The human factor: helping governments tap into collective intelligence
Can natural language processing and machine learning technologies foster quicker political response to citizen views on digital democracy platforms? With the Nesta Collective Intelligence Grants Programme, this is...
Natural Language Processing at CitizenLab: how machine learning can transform citizen engagement projects.
This article has been written in close collaboration with the NLP experts at NLP Town, who supported us through our own NLP journey. Will robots take over the world? Probably not. However, NLP (or Natural Language...
Civic Tech Reads of the Week #10
This Friday, we’ve got even more reason to celebrate than usual. Not only is the weekend rolling around and is your beloved Reads of the Week selection in your inbox, but it’s our TENTH edition! A true...
Civic Tech Reads of the Week #9
The weekend is right around the corner, and that’s always a reason to be in a good mood. Well, let us add a little more joy to your day, because it’s time for our Reads of the Week! Every week, we hand-pick...
8 Steps to Effective Participatory Budgeting
Participatory budgets are a powerful tool for inclusive and accountable governance. They allow cities and towns to educate, engage, and empower their citizens along with strengthening their governance. This blog...
8 Civic Tech Newsletters to Keep Up With
If finding sizzling civic tech news online is silver, getting it sent directly to your inbox is definitely gold. Long live the civic tech thought-leaders that gather everything there is to know in the field, then...
Offline vs. Online participation: A Case Study of Mol & Temse
Citizen participation may be hot and happening right now, but it’s not a new phenomenon. Besides heading to the ballot box every few years, citizens have been showing up to town hall gatherings or collecting...
Civic Tech Reads of the Week #8
If you’re reading this, that means the weekend is almost here! Let’s dive right in, because like every week, we’ve hand-picked the hottest civic tech news for you. 1. “How Civic Tech can steer development and...
4 reasons why digital participation is easier than you think.
If you’re reading this post, chances are you’re probably already convinced that citizen participation is a good thing. However, what you might not be so convinced about is that involving citizens in decision-making...
Civic Tech Reads of the Week #7
What time is it? It’s not summertime quite yet, but something even better: time for our Reads of The Week! Every Friday, we share our weekly selection of interesting civic tech reads. If you missed some of our...
Civic tech reads of the week #6
Friday’s here! Another week has flown by, and more sizzling civic tech news has rolled off the (digital) presses. And that means it’s time for our selection of the hottest civic tech reads of the week! In our list...
Our 7 key takeaways from TICTec 2019
We came, we listened, we learned : here are our 7 key take-aways from the TICTec conference . TICTec, the conference focusing on Civic technology and digital democracy, is now in its 5th edition. We attended the...
Civic Tech Reads of the Week #5
It’s that time of the week again! Spend your Friday productively by diving into the depths of civic tech with us. And we’ve got quite the selection this week, ranging from the French gilets jaunes to the nature of...
Civic Tech Reads of the Week #4
A special birthday, a computer game and great news for our hearts — we’ve got a really interesting selection of must-reads for you this week! You know the drill by now: Friday stands for compelling and...
Civic Tech Reads of the Week #3
Another week has flown by and we’re back with our famous — we’re famous by now, aren’t we? — weekly list of must-reads! It’s time for your favourite updates from the world of digital participation, and this...
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...
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...
✨ 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...
