 Well welcome everybody thank you for having made it here running from the previous session that we understood Ended a bit later. So we decided to Well, we have less time so we decided to have a different format for the session We will start with a short introduction We will leave the floor to the speakers and then we will open up the space for questions and interactive exchanges So can I invite everybody's in the back to maybe sit around the table if there are some free seats Available so good morning everybody and welcome. You've been here for a couple of days I do participating in the tic-tac forum or the integrity forum that is happening at are happening at the moment Starting with introducing ourselves. My name is Barbara Baldy and I lead the work on digital government and open data at the OCD and my colleague Alessandro Bellantone was the head of the open government work at the OCD And I think the fact that we are organizing the session together is a little bit a testimony of the approach that we would like to take at the OCD Which is Overcoming a little bit the silo approach we see in some countries Leading to digital government strategies open data strategies open government strategies and policies initiatives that are Disconnected and also we would like to move a little bit beyond the hype of thinking that all the new opportunities and tools that we have available Provide automatically the way for having more collaborative democracy meaning more integration of users needs and Opinions in the way with design policies with design services and we bring value to all our citizens So a little bit the discussion we would like to have with you here today is yes Let's recognize that is an age where we have new opportunities, but let's also see if this is really happening Or not so if this digital and era is actually bringing our governments closer to the society And these I leave the floor to Ale. That's the same Good afternoon As Barbara said one of the One of the tasks that the open government unit at the OCD has given to itself is in fact that of going to countries that are already pretty active in the fields of Participatory democracy, especially in how new technologies is informing These practices and go there and test whether the principles of democracy Inclusiveness and participation are in fact upheld in the in the in the way this these practices are shaped And what we are seeing more and more is in fact that we have a lot of isolated success stories that are very Inspiring and that are even successful sometimes not all the time But this is not yet being transformed in the new way democracy works At the local level maybe more than at the central level But we are we feel there's a sort of an experimentation kind of face that is being protected and and perhaps it's about time to stop this kind of Improvised approach and maybe transform this practice into institutionalized solid robust the methodologies that can allow Governments and and at all levels To really better include the voice and the views of all stakeholders in their policymaking cycles and in service delivery But in this session, we only have less than an hour But we'll try to be as concise as possible But also we would like to explore how this can happen and how this can affect the quality of policies and services And since we have great speakers with us I will leave at the floor to the speakers to share with us a little bit their first thoughts about the reality and our opportunities and challenges are actually being Connected at the moment starting with more who's a friend For those who don't know more I will introduce her Underlining some of the few of the things that she's been doing in the past few years and she's responsible for more is a manager at data labs at 360 giving which is an initiative that aims to Basically Help governments to have more evidence-based impactful and strategic approaches And that's also very complimentary to the other Head that brings her here today Which is being the founder of open heroines Which has the mission to give us visible platform for women to express their thoughts ideas and critique But more has also been extremely active in the open data community and she has very critical Constructive thoughts so maybe you can share some of your ideas and experiences on some of the open questions That we put on the table more Hi, everybody So I'm working with the philanthropic sectors with governments and with civil society and what I learned in the past few years it's that it's all come to design and unfortunately Government and civil society do not have all the capacity to understand design or to run design sessions So when we're speaking about how to be more collaborative how to be more Democratic and how to create better processes. We need to look at these designs But I think in reality we don't even when we look at our technologies and even though it's Something that we see is in the open data movement at least like this discussions of like starting to choose a center design and how to implement it In reality, it's little to be done And I actually can't really blame government for not doing it It's something that they're not used to do when thinking about these processes in tech and collaboration They have like old-fashioned waterfall designs that used to work in the past, but do not work now and to be fair Sometimes they still work for government because they can keep doing their work forever And why do I think design because if we do want to basically understand how these processes work? We need to look at intersectionality. We need to look at gender. We need to look at age We need to look at location and we need to look at all of them together What helps for women in their 30s probably will not help to women in their 60s Sometimes it is, sometimes it doesn't, but most of our design processes in government are not done by this intersectionality They're usually done as population and as Caroline Carito Perez wrote in our new book That I recommend to read and to be critical about the gender data gap The we actually the invisible women exactly We usually when we design we design thinking of a person and a person usually in 95% of the cases will be a man and it will be a very In a man in good health, let's say that so we don't look at disabilities We don't look at other Proportions of body we don't look at other proportions on language as well language is really important