CODE Europe

Co-deciding Europe: Civic Tech for Good Governance and Active Citizenship (CODE Europe)

CODE Europe is both a transnational experimentation of e-democracy platforms for the co-creation of policies and a research project on e-participation. The aim will mainly be three-fold: (1) to allow citizens to co-produce solutions for Europe on the subject of ‘air quality’ through the method of crowdsourcing legislation in five different countries, (2) to implement a Digital Dashboard for social listening in order to gather online opinions on the issue of ‘air quality’, (3) to develop a universally applicable methodology for assessment of e-participation experiences and ethical guidelines for social listening. The success of the crowdsourcing pilots and the social listening will be evaluated through the assessment methodologies based on clearly defined criteria and indicators.

Description
Timeframe
What does ECAS do?

The project outputs – 5 crowdsourcing pilots and Digital Dashboard findings – will provide evidence-based argumentation of the need to mainstream methods of digital democracy in decision-making process at all levels and will feed the citizens’ input to the EU legislative process on ‘air quality’. The assessment frameworks for e-participation and social listening guideline will allow objective comparison of the impact of e-participation projects across time and geographical space ensuring systematic and impactful knowledge-sharing, exchange of good practices and capacity building.

The project will work with academia and research institutes for the development of the methodologies to be tested in the action part of the project. Civic tech and digital democracy practitioners will implement the crowdsourcing pilots and will assist in their assessment. Authorities at local level will be involved and will acquire knowledge about the methods of co-deciding with citizens.

This project is implemented in partnership with the following organisations:

Hungarian Academy of Science – Centre for Social Sciences, Hungary
European Environmental Bureau (EEB), Belgium
Citizens Foundation, Iceland
Scify, Greece
DAEM, Municipality of Athens, Greece
OneSource, Portugal
ManaBalss.lv, Latvia
ProInfo, Bulgaria
E-Governance Academy, Estonia
InePA, Slovenia
Centre for Public Policy Providus, Latvia

1 January 2021 – 31 December 2023

ECAS will act as the main Expertise Partner on citizen participation and crowdsourcing processes. The specific tasks for the projects will include:

Lead the setting up of the main crowdsourcing process for the project
Support the development of the E-Participation Assessment Framework
Monitor and assess the implementation of the project in terms of outcomes and outputs and contribute to the evaluation of the crowdsourcing and social listening on ‘air quality’
Map the interested stakeholders in all EEA beneficiary countries who will participate in the knowledge-sharing mechanism
Engage EU decision-makers in the follow-up of the results of the crowdsourcing and the social listening on air quality, especially in terms of advocating to mainstream methods of digital democracy in decision-making process
Support in the project communication and in the creation of an online course to ensure widespread knowledge of e-participation practices

CODE Europe Website Contact: Elisa Lironi