# Decidim Working Group: Participatory Processes at CfA

**URL:** <https://discourse.codeforamerica.org/t/decidim-working-group-participatory-processes-at-cfa/1050>\
**Category:** Tools\
**Tags:** decidim, notes\
**Created:** [February 9, 2021, 12:53am UTC](https://discourse.codeforamerica.org/t/decidim-working-group-participatory-processes-at-cfa/1050 "2021-02-09T00:53:24Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![elb](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex020/user_avatar/discourse.codeforamerica.org/elb/32/484_2.png) [@elb](https://discourse.codeforamerica.org/u/elb)\
**Post date:** [February 9, 2021, 12:53am UTC](https://discourse.codeforamerica.org/t/decidim-working-group-participatory-processes-at-cfa/1050/1 "2021-02-09T00:53:24Z")

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## Notes from Initial Working Group Meeting: 2/8/2021

- Participants: Arthur S, Melanie M, Ryan H, Em B

### Defining the process

- If it’s already in motion, something more simple like Consider.it
- What decidim does well is create a forum where people can make proposals
  - We’ve already gone through that process with theory of change
  - Start to think more just about the

- Going all-in on Decidim means we could be constrained by the software
  - Have a working document that outlines what we want as a distributed network

- Consider.it is good at comparing different options
  - But seeing all the profile pics on one end of a spectrum, it could also lead to a herd mentality

- What’s the first online deliberative activity we want to engage?
  - PAA was a good example

- Like the idea of having the network on a collaborative platform
- Participation challenges:
  - We’re not trying to recreate slack and messages
  - It’s so hard to get people to participate - different timelines
    - Really hard to make a collaborative decision when we had to build out a participatory framework while doing
    - Brings to mind a Democracy Lab product

- Using multiple tools
  - Only criteria is that they are open source

- How do we bring people into the participatory process?
  - This is a shared challenge for a distributed network of volunteers
    - How do your prefer being notified?

  - Communications challenge
    - One of the issues is the communications are inconsistent
      - We don’t have one way to easily reach everyone
      - Knowing where to find information consistently is very hard

- Decidim and open source
  - It’s one of the more restrictive licenses
  - Any changes you make, you have to include all prior licensing with them - you can’t do anything for your own purposes, you’d have to make it all available to everyone
    - It’s doable, but can place an extra burden on us if we are going to make customizations we have to make them in a way that’s releasable

  - Share alike and creative commons: any derivative documentation also has to be made available
  - Also include not just the steps of the process but also what the constraints are

### Next steps:

- Working document to outline what our goals are, etc.
- One place to gather the learnings
  - Replies from the Decidim help desk
  - Examples like code for france

- If there are points of the processes that fit imperfectly, maybe look at other tools
  - Anything coming up as a reason we shouldn’t go in on Decidim

- Just do something that’s not too

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**Author:** ![Mari](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex020/user_avatar/discourse.codeforamerica.org/mari/32/992_2.png) [@Mari](https://discourse.codeforamerica.org/u/Mari)\
**Post date:** [July 1, 2023, 7:05am UTC](https://discourse.codeforamerica.org/t/decidim-working-group-participatory-processes-at-cfa/1050/2 "2023-07-01T07:05:52Z")

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