in launching their online participation platform. With each of these platforms, we saw different examples to collect...
Here’s Why Flemings and Walloons Agree on the Priorities for Brussels
At the beginning of 2017, the Cabinet Citoyen & Burgerkabinet initiatives were launched by the Flemish Region and the Federation Wallonia-Brussels with one idea in mind: get a better hold of what citizens...
7 Unmissable Talks at Smart City Expo World Congress 2017
This year the Smart City Expo World Congress in Barcelona will be bigger than ever: more cities, more exhibitors, more speakers, and more inspiring talks by experts! The focus of this year is citizen empowerment,...
5 Indices & Frameworks to Evaluate E-participation
Source: Freepik Below, we are listing 5 metrics, tools, solutions and frameworks which are useful to measure how governments are performing when it comes to implementing e-participation initiatives. This article is...
CitizenLab, Winner Solution for the Smart State Germany
From Left to Right: Benedikt Lahme, door2door; Gerhard Hammerschmid, Hertie School professor and myGovernment jury member; Thomas Balbach, CitizenLab; Tino Mittelmeier, Little Bird; Laila Oudray, Polyas;...
Arlon is launching its CitizenLab citizen platform
The City of Arlon decided to make citizen participation one of the main pillars of its policy strategy. It is way to enable participative democracy and to develop new projects in full transparency. CitizenLab was...
