Across Europe and across the globe the number of use cases is growing for Decidim, the eParticipation software developed as open source by the city of Barcelona. Mexico City, for example, recently began to use Decidim, calling on its citizens to propose, debate, vote and decide on local projects and proposals that affect their lives.
The tool is even gaining traction in companies, Decidim developers told the European Commission’s Open Source Repository. One example is Decathlon, a French multinational sportswear company, which used Decidim to get feedback from customers, athletes, and neighbours for its plans to renovate its headquarters in Villeneuve-d’Ascq.
“We know of 159 projects that use Decidim,” says Andrés Lucena, one of the Decidim contributors. Since the software is open source, those who download and use the application are under no obligation to report back to the authors.
Development of Decidim (which is Catalan for ‘We decide’) started in September 2016.
DecidimFest 19
The city of Barcelona is organising a conference on Decidim - DecidimFest 19 - which will take place from 29 to 31 October. Speakers include Katja Henttonnen, working on the use of Decidim in the city of Helsinki (Finland), and Mauro Forte, from the city of Naples (Italy), Óscar Pretel Ramírez, a former advisor for the city of Zaragoza (Spain), and Paula Forteza, member of the French parliament.
According to a blog re-posted on the Decidim website, the software compares well with Consul, a similar project whose development started in Madrid a few months before that of Decidim. Consul now counts 130 institutions in 33 countries among its users.
Both projects are published under the GNU Affero General Public Licence (v3).
More information:
Decidim conference
Decidim (on GitHub)
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