Co-Deciding Europe: Civic Tech for Good Governance and Active Citizenship

The growing use of technology has transformed democracy and participatory decision-making processes. Although policymakers are using e-tools to facilitate democratic processes, it remains difficult to assess the success of these tools, as there is currently no universally applicable methodology for evaluating e-participation experiences. Moreover, there are still no effective mechanisms for involving European Union citizens in the co-creation of political decisions.

The CODE Europe project was launched to test co-creation in policy-making and to develop a methodology for facilitating the e-participation experience. The CODE Europe project piloted crowdsourcing on air quality in ten European cities. We chose this topic because of its transnational nature and associated problems. It has been estimated to be responsible for more than 400.000 premature deaths each year in Europe.

In the project, eGA experts created the assessment framework for e-participation. The assessment framework first sets out the approach to e-participation and then provides generic guidelines for analysing e-participation cases and comparing their results. The framework can also be used as a tool for planning and implementing e-participation as the practical part of the framework has also a practical checklist: sample questions for in-depth analyses of e-participation cases.

Additionally, eGA team successfully conducted a crowdsourcing pilot in Tallinn and organised many advocacy and campaigning events.

Explore more in the overview of our communication activities.

eGA experts presented the problems and solutions on air quality submitted by citizens of Tallinn to the Council of the City of Tallinn, in June 2022 and also created the report on proposals of citizens of Tallinn and handed it over to the Tallinn City administration. Additionally  10 Policy Recommendations derived from the Crowdsourcing process was sent to all Estonian MEPs.

Based on the lessons learned from the CODE project eGA experts created a Guide for the impactful digital engagement of citizens.

The project’s lessons learned on crowdsourcing and engagement were shared with 57 Georgian and 31 Moldovan CSOs who are involved in environmental or democracy advocacy.

This project was funded by Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway through the EEA and Norway Grants Fund for Regional Cooperation.