We're coming to speak to people so it's not only the technology itself is what we write on that technology and Sometimes because of all the hype as Barbara said we are lacking these languages And our country's becoming more diverse and speaking more and more languages even though some people don't want that So it's really important to understand how to design that and not necessarily how to also design a great ux Although user interface should be good and great to everybody But again, I don't know how to answer how to create this design to government and how to do it Like we know the data literacy is lacking So I'm pretty sure the design like literacy is lacking even more and I'm pretty sure that most governments will not have a user interface designer or UX designer on board So we need to look also in that and lastly If we want to make people to feel like they can speak they need to feel that their voices heard But there's nothing will happen to them We need to design safe spaces to create them and we are lacking that at all even in our Nice initiative like the open government partnerships or others It's really hard sometimes to voice to feel like you can voice I voice all the time because I'm very rude and I'm liking it But other people but other people will not feel comfortable with it specifically women So we need to make sure that when women do voice expert like voice They're concerned they're being heard and they're not being bullied luckily never happened to me But a lot of other women that I speak to did happen to them And this is the reason why they don't speak and I don't know how we create this mechanism with thank government to make it Happen but what usually happen when you do speak to government erase this concern is that they become more in the defensive And this is something that I don't think tech can help how to make people to understand that this is not a critique This is feedback and how to get to speak again without feeling on the defense because at the end of the day and I work In my home country as well. I work with many Public officials and they always like to hear the pat on the back and how they done well and every time we tell them That something went wrong after that they shutting off completely men and women So we need to make sure that when they do hear this feedback They gather this feedback and understanding and I don't know yet how to create it within a machine That will make this feedback heard in a nicer way. So at the end of the day Yes, that is really nice, but we need to look at all of this like human Design that we need to think about how to create this feedback and actually make people feel safe listen And actually part of the process by being designed because we can ever design to the whole population. So let's Think how we like tackle one population at a time or one population that it's relevant for the topic and how we can actually move Well, thank you So no better speaker on this than Claudia Shfalis who was now I can probably say a colleague of ours She's a member of the open government team But Claudia before joining the OCD has been working on deliberative processes for quite some time And she's the author of the book the people's verdict adding informed citizens voices to public decision-making Claudia some thoughts you can share with us Great, yes, thanks very much And I think what I'm about to say really follows nicely what Miriam was just talking about Because the kind of overarching question of how we we framed the session and that I was thinking about when preparing these notes was How do we involve everyday people from all walks of life? Directly in policymaking But in such a way that actually allows them to give a constructive and an informed point of view and input into public decision-making So those two aspects are really key and often we get top of mind opinions Or we're asking not very representative groups of people what they think about things But there is ever-increasing evidence that through using these longer form deliberative processes like citizens assemblies For instance, and we're able to actually try and counter those two parts So breaking apart that that question there are two parts of it first How do we involve everyday people in into? Participation so there are two elements to that the first is that it actually has to be a meaningful opportunity To change things. I think we all have an innate sense of when our time is being wasted But when we know that what we're going to devote maybe a few a few weekends to Will actually have a direct impact on one of the policies that's affecting our lives our community There's like overwhelming evidence that people are more than willing to actually give up that time when they're asked to do So so the first is actually having that meaningful opportunity the second Is through through sortition or random selection? Sometimes this is called a civic lottery and this means that you really give everybody an equal opportunity to be selected in the first place It means it often comes in the form of everybody or not everybody It's usually around 10 to 30,000 people will receive a letter from their mayor or their minister or a public authority Inviting them to participate in this citizens assembly on Whatever local issue or it could be a national issue Will you give up four or five weekends of your time to help give us recommendations? Which we will then act upon so through combining those two things you still end up with some sort of self-selection bias So you still have the people who are more likely to participate which tend to be men Who are white and well off and well educated? And and there's a lot of research with facts that up, but when you combine it with the meaningful You know when it's an invite from someone who actually has authority You also get the people who have never gone to a town hall meeting who have never voted who have never participated in any other way So you do end up actually reaching everyday people from all walks of life and being able to bring them together So that's what the one aspect and then the second aspect is how How do you engage people in a way that actually allows them to give an informed? Perspective rather than just what they think off the top of their minds about something and here That's where you actually need to give the time and the resources to allow people to deliberate I mean deliberation when you when you look at the definition. It means long and careful discussion It implies that it's actually it's the best arguments that went out rather than just the loudest voices or the most money behind something or or the biggest push behind coming from from that sense and So a lot of the deliberative processes that take place They people meet for four or five six weekends over numerous months Because that's that's the only way you can get to grips a really complex issue to hear from lots of experts to Read about it to also have time in between those meetings to talk to your family to your friends to your colleagues But what you're up to and also feed their opinions in Also, a lot of these processes tend to combine Be combined with other forms of engagement So for instance in between in the middle of these meetings There might be a public town hall where the participants of the randomly selected assembly will answer questions We'll also get feedback from the wider public which they then bring into the rest of their deliberations and And then the last element of that which is important is that these are moderated discussions, which mean that It's not just the people who feel the most comfortable who end up dominated the discussions because there's someone there who facilitates those discussions and make sure that everybody really has an equal chance to speak and to have their voice reflected in and And and so the combination of these two things really allows that to happen And we've heard one example of how this is being done in reality, which is about to kick off in in the UK But it's been a long time that in some countries I mean I most familiar with the research that I've done in Canada and Australia where it's been about a decade that Governments at all levels of governance local regional state provincial and national Have used the randomly selected assemblies to help help them solve big and important issues like developing National strategies to tackle obesity to 30 year infrastructure investment plans Developing new housing legislation. So really big issues That they've been done on and one one of the more interesting developments That's been happening is something which Alessandro touched on in his introductory remarks that it's moving from being just Away from being just these one-off ad hoc initiatives to being institutionalized as a normal way of doing things in some places So just three weeks ago in the German speaking region of Belgium The Parliament's there has now put in place a randomly selected citizens council Which is 24 people who will actually have an agenda setting power They will decide on what are the one two or three issues every year that will go to a randomly selected Citizens assembly who will have three months at least to tackle and give recommendations to the parliament on that issue So it's a it's really Starting to change the infrastructure of our democracies and bringing people into the picture in a way that Compliments our representative institutions, but gives them more power Thank you very much. I think this morning. We had a session on the use of big data for supporting anti-corruption efforts and policies and I think one of the clear messages that came from the from the panelists, but also from the participants was Make it democratic if you use data to show, you know Decisions make it possible for the common people the average person to actually understand use and interact And I think so that's a very common message that brings me to the last panelist who's been working for quite some time on Issues that are cross-cutting between the digital discourse and narrative and the open government discourse and narrative Amanda Clark She's assistant professor at the School of Public Policy and Administration at Calton University and Amanda 2019 launched the book opening the government of Canada the federal bureaucracy in the digital age Which precisely looks at the response of government to new opportunities like social media crowd sourcing open data User-centered design. So how can we make sure that as the government matures in its capacity to be Ready to take up the opportunities of digital age doesn't forget all these key issues that are those that remain Relevant to make all these efforts Both purposeful and useful for everybody Great, thank you, and I'll thank the others for their Interventions as well. So I mean I thought what I'd use my five minutes for is is to just return to the question of you know What we know from research so far and what I've seen in my own work on How to generate more inclusive policymaking which is really the focus of this whole session So I have five quick points to make The first I think is that in some of these return to basics, right? They're sort of technology neutral and we can find a long history of research on citizen engagement that would support these findings The first is I think to really be clear about what your goal is So is your goal to use engagement to give more political legitimacy or a democratic license to government policy? Decisions or is it to tap expertise or is it both? And I think that will really shape how inclusive you need to be because it shapes the question of you know Well, how many stakeholders do I need around that table? I mean I've spoken to civil servants who say a truly And helpful form of engagement on this policy would mean that I actually bring in like the six experts on this topic Or the seven industry groups that work on this which is different from a process where you would say we want to bring in a Representative cross-section of citizens and so I think being clear about what your objective is Is it legitimacy or expertise or both can be helpful? The second thing I think that's useful to remember is to not assume the availability and willingness of Citizens to participate in some of these processes, which is one of the big assumptions that I think we we all fall into We're all here because we're excited about democracy and government We're also of a certain level of education We have certain resources that have enabled us to have the time to spend a few days at a civic tech conference in Paris But I think when we talk about broad-based participation and in particular bringing in some of those more marginalized typically Kind of ignored voices. We're talking about people where you know participating in a Deliberative exercise over six weekends is probably not an option So how do we accommodate that question of resources and time and just sheer interest? You know, are we assuming that citizens actually want to be participating to the extent? We assume we do when we push for things like digital democracy or broad-based deliberative reforms for the policymaking process Think another point is being careful about assuming knowledge. This is another sort of conceit of the Open policymaking movement is I mean, I think on the one hand policy makers often Discount the everyday lived experience and knowledge of those on the ground who aren't from typical sort of You know sources of expertise So We have to challenge that stereotype But also I think you know, we've seen from certain engagement processes that aren't well designed that citizens often ask for things that are not actually good with them or that when we're simply aggregating Individual interests we can get into situations of tyranny of the majority or you know Where we can't actually push forward progressive policies that on mass are not popular Canada's pushing forward a carbon tax right now It has a carbon tax rather if you were to pull every citizen and put it through a referendum I don't think we have a carbon tax yet. We know that I want to tackle climate change So it's a political perspective, but I'm happy that we're putting forward progressive policies in that regard So I also think we want to be honest with ourselves about you know Like what happens when we engage on some of these more contentious policy issues where they involve people suffering potentially individual costs for greater collective good The fourth point is around, you know, where does digital come in to all of this My experience is that online tools are like for a lot of the policy making open policy making the governments are leading are not Necessarily that helpful in many cases what they tend to do is scale up the engagement to a degree that is not actually useful I'm happy to have that view challenged I think there's creative ways to use tools obviously to tap into perspectives But when you get into these very qualitative values-based debates Those are hard to handle in an online space where you've got many many participants And then the last point I'd make is just that I think we have to be careful here about drawing a distinction between Engagement on policy making on policy decisions that are happening earlier in the policy process So where we're identifying policy problems to address different policy tools or objectives that we want to achieve Versus engaging the public on service design Because by the time you get to the service design or the program design a lot of those earlier decisions are already made the actual Values-based questions about what we want our government to do how we want our resources to be expended By the time you get to the service It's like how do we make it work well at the point of transaction and that's where I think most governments are most Enthusiastic right now I mean I love your point that government like anybody don't like giving up power and when you engage citizens earlier in the Values-based conversations or where you're discussing how we want taxes to be collected or not and how we want them to be expend expended Governments are obviously more hesitant to have those kinds of conversations But when it's engaging citizens at the point of transaction, it's an easy sell to administrators because that's a way to Reduce the cost of government. So, you know, I think we have to be Careful about saying that the move to user-centered government is about more democratic government because I don't think it is I can think of a number of governments right now in Canada that are investing heavily in digital teams to do amazing user-centered design While at the back end they're cutting all the services that those websites produce you can have the example I like that I was discussing earlier with with somebody from French government working on the digital team was You know our Ontario government has a beautiful user-centered design interface for applying for student loans at the same time That government has just cut the student loans program So it's all well and good to tell me it's a user-centered process But my user need as a low-income student would be better loans and the whizzy website is like lipstick on a pig So I think there's a risk that the more we invest in user-centered design As opposed to thinking as well about engaging citizens on values and preferences We actually run the risk of really disenchanting citizens in a sense and that's something that I'd love to talk about today Thank you I think it's very important to remember how different processes might lead to different types of engagement and for what purpose because I Agree with you that much of the discussion and Alan I talk often about this is around the service delivery The service design and the policy making which implies, you know Sharing values and opening up the ideas around values early on in the process It's something that in the narrative that sells is much less present. Well, thank you very much for having made that important point I would like now to leave the floor for questions interactions comments from the floor. Maybe keep it short and clear And if it is directed to one of the panelists, please Indicate the person and maybe you can introduce yourself Can you summarize the answer the question before you answer because it's not recorded We can take I think we have one here and one there So more Can use the microphone you have the advantage of everyone So more mentions and sort of being the panel game The process more inclusive And in the UK, there's obvious section that are specifically by voting. So we've got a great teams You've got prisoners the section There's obstacles that aren't necessarily legal but homeless people have a lot of obstacles So when you say about sortition being used to ensure that the Citizens assemblies are representative Is it a case of Increase the inclusion by making it a requirement that the government specifically and Visibly exclude people by virtue of legislation such as with prisoners Rather than or is One question there My question unsurprisingly is about the use of technology in this like citizens assemblies I was wondering I take Amanda's point very seriously that there's no Value in jumping to the conclusion that you're going to add to a process by adding on a digital element Um, so I wonder