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Transcript of SFP#17: Citizen participation through Free Software with Petter Joelson

Back to the episode SFP#17

This is a transcript created with the Free Software tool Whisper. For more information and feedback reach out to podcast@fsfe.org

WEBVTT

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Welcome to the Software Freedom Podcast.

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This podcast is presented to you by the Free Software Foundation Europe where a charity

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then it powers users to control technology.

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I'm Matthias Kirschner, the president of the Free Software Foundation Europe, and my

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today's guest is Peter Uelson.

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Peter is the project coordinator at a digital lab in Gothenburg, and I'm at Peter through

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an exchange program by the Goethe Institute in Sweden, so they match the digital lab and

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the FSFE and then cover the expenses that we could visit each other, and now Peter

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spent the last days with other staffers and myself here in our Berlin office and had

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time to learn from each other and think about some potential ways what we could do in

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future.

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And yes, I wanted to use this opportunity to talk with Peter about his work with Free

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Software, his experiences with Free Software, so welcome, Peter.

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Thank you so much, have a good day.

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So Peter, before we go into the other questions and about your work, my question would be how

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did you first encounter Free Software?

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Yeah, yeah, just thought about this recently, I actually, the first time I started using

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is I installed Linux on my computer around 2000, and it was after I'd seen Steve Ballmer,

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I think it was the former CEO or at least, I mean the boss of Microsoft, he did a keynote,

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he did a keynote speech on stage, I saw on TV, it was screaming and jumping up and down,

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and I was like, no, I'm not gonna use Microsoft anymore, and I haven't since, I've cheated

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with Apple, but I've never gone back to Microsoft, that's funny, I think you are the first person

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who tells me that the reason for them to use Linux or not use Microsoft was the keynote

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speech by Ballmer.

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Okay, and yeah, so now at DigiDim Lab, you work with a DigiDim, and we also covered that

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in our public money, public code brochure, and we wrote like, DigiDim is a participatory

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democracy framework software that allows citizen to debate attend meetings and create proposals

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with the goal of improving life in the city, but I'm quite sure that you could explain

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us a little bit more what it means in practice, what you can do with that citizen.

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Yeah, it's, I mean in practice is just a user-friendly web platform for setting up, like

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it's a participation process, mainly for mainly aimed at cities, but like with DigiDim

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Lab, we also work with some housing companies or, or, yeah, different like sections of cities

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and so on.

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So it's, so with, with Dacidim, you can, and you can in a sort of modular way design

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citizen process in different stages.

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So there might be like for us, we, we push, like, citizen participatory budgets a lot,

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and then you have different phases of, of the citizens are able to, to write suggestions

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on the platform, and then in the next step, someone, someone within the city is like going

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through the suggestions to see, oh, is this legal, how much would each suggestion cost

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and put a price tag on them and see if it's not, is it feasible, can we do this at all?

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And then the next step, the citizens can, can vote for the suggestions that they like,

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and that's how the, that's particularly part of the budget is done, distributed.

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And there are also like, after something is, like, decided on Dacidim, you can follow

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the process of implementation, which is a good thing for transparency also to see like,

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oh, oh, we voted to improve this park and now it's been done to like 50% and these

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other things that have been done and these things are left.

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So it's, yeah, so, so you can sort of have a participatory process from start to end,

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you know, in just a clear and user friendly way.

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So on, on, on what level is, is that use, so there are suggestions by citizens and like,

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is that then mainly like on a, on a city level or is it also used on a, on a higher level there?

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And I mean, it's, it's, it was developed by Barcelona, city of Barcelona, to start with.

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And it's being used in some, some regions and some national processes.

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And we, we were also involved in using it for something called the future of Europe conferences

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where they, they had the process of like citizen suggestions for the whole of EU where you can put

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in suggestions and there was a process around it. So it's, I mean, it's, it can easily scale and

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and I mean, we use it for like just smaller parts of the city, for example, space, but,

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but for Barcelona, I mean, it's a few million people. So it's, so it kind of scales in

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these different ways. I wouldn't use it for like a smaller association. I think that, like, that has to be like,

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yeah, on, on some kind of medium scale to be worth using. But other than that, you can go like,

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pretty far. But then I guess like, the most interesting things around citizen participation

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has happened on a city level for the last, last six to eight years and something like that.

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And with, with which public administrations did you work then in the past?

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Like, right now in Sweden, we have like six decedent platforms running for, for a couple of areas

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in Stockholm, Bootscheck and Jörg Holman. We have a city called Siktuna. We have a housing company

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or two, two housing companies. And also the tenants association use it a bit. So, and then,

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then in the past, we've also been involved in like international processes like this for the European

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Union. And we worked with New York and Chicago in a consortium of other companies like mainly

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French company called open source politics. We work with it not.

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How is, how is that now working? Because I mean, if I remember correctