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Good practice Imported

Decidim — Barcelona's Open-Source Participatory Democracy Platform

Spain · Barcelona · See the Spain profile · See the Barcelona profile

Evidence: Observational / pre–post Top 10% 86/100 · Ask Evidence Copilot about this practice

Barcelona City Council built the open-source platform Decidim to run participatory budgeting and planning; its 2016 strategic-plan process drew 40,000+ citizens and 10,860 proposals, and the software now runs civic participation for 150+ governments worldwide.

40,000+
Citizens participating in Barcelona's 2016-2019 Municipal Action Plan process (2016-2019)
10,860
Proposals submitted (2016-2019)
18,192
Comments posted (2016-2019)
150+
Institutions worldwide that have adopted Decidim
Decidim — Barcelona's Open-Source Participatory Democracy Platform

Details

Maturity
Established
Promoter
Ajuntament de Barcelona / Decidim Association (Metadecidim community)
Period
2016–present
Region (NUTS)
ES511
Keywords
civic tech, digital democracy, open source, urban governance

Context

Barcelona City Council launched Decidim in 2016 as a free, open-source platform for running participatory budgeting, strategic planning and deliberative processes both online and offline, built by the council's digital-democracy team together with a global open-source community organised as Metadecidim.

Objectives

The platform aimed to let large numbers of citizens submit and discuss proposals feeding into official municipal strategic planning and budgeting.

Activities

For Barcelona's 2016-2019 Municipal Action Plan, more than 40,000 citizens took part. Researchers who extracted the underlying data via the platform's API documented the resulting engagement and analysed it in peer-reviewed studies of the platform's deliberative design.

Results

The 2016-2019 process generated 10,860 proposals and 18,192 comments. Decidim has since been adopted by 150+ institutions worldwide, including city governments (Helsinki, New York City), regional and national bodies (Generalitat de Catalunya, the French Senate and National Assembly) and the European Commission — though this adoption count is self-reported by the platform's own non-profit foundation rather than independently audited. A 2023 study combining interviews and surveys of municipal staff across Catalan municipalities using Decidim found the platform was most valued for transparency and proposal collection, with more limited use for deeper deliberation or transfer of decision-making power to citizens.

Conclusions

Academic literature on Decidim notes that broadened participation numbers have not, on their own, eliminated pre-existing inequalities in who takes part online, nor guaranteed that participation translates into binding decisions.

Implementation
Indicative cost
Low (< €50k)
Time to results
Long (> 3 years)
Staffing & skills
Barcelona City Council's digital-democracy team building and maintaining the core platform, Metadecidim, a global open-source contributor community, Local staff at each adopting institution running their own participatory processes on the platform

Conditions for success

  • Open-source licensing allowing any government to deploy and adapt the platform
  • An active non-profit foundation (Decidim Association) and developer community sustaining the software
  • Political commitment from the host institution to actually act on proposals, since the 2023 study found this varies — deeper deliberation and power transfer lag behind proposal collection

Commonly funded by

ERDF — European Regional Development Fund Horizon Europe National / regional programmes

Indicative funding routes for practices of this type — always check each programme's current calls and eligibility rules.

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Data sources

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