if there are any examples Either in your experience or maybe for years of really good use of the two in conjunction My own early speculation is maybe that there's some value in story time around so sortition is a very nerdy word But it's very well established in the context of juries And one of the reasons for that is we have a very culturally embedded concept of how a jury works There are plays and novels and films about how the jury works We don't really have that in the sense with some of these Democratic Okay, so there are a number of questions about the innovation democracy program, so I'll try and answer them all together Um, you asked what issues the citizens assemblies will be covering and if they were any they were excluded Um, I can't really answer that because we haven't decided which local authorities we're going to be working with yet But It's the the issues they can cover or anything that the local authority has jurisdiction over so that could be a little transport policies could be waste management could be tackling hate crime community cohesion It could be inclusive growth. It could be anything that that local authority can control And can have a policy on and can do something about We can have the citizens assembly on and what government is saying is that we aren't going to dictate that We don't have any preferences. It has to be what matters to local people and what matters to the local authority in terms of its priority Having said that there was one issue that we had to exclude Um that we can't cover anything to do with housing and planning um because we have such severe housing targets that um Essentially the government was very worried that we might do it may reverse a decision that has taken in a through a quasi judicial process Which is the planning process in the uk So we actually could we had to kind of steer clear of anything that could um get in the way of that judicial system or quasi judicial system essentially so we had to exclude that um What we asked when we asked um local authorities to bid to be part of the program We asked them to to demonstrate for the issue that they were proposing to us that they wanted to cover Was one that was a priority issue for their local communities and that they were going to have to deal with kind of in the coming months and years so So the question whether citizens will be involved in choosing the topics No, but that's partly a timing issue Um, but what we've asked the local authorities to prove that when they said we want to work on X issue they had to approve to us why they know that's a priority for citizens So it might have come out of surveys they've done It might have come out of protests that have happened in the local area So they know this is something people care about So it isn't just a random thing that the local authority thinks is uncontroversial and easy. It has to be something that is of importance um You asked whether the decisions are binding on the local authorities Uh in the first iteration of the program Yes, they were and then I spoke to some local authorities and said so if we made these citizen assemblies binding on you Are you up for it? They're like no, no, that's never going to happen They were never going to get their leader and their chief executives the political and the executive leadership to Um Buy into this process if we were basically saying before the process has even started you have to commit to delivering what comes out so We kind of retracted a little bit on that and said Okay, it doesn't have to be binding on you But you need to respond to every recommendation that comes out of the citizens assembly And there has to be a presumption in favor of delivering it And if you're not going to deliver it You have to stand up and explain loudly and publicly and transparently exactly why not because people are going to want to know Because what we we know from previous citizens assemblies that have happened around the world is that what comes out of them are really sensible Recommendations there should be no reason given all the context and the constraints The citizens assembly members will know about exactly the same constraints the local authority would face that um There is no reason why they shouldn't come out with really sensible recommendations that local authorities should put into practice and the last question was about um Whether the citizens assembly make up the membership um if that's inclusive of everybody Or does it exclude in the same way that the voting system excludes people The answer is it's not going to be perfect No, it can't be partly for prisoners and you actually have to be in the room so You're kind of excluded if you can't get to the meeting room because you're in prison. That's partly an issue but also the What what we're trying to do though is make it as inclusive as possible So we're not using the electoral roles as the um database to which we will um randomly select because those In some areas exclude up to 20 percent of people Not because they aren't eligible to vote just because certain community groups certain groups don't actually register to vote and we don't want to exclude them So the database that we will use is the post office register Which in the uk is the most comprehensive register of addresses and households in the country So it doesn't exclude people who are homeless. I'm sorry. It does exclude people who are homeless It will include somebody who basically has no fixed vote So it's not perfect, but it's as good as we can do given the imperfect system That's question. Yeah, so I had the question of uh, how to how Like what by what mechanisms should governments try to engage citizens earlier on on policy work And I think there, you know, I liked how uh, james anderson put it this morning Or at lunchtime, which was basically, you know, there's no one vehicle I think you have to decide which instrument of participation makes sense for the issue at hand And I think in particular given your objective So if your goal is to produce more robust policy making Or you know better policy responses, then it might mean that you literally do just need to get on the phone with a group of scientific experts or International, you know an international meeting of other governments who dealt with this and see what worked in their context If the goal is to raise trust Amongst the citizenry on a contentious policy issue and get sort of democratic license