(Image from: PeoplePowered.org)
People Powered, a global hub for participatory democracy, published its third edition of ratings of digital participation tools. This release marks the third time the organisation has rated the platforms, with this year’s list including 30 different platforms worldwide. With Czech Civic Tech tools included.
Which Civic Tech tool might be the right choice for your next participatory project? A global hub for participatory democracy People Powered, in which we are also proudly represented on a board of directors by our International Director Katya Petrikevich, just released their third edition of Ratings for Digital Participation Tools 2024. The Ratings are evaluating 30 digital participation tools from all around the world.
Among 30 evaluated tools, you can find well-known proprietary tools like CitizenLab, Make.org or Fluicity, as well as time-tested open-source platforms like Decidim, Consul, and Your Priorities. We are however excited to see that for a third year in a row, two platforms from our home country, Czech Republic, also made it to this prestigious list. The first one is the smart communication platform Munipolis, and the other one is the voting and participatory budgeting tool Decision 21. Congratulations to our local players!
Tools were evaluated based on publicly available information, user surveys as well as information from developers. Ratings are further divided into six categories, specifically platform cost, capacity requirements, features, accessibility, ethics and transparency and track record and reliability. In each category, the tools could receive a score between 1-100.
Compared to the 2023 ratings, there are only two categories of tools: Multipurpose and Specific. Also, some changes happened to the list of tools itself as five of the ones from the past year were removed due to lack of information or inactivity, while one new tool was added (Citizen OS). However, the main difference of this year’s iteration is that this year the ratings do not present an overall score in order to avoid misinterpretation of the ratings for ranking which platform is the best one.
See the detailed rankings here. If you are eager to learn more about digital participation platforms, do not miss People Powered Guide to Digital Platforms and stay tuned for the next edition of the Ratings where we’re going to be represented by our Head of Civic Tech Ervin Hausvater.
Do you want to learn more about Civic Tech and how to run a participatory project? Try our Participate Practically online course. Or do you need tailored help with integrating Civic Tech tools into your project? Reach out to us at info@participationfactory.com.