This document outlines Citizens Foundation's work developing participatory democracy software called Your Priorities. It summarizes how the software has been used in Iceland, Estonia, and the UK to give citizens a stronger voice in policymaking. The software allows citizens to submit and debate ideas, helps prioritize the best ideas, and facilitates connections between citizens and their representatives. Over 500,000 unique visitors have used the open source software since 2008. The presentation concludes by describing Citizens Foundation's vision for new participatory democracy tools called Active Citizen that integrate artificial intelligence and virtual/augmented reality to further increase citizen participation and influence.

1. Increased youth participation
through technology
Gunnar Grímsson - Robert Bjarnason - citizens.is
Istanbul May 2014

2. Citizens Foundation Vision
We believe that citizens need a strong voice
in policymaking, formal participation
in the political process with a persistent and
binding influence on the big issues.
citizens.is

3. Our work, 2008 - 2014

4. Your Priorities
● Give people real influence
● Find the best ideas to better your community and
the best arguments for and against those ideas
● Allow large groups to speak with one voice
and organise with ideas
● Open source eDemocracy software
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5. Your Priorities highlights
● 500.000 unique visitors since 2008,
over 250.000 in 2013
● Used in Estonia, UK, Iceland and elsewhere
● Your Priorities scales well, is easy to translate
and adapts easily to different scenarios
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6. Users can
● Submit their ideas
● Support or oppose ideas and points
● Debate ideas with points for and against
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7. Prioritization and debate
● The best ideas are chosen by the participants
● Help others with your debate points and become better
informed yourself in the process
● All ideas and best points for and
against them are visible at a glance
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8. Don’t argue, debate!
● Points for and against are in different columns
○ It’s hard to argue across columns
○ This encourages rational debate
○ And helps facilitate consensus
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Better Alamance

11. Better Reykjavík
● Born out of the 2008 economic crisis
● Non-partisan citizens initiative
● Opened a week before the local elections in Reykjavik
● Over 40% of voters participated
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12. Better Reykjavík
● Formal collaboration with the city of
Reykjavík started in October 2011
● 15 top ideas are processed by the city every
month, some are accepted, some denied
● Connects citizens and their representatives
and gives them influence on decision-making
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13. Statistics
● Over 70.000 people have participated
out of a population of 120.000
● 12.000 registered users have submitted over 3,300
ideas and over 5,500 points for and against
● 476 ideas have been approved
by the city of Reykjavík
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17. Interview with Kolla - 9 years old
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18. Better Neighborhoods budgeting
● Participatory budgeting to improve Reykjavik city
● Each voter has the same budget amount as the total
and has to choose which projects matter most to him
● Our voting interface helps citizens
understand the realities of budgeting
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19. Screenshot from authentication
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20. Screenshot from authentication
● A screenshot with a few projects chosen and some grayed out
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21. Placeholder
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● Needs photos from executed projects, collage
in one slide
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26. NHS - United Kingdom
● National Health Service is using Your
Priorities to connect with its customers
● Ideas which generate the most online discussion or have
the biggest national significance will be
further processed by the NHS board
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28. Rahvakogu - Estonian reforms
● After political scandals in Estonia in 2012, grassroots
organisations with official ties lead a law reform project
● Ideas were gathered through Your Priorities
that was installed and modified by Estonians
● Over 50.000 people took part and
submitted over 2000 proposals
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30. From Your Priorities to new laws
● The president of Estonia presented the top 18
ideas to the parliament
● As of March 2014, two of the ideas
have been adopted as Estonian law
○ Better support for small political parties
○ 1000 citizens can now send issues to
the parliament which must process themcitizens.is

31. You can make a difference
● We are looking for local partners everywhere
○ Activists, researchers, volunteers, you?
● If you want to improve democracy
then we want to work with you
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32. Democracy challenges

33. Participation and influence
● Less voting, especially young people
● Media and big money can have a big influence on outcome
of elections and referendums
● Over emphasis on voting, the yes/no process
● Globalisation has removed much power
from politicians and the people
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34. Different types of participation
● Many don’t believe that traditional voting
has much effect on society
● Participation outside of traditional democratic
channels
○ Protesting, working with NGOs,
on-line activism, volunteering
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35. Without participation
there is no democracy
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36. What is electronic democracy?
● Traditional democracy taken online
○ Same basics mostly apply but a lot of the specifics
are very different with new possibilities
● A new way to connect people together to
participate in democracy, politics and civic life
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37. Why electronic democracy?
● Our best hope for increasing general
democratic participation
● It’s easy to take part
● Young people are more likely to participate
● Our life has moved online in many
ways, so democracy will follow
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38. Citizens need empowerment
● We must provide tools that will help people to override
their apathy and start making real and lasting changes
● Citizens must be able to meet up, prioritize, plan and
carry through their most important issues
● The process must be easy and intuitive for everyone
● This is Active Citizen
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39. Active Citizen is three things
● Personal Artificial Intelligence for citizens that
helps you participate well with little time spent
● Powerful democracy software that can be accessed
on all devices, from voice control to 3D
● Events and protests that merge offline with online
and combine the best features from each
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40. We are being monitored
● Everything we do online is collected as data
● This data is used by big corporations and governments
to predict our behaviour and control what we see online
● We can not stop them but we can use
similar methods to regain our control
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41. Active Citizen, your AI friend
● Gives citizens access to powerful artificial intelligence
which looks after their democratic interests online
● Your AI democracy friend learns about
your interests, needs and opinions
○ Shows you what you want and need to see
● Increases participation by making it really
easy and also reduces time spent
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46. The protests problem
● Real life protests do not leave much
behind after the event
● There is little evolution of ideas
and vision after the protests
● Unfocused protests about many
issues are not effective
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47. Online actions have problems
● Actions have little impact on offline world
● You don’t meet the other people and there is
little solidarity amongst participants
● People participate momentarily and then forget
● Participation numbers are valued
much less than real life meetings
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48. Active Citizen 3D
● Brings people together in real time
virtual environments
● 3D universes of ideas that cluster together in content
and context sensitive patterns
● Groups share environments to create
multimedia presentations for ideas
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49. ● Backup screenshot of 3D
● 3 people protesting
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50. ● Backup screenshot of 3D
● 3 people protesting
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52. Active Citizen Real Events
● One click presence
○ 1.000 real life people and 100.000
online in a protest are hard to ignore
● Live data feeds between online and offline worlds
● Collect opinions, ideas and solutions
○ AI data retrieval, processing and presentation
○ Input, feedback and rating from participants
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53. Active Citizen - Why?
● Increase youth participation by merging e-democracy
with gaming elements and artificial intelligence
● Scalable UI from voice control to mobile to accessible
with HTML5 and 3D virtual reality at the top end
● For us, the people, to have the data and
tools we need to control our own lives
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54. Thank you
Róbert Bjarnason - robert@citizens.is
Gunnar Grímsson - gunnar@citizens.is