to innovate in that space Then you're probably talking about something like a citizens assembly or more of a deliberative forum If the goal is education, then I think something like participatory budgeting might make sense Where you know, I think one of the outcomes of that sort of an exercise is citizens understanding The hard trade-offs that governments have to make So it takes a lot of kind of front-end design Work in deciding which instrument of engagement to use in the first place Which is why I'm always concerned when I see governments who tend to just do sort of A consultation like they throw up a white paper or whatever and they say give us your feedback And that gets you know, it kind of is the default form of engagement. I mean that's pretty thin and Probably is appropriate for many problems And I think often isn't even done With a with the department or the policy shop deciding in the first place what their goal was so That's some of the work. I'd like to see Happen more is and then I think post facto some evaluation of whether you actually achieve that objective And this I'd maybe throw out at the other panelists here is you know, to what extent from your research and work Have you found that Things like citizens assemblies or deliberative democracy achieve those outcomes So do we know that they lead to Do they grow citizens levels of trust in the state post facto? Do they see that the decision is more legitimate? Is it just those who immediately participated in the assembly or in the deliberative democracy? Exercise or do they is there a spillover effect where they talk to their social networks about hey I've just paid it in this thing and I learned all this stuff from government and actually you know It's a hard job that they do maybe we should be a bit more empathetic Or it is a disillusion them because we know That sometimes when you see how the sausage is made in government you have less trust in those processes Which I think we also shouldn't discount. So I'll throw that out at you I mean, maybe I'll start from there and then I'll pick up the question earlier I'm loving all the metaphors And I'll pull it at her. What can I say? No, but I think you ask a really good question about what is the impact on those things And that's one area where there's clearly not enough research yet. There's a lot of anecdotal evidence So from doing interviews with participants or with the with the organizers of these assemblies, you know that It definitely has a big effect on the people who have participated in them on their sense of agency Their sense of efficacy So they they have a greater sense of being able to change things around them and have greater confidence in themselves So I don't think that's a minor thing to be discounted even though it's a small group of people And I think that's where the argument for Institutionalizing the use of them so that as many people as possible at least once in their lives have the opportunity to participate Comes in there has been some research done That's a bit more through in ireland. So I don't know how many people are familiar here, but in ireland there was a citizen's convention first and then a citizen's assembly So the latter one was about abortion and repealing the 8th amendment Which lasted for five months and it was this assembly which recommended to the the parliament that there should be a referendum on this issue Because in ireland you need to have a referendum to change the constitution And if if people vote to change it, this is the way it should be changed. And there There was a really high proportion of people in the wider public that knew that this happened That the researchers who did this work found that lots of this prompted more deliberative Interactions within wider society between people that changed the nature of the kinds of discussions people were having on such a really sensitive and controversial issue and that People who knew about the assembly were much more likely to vote in favor of the assembly's recommendations So afterwards we can't get any more wider conclusions than that But I think it's still something to suggest that it does have an impact And things and then very quickly so we can have maybe a couple more questions about combining tech with citizens assembly because it's also An excellent question Here the traditional way has been more to have websites and live streaming to have Transparency so that all of the material that experts show the citizens assembly are also available to the wider public There's nothing kind of hidden in the back room of this is what's going on No one knows what's happening. Um, I think the storytelling thing you point out is really interesting I think it's starting to happen. There's a short documentary about the irish citizens assembly I just mentioned called when citizens assemble which if you're interested in this I recommend you watch it's actually quite good And I think it was a good job of telling the story. There's a few interviews with people and so on but I will I think the most interesting development there is what's happening in Madrid Because I guess as a civic tech community you might be familiar with the platform to see the Madrid Which has been in place for for a little while now and it's a platform which Citizens can propose ideas which then can can be taken forward based on a number of votes And what they've been finding is that it tends to be the people with them People and organizations with the most money and resources who have their ideas actually go forward So to help counter this problem, they've now set up a permanent citizens council Which they've called the observatory of the city and this is 49 Residents which will be randomly selected to serve a one-year term And their role will be to deliberate on these proposals to also come up with their own proposals Which will then go to to the city council So it's a way of trying to counter this issue of the loudest voices Dominating everything to actually give a more representative group of residents The time and space to deliberate and weigh the trade-offs of the proposals and then make recommendations Thank you. I would like to leave the floor to more if she has any comments or reply to some of the questions that were asked Yeah, no, I think that when We're looking just to answer Amanda when we're looking at user-centered design when we work with philanthropists We try to work with them not