On the 15th of December, D-CENT was showcased in London for an enthusiastic crowd of 200. The event, titled D-CENT Showcase and Opportunities for UK Digital Democracy was hosted by Nesta, UK innovation charity and D-CENT project coordinator. And D-CENT team was happy to be onstage to share the latest development on its tools and pilots. See full agenda here.
The D-CENT team was sharing key findings from recent work around direct democracy and digital currencies. To sum up, the project has published a new tools page, which collects D-CENT tools and pilots into one website.
Natalie Eskinazi from Thoughtworks explained how D-CENT tools are built on open source code and open standards, valuing privacy and security. They form a federated architecture, which means that they can be combined in many ways to support democratic processes.
Learn more about Objective8 (collaborative policy making tool), Stonecutter (common open authentication) and Mooncake (secure notifications engine) from the D-CENT tools page, with links to demos and Github code.
Piloting the tools
D-CENT also shared insights of our tools in action, meaning activities run in Barcelona, Reykjavik, Helsinki and Madrid. These large-scale experimentations have enabled more collaborative decision-making through mass-scale content sharing, deliberation and voting, and been widely adopted in their respective cities.
“We want to use tech to build a heartbeat between citizens and civil servants,” said Jaakko Korhonen from Open Knowledge Finland, when talking about the Finnish pilot.
D-CENT team from left: Francesca Bria (Nesta), Guðjón Idir (IMMI), Jaakko Korhonen (OKF), Natalie Eskinazi (Thoughtworks), Jaromil Rojo (Dyne.org), Pablo Aragon (Eurecat), Javier Toret (UOC).
Jaromil Rojo of Dyne.org shared the development of D-CENT Freecoin – a set of tools to let people run reward schemes that are transparent and auditable to other organisations.
Freecoin is made for participatory and democratic organisations who want to incentivise participation, unlike centralised banking databases. Freecoin aims to leverage the use of social digital currencies in a reliable, simple and resilient way.
Opportunities for UK Digital Democracy
After the D-CENT showcase, a panel of movers and shakers in the UK digital democracy scene took the floor. The speakers of the panel, chaired by Geoff Mulgan from Nesta, were Sym Roe, founder of Democracy Club, Andy Williamson, founder of Democratise and Democracy Space, Helen Milner, Chief Executive of the Tinder Foundation, and Will Perrin, from Indigo Trust, Talk about Local and NED Tinder Foundation. The panelists discussed the practicalities of applying similar approaches in UK cities and how to use digital technology to reinvigorate democracy and participation in the UK.
Event discussion and pics can be found from Twitter: #dcent
D-CENT offers digital tools for social movements, civic innovators and civil society groups for direct democracy and economic empowerment. It’s an open, decentralised and non-commercial alternative for the non-profit sector to organize its activities. D-CENT project is funded by the EU. Forum Virium Helsinki is one of its partners, responsible of the Finnish piloting and dissemination. http://dcentproject.eu