Decidim Use

By Sawyer, Anand, and Ankhil

Introduction to Decidim

Decidim is a platform that allows people to collectively share ideas and concepts in a certain space. Users can create proposals, vote, debate, and much more, all with complete transparency and free use. Any organization, city, or group can create their own Decidim page, which is where users come together to contribute ideas and make decisions.

How to Create an Account

To create an account, you must be on the Decidim instance of an existing organization. Go to https://decidim.novawebdevelopment.org/ and follow the steps to sign up.

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User Interface and Basic Uses

Users can see all of the public components of a page without an account; however, to participate and interact they must have an account. From the home page, users can see active processes and assemblies. An assembly is a group of components that a collective of people can participate with. A process is similar to an assembly except that it has a timeframe with varying steps. When an assembly or process is selected, users will have the opportunity to interact with whichever components they would like.

Components of a Decidim page

There are 7 main components:

• Proposals- users have a free space to create and publish proposals, support each others proposals, and comment. Proposals can be accepted, rejected, or voted on in the future.
• Surveys- users can vote on various topics, with multiple answer choices or free response answers
• Blogs- blogs can be posted by an admin and openly discussed
• Debates- users can create debates about any topic and discuss, comment, and “like” debate posts
• Meetings- When a meeting is set up by an admin, users can see details about it, such as location, time, or if it is online
• Pages- essentially an article or information page posted by admins with lots of information
• Budgets- Admins set a total budget and add all possible budget components, then users select all of the budget components they want and vote on their suggestions.

Admin Usage

• System admin: Users that can manage organizations in Decidim
• Admins: Users that can manage a single organization in Decidim
• Participatory process admins: Users that can manage a single participatory process in an organization in Decidim

There is a separate dashboard for admins where they can:

• Configure a participatory process
• Activate a consultation and receiving votes
• Moderating the platform
• Managing associated legal texts (as the privacy policy)
• Managing authorization from the administrators
• Monitoring and verifying organizations

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Admin pages

Processes

Assemblies

Components within an assembly

How Can Small Business or Organization Use Decidim

Any group can freely establish and configure its own platform to adapt and fit their needs.

• Create action plans
• Consult the public
• Manage a community
• Organize participatory budgets

How Should Governments Use Decidim

-Barcelona, Helinski, are major cities who have already adopted Decidim

-Both have created the opportunity for citizen proposals to be heard. However, Barcelona allows proposals throughout the year, while Helinski only allows new proposals for a select amount of days in October and uses the rest of the year to vote on and figure out how to best implement the proposals if they are approved.

-Governments should use Barcelona’s model. The world is always changing so citizens should always be able to create new proposals.

-Citizens should also be able to have control of the proposals throughout. They should be involved in the plans for implementation and the amendments of passed proposals.

-There should be little to none restrictions on budgeting that something may require.

OmaStadi (Helsinki Decidim)

Decidim Barcelona

The People’s Money (NYC Usage of Decidim)

How Can We Use Decidim

-Proposals: With the proposals tool, people can create longer plans that others can comment on or make amendments to

-Meetings: We can use meeting to show the location and time of in-person meetings. We can also implement Jitsi or BigBlueButton into the meeting page for easier access to online meetings

-Debates/Blogs: We can use this as a place to chat and create different channels based on topic

-Budgets: We can use this to vote on a budget with a shopping cart-like interface

Budget

Proposal

Meetings

Proposals