On 19 September 2023, on the occasion of the International Democracy Day, ECAS and Smarter Together held a Democracy Lab on crowdsourcing for more robust EU policies and democracy at the EU level.
7 Speakers presented different forms of how crowdsourcing can contribute to better policy making, how citizens can be mobilised to help monitor the implementation of EU policies and how we can combine expert-base crowdsourcing with problem-solving and scenario planning.
An audience of around 40 policy-makers, CSOs and social innovators participated in the event and contributed actively to the debate, giving solutions on how to increase trust in policymaking with crowdsourcing and on how to encourage citizens to participate in crowdsourcing projects.
Crowdsourcing is a digital democracy method that mobilises the so-called’ wisdom of the crowd’ on public policy issues.
ECAS Executive Director Assya Kavrakova’s presentation focused on “The case for crowdsourcing EU legislation with citizens”, focusing on ECAS Projects on Crowdsourcing legislation with citizens, mainly CODE Europe and DIGIDEM projects, the first-ever transnational project on crowdsourcing legislation in 10 European cities in 10 Member States on “air quality”.
ECAS Executive Director reiterated the importance of the engagement method of crowdsourcing with citizens, pointing to its viable potential to reduce the gap between political elites and citizens through co-decision-making as it can increase both the legitimacy of the decisions taken and their ownership by citizens.
Read here our policy paper on “Crowdsourcing: The Citizens’ Highway to Policymaking in the EU” which provides a comprehensive understanding of the added value of the method of crowdsourcing of citizens’ opinions to the quality of our European democracy.
Presentation slides are available HERE.