The future of the Web should be truly open, surveillance-free and enhance citizens’ rights
DemocracyPilotsProjectadmin

Article by Francesca Bria and Elettra Bianchi Dennerlein. The original article was published at the Nesta website. 

The 2015 Web We Want festival edition launched with a Q&A evening session on Thursday the 28th with Sir Tim Berners-Lee. Berners-Lee discussed the future of the web and his vision of instituting a successful Bill of Rights for the Web.

During the opening interview, Tim Berners Lee covered a broad range of topics such as limiting the surveillance powers of State Agencies and corporations; providing equal Internet access as basic human right; re-appropriation of data and data control by citizens, privacy and security by design; Net neutrality and copyright reform.

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http://185.26.51.181//wp-content/uploads/2015/05/D4.4-final_v4.pdf

The D-CENT Freecoin Toolchain
CurrencyPilotsProjectadmin

Writer: Marco Sachy, Dyne.org

The experimentation on the Digital Social Currency Pilots in D-CENT can be conceived as an open-source approach to decentralized complementary currency design, which becomes ever more relevant where pilot communities are already actively designing tools for collective engagement and decision making on monetary economic matters affecting their communities.

D-CENT is going to prototype the Freecoin Toolchain as a set of features that are apt to advance the state-of-the-art in two domains of social innovation: complementary currencies governance systems and decentralized trust management systems.

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Designing digital democracy: a short guide
DemocracyProjectadmin

Writer: Geoff Mulgan, Chief Executive at Nesta. The original article was published in the Nesta website.

I’ve written quite a few blogs and pieces on digital technology and democracy – most recently on the relevance of new-style political parties. [1]

Here I look at the practical question of how parliaments, assemblies and governments should choose the right methods for greater public engagement in decisions.

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Network Democracy for a better city Barcelona 5th May
DemocracyPilotsProjectadmin

D-CENT’s Network Democracy for a better city event was organised in the 5th of May in Barcelona. The event explored how politics and political participation can be reinvented with concrete proposals to devolve greater control and power to citizens. We also presented network democracy tools and ideas for real participatory cities of the XXI century.

The programme (see in English here / Spanish here) included four panels and 24 speakers. The event attracted around 170 high-level policy makers, academics, activists, civic society organisations, and hackers together to debate.

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D-CENT event: Network democracy for a better city
PilotsProjectadmin

Exciting news! We have set the date and preliminary agenda for the next D-CENT event. On May 5th, we will be hosting a conference in Barcelona which dives into Network democracy for a better city. Our plan is to inspire a great number of high-level policy makers, academics, activists, civic society organisations, and hackers to debate the future of democratic City Governments.

Together we will explore new ways of strengthening citizens’ participation in the political process presenting already existing digital tools for a more participatory democracy. We will also discuss how future democratic city infrastructures and governments should look like.

>> LIVE STREAMING HERE

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Open Knowledge Finland discusses the D-CENT potential to change democratic participation
DemocracyPilotsProjectadmin

Writers: Darryl Chamberlain & Francesca Bria (Nesta)

Representatives of the groups involved in D-CENT met in London to share their experiences. Jaakko Korhonen of Open Knowledge Foundation Finland talked about D-CENT’s potential.

What are you doing for D-CENT?

I’ve been doing research and development work and design work, and have colleagues that are working on participation, community management and more. There’s a network of people who are trying to find citizen-oriented democracy opportunities and there’s only a handful of organisations with the capability to accelerate this.

Maybe it comes from being in a small circle, but we keep ourselves away from the stuff that we’re not responsible for, so the decision-makers don’t get confused!

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D-CENT Interview with Citizens Foundation
DemocracyPilotsProjectadmin

Editors: Darryl Chamberlain, Francesca Bria

Citizens foundation promotes e-democracy and participatory budgeting in Iceland. Interviewing Róbert Bjarnason.

What is the Citizens Foundation?

robert_0

We’re a non-profit that started after the Icelandic financial crisis in 2008, and we aim to increasing people’s influence in policy and government. All the banks went bankrupt, and there was a big decrease in trust in the political process and parliament. Parliament went from a 70-something percent trust rating down to six or seven per cent. It’s now recovered to 14%.

I started Iceland’s first internet service provider in 1993, and I thought we could use the internet to empower people and give them a stronger voice. Our Your Priorities tool was written into the original proposal, and I think D-CENT could really help us.

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Network parties in Spain: Interview with Labodemo, Podemos participation team
DemocracyPilotsProjectadmin

Miguel Arana Catania_Labodemo_picture Nesta

Writers: Darryl Chamberlain & Francesca Bria (Nesta)

Representatives of the groups involved in D-CENT met in London to share their experiences. Miguel Arana Catania, of LaboDemo, which is working with Spanish political party Podemos, talked about how he sees the project. Miguel took part in the FutureFest panel hosted by D-CENT titled “Networks, Movements, and Parties: D-CENT and the challenges of the netera politics”.

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