Digital democracy is not better or worse than the traditional one. It is an inevitable form of improving public life. Join us in making it better.

New technologies can empower those who actively participate in public life and engage those who are not there yet. Affecting and improving government’s decision is an important part of activities aimed at public interest. It also strengthens CSOs and other key players in creating socially responsible environment. What works the best for democracy is the synergy between smart society and decision makers.

Democracy as community

For us, democracy stands for cooperation between different stakeholders and citizens.

We want to bring networking and a collaborative spirit to the digital democracy cluster of DSI4EU. We want to bring knowledge about existing tools and initiatives in Europe (and beyond) to the whole DSI community, develop platforms for cooperation and fuel peer learning activities. We are using bottom-up approaches, supporting cross-sector cooperation and putting emphasis on popularising co-creation and replication methods. We also aim to increase engagement of public officials themselves - not only to respond better to societal needs but also to gather feedback on what kind of DSI will support their daily activities and improve public administration performance.

The aim of our peer learning activities is to popularise the idea of scaling digital initiatives which can improve the state of modern democracy. We will organise webinars and workshops to involve people wherever they are. We are holding two webinars on scaling civic tech/digital democracy projects - one to share examples and one to better understand lessons learnt. In particular, we’ll focus on practical aspects related to building organisational capacity, choosing tech solutions and maintaining tools. We will also share experiences on how to involve decision-makers in creating DSI and deliberate on the most effective ways to boost the impact of technology on authorities and secure democratic values.

Democracy as the clash of stakeholders

In terms of improving policies around digital democracy activities, we want to build a more sustainable organisational environment of civic tech initiatives, including funding opportunities and data accessibility. We will monitor the development of a recent proposal on amending the Directive on the Reuse of Public Sector Information and any other important development in the context of data accessibility.

We will address our findings to relevant decision and policymakers, as well as the donor community (the latter of which still does not properly realise the potential of civic tech). We need to focus more on long-term perspectives, as we see building digital democracy as a process rather than a product.

Democracy as cooperation

Therefore, we want to build comprehensive knowledge on the state of play of digital democracy innovations in Europe to identify effective processed and successful projects and their potential for replication.

ePaństwo Foundation is an active member of boards of TransparenCEE and Code for All Networks. Thanks to our International Advisory Board and other international projects we have also connections in other civic tech circles worldwide. We see our role as connector of various networks and circles, also in the terms of connecting Eastern and Western European organisations.

We want to inspire people with the idea of responsibility for their own country or municipality and give them knowledge and modern digital tools to take care of and improve them. Contact us at [email protected] and [email protected]