from citizen data to the wisdom of the crowds: the case study of decide madrid

From citizen data to

the wisdom of crowdsAssessing the success of Decide Madrid

Pablo Aragón

Universitat Pompeu Fabra & Eurecat

TICTeC 2016 Conference, 27-28 April, Barcelona

D-CENT

Europe-wide project creating open, secure and privacy-aware tools for

direct democracy and economic empowerment.

develops the building blocks of an open, decentralised, privacy-

aware Digital Ecosystem

implements a distributed and standardised identity management giving

citizens control over their personal and social data

enable real-time collective democratic deliberation and decision

making, sharing of open data, and social digital currencies for the

common good

promote large-scale adoption of open standards, free software,

open data and open APIs


D-CENT

builds on Europe’s largest experiments in direct democracy:

Open Ministry crowdsourcing site linked into parliament in Finland

The e-democracy website Better Reykjavik in Iceland

Various platforms used by Spanish grassroots citizen coalitions.

helps social movements developing next generation of public,

federated, privacy-aware architectures and tools for direct

democracy and economic empowerment .

grows long-term alternatives to today’s highly centralized platforms and

power structures and promote …provide a positive vision of collective

intelligence in democracy in the XXI century.


Community engagement

and maximising

outreach

Blockchain ExperimentsSocio-economic

Impact & Evidence

Open standards

Tools

tools.dcentproject.eu

Large scale pilots

Barcelona, Madrid, Helsinki, Reykjavik

Multidisciplinary research

New citizen movements; economic models based on knowledge commons;

distributed identity systems; digital social currencies


Collaboration with the Area of Citizen

Participation, Transparency and Open

Government of the Madrid City Council.

Data Analysis of Decide Madrid in order to

monitor usage patterns, guide the

development of the platform and enhance

user experience in order to foster citizen

participation.

Open source technologies to enable the

integration of data visualization features.

Multidisciplinary Research


Open Government Portal of Madrid

In September 2015 the new City Council of Madrid launched the new Open

Government Portal of Madrid:

Participation - DECIDE MADRID

Space to discuss and decide the city model (debates, citizen

proposals, participatory budgets, collaborative laws, etc…).

Transparency

Space to review data related to the City Council management (name

and salary of the Mayor and councillors, government plans, contracts,

public agenda, etc…) and to request access to additional information.

Open Data

Open access to databases owned by the City Council of Madrid.


Decide Madrid

Debates

Discussion threads opened and

commented by any citizen.

Proposals

Petitions published by citizens to:

receive support from other

citizens through debates

run a public voting of the entire

population


BetaDemIC

Research network to provide feedback

into Decide Madrid:

Political Framework

Communication

Data Analysis (D-CENT project)

Growth Hacking Process

BetaDemIC Data Analysis

Diffusion Campaigns

Which quantitative indicators can measure the impact of the

November advertising campaign on the platform activity?

Community Structure

How can we characterize the structure of communities of users

around specific topics and/or profiles?

Proposal Lifecycle

Proposals were available since mid-September.

What is the performance of this core functionality?

User Lifecycle

How do users interact when they sign up?

Online Deliberation

Deliberation is one of the key concepts for Decide Madrid.

Which metrics can quantify the level of deliberation in the debates?


Diffusion Campaigns

Activity focused on

proposals rather

than on debates.

Citizens were

engaged in the

possibility of

achieving tangible

political goals.

Debates with

representatives

improved their

performance.

Debate

Comment to debate

Proposal

Comment to proposal


Community Structure

Well-connected

structure without well-

defined clusters of

users: users were not

strongly clustered

around preferences.

A cluster is partially

isolated from the main

component of the

network: a community

of trolls focused on

goliardic actions.


Community Structure

The co-tag network is

a very dense graph

but relevant tags are

clustered in:

Green nodes

mobility, health

and environment.

Red nodes

civil rights and

social services,

Blue nodes

neighbourhoods

of Madrid,


Proposals Lifecycle

Many of the most supported proposals were published in the first days of the platform

0-100 supports

101-1000 supports

>1000 supports


Users Lifecycle

Many users signed up

when new things

happen:

Debates

Proposals

Debates with

representatives

Diffusion campaign

brought many people

who published new

proposals rather than

commenting old ones.

Debate

Comment to debate

Proposal

Comment to proposal


Online Deliberation

Representation and Argumentation as prerequisites for Deliberation

Gonzalez-Bailon S., Kaltenbrunner A., Banchs R. E. (2010)

The Structure of Political Discussion Networks:

A Model for the Analysis of E-Deliberation,

Journal of Information Technology, 25, 2010, pp 230-243.


http://www.palgrave-journals.com/jit/index.html

Online Deliberation

Visualization Tool for Collective Awareness in a Platform of Citizen Proposals


Online Deliberation

h-index for quantifying Representation and Argumentation


Conclusions

Key principle: Citizens control their own data.

To turn citizen data into the Wisdom of the Crowds, citizens must also

own open, effective and user-friendly data visualization tools.

Join us!

Democracy Lab

Workshops, hackathons and open

sessions for democratic participation

(23-27 May, Medialab-Prado)

The Commons technology and the

right to a democratic city Conference

(27-28 May, Museo Reina Sofia)


More info at tools.centproject.eu


Thank you

for your timeWebsite: www.dcentproject.eu

Twitter: @dcentproject

Vimeo: vimeo.com/dcentproject

Slideshare: slideshare.net/dcentproject

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement no 610349.


from citizen data to the wisdom of the crowds: the case study of decide madrid

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