on their app But on the process itself like what is the user story of the like of the sector to try to help Not how to create an app for them to apply To this and it's really interesting working with philanthropists and user stories because all of a sudden they started to think of different points of news That they haven't thought before specifically tried to put it Even when you write a user story as a name of women or names of Migrant communities, etc to help them to go into this type of thinking and also make sure that they understand the biases of them Writing these user stories without having the research done before Um, so I agree with Amanda that like UX is really nice Not if the service that you like make is not good, but also there is a work Corpus of work that was done Almost a decade ago of a lower and element can with where they write about building with not for with Jim Anderson was mentioned today And I think we should all like always refer to it and read it and thinking about like different users of tech and different users of face-to-face interfaces and others in order to get people minds And from my experience right away from the Israeli government and also maybe the ogp NAP programs Is that a lot of the time the digital tools are used as open washing So we've done this like brilliant thing and we have like thousands of people saying and then nothing happened with what happened Because it just was online and they just pick up the stuff that is happening So as activists I point to you that if you see that also make sure that we are making sure that people know that it's open washing or Maybe we should call it deliberate washing or something else because this is like When government tried to get over to put numbers up and actually don't discuss of what was discussed in these platforms is massively damaging and it's happened over and over again and we see it actually in the open government partnership repeatedly, so maybe there's Some lessons to learn there About how this works and what didn't work and I think the ogp trust fund is looking at that as well So something to think about Thank you so much more unfortunately because of the late start of the session Okay, so anyway, I think there are other engagements and commitments that the panelists have but thank you very much for the flexibility So at last to leave the floor to Ale for some final remarks Sorry, I don't want to be the one that's cut this short. I do have to be in another session But maybe that one is also late. So let's try to find a middle ground of Acceptable level of being late. No Listen, this is an amazing discussion. I would like to continue it and in fact we could and we can so that's what I will say Yeah, well online more with Barbara with me being open government in terms of more participatory processes So why am I saying this? There is an online component of it We are collecting good practices of what we call innovative citizen participation It's on our website if you go on the open government page of the ocd website There is a call for application. It's open until april 12th We are we are doing it with your gp by the way also because at ucd we believe a lot in The value of bad practices To learn from mistakes, but of course also the value of good practices to to build on what works It's open to governments, but also to civil society. So if you feel that you have done something In this field that is worth Mentioning let us know. It's a very short survey. We might get in touch with you for more information All these will end up in a report and the reason why we're doing this report is because Actually, we share all the questions that Amanda asked. We love academics. They ask all with the questions They know there's no answers And we are And we are so crazy to think that perhaps the role of organizations like ucd is to try to give some of these answers So this report The idea is to really see what works and what doesn't and and how to transform this sporadic anecdotal Kind of narrative into something more structured that can be implemented in a more Long-term kind of basis. So please give us your experiences We have already more than 100 which is we I think is amazing that you know 100 public officials took the time and gave us their experience And then also based on that we want to create An occasion to discuss and meet and together elaborate The ocd recommendations in this field at the moment. We call it network, but network is a more 1990s kind of concept So this will be multi-dimensions will be online. We want to meet So please get in touch with claudia. She's in charge of this if you want to be involved in this discussion I think ocd recommendations can be useful to shape Some of the actions that governments will take in the future. So you have an opportunity to help us Give the indication of where to go I didn't I hadn't heard before the word open washing a new pink washing but But in fact that was exactly what I wanted to say at the beginning We are here to you know ping point to our countries here. You are open washing So this is not really achieving what you want to we know. It's difficult. So we're not criticizing. We are helping the idea is to be Constructed and of course technology is the heart of the matter, but it's not the end of it So that's why we want to build on on this experience, but we want to use it to achieve the objectives and concept like Issues like at what point of the policy cycle opening up beginning during after Evaluation for example is very nicely done when it's participatory. It's almost never done together with the beneficiaries of a policy So there are advantages and disadvantages. What levels of government central versus local? What are the what issues what issues of course? What are the key stakeholders because we can talk about You know underrepresented stakeholders, but these are very different according to the policies according to how things could be homeless but You know can be other issues for other Sector so we have more questions than answers as I said But we do believe that the future goes in this direction And and also we believe that the future is in the ends of these two community the digital tech CV tech community and democracy activists participatory people So so that's why I'm so happy to be here with Barbara and with all of you and please do get in touch We want to work with you on these topics in the future and thank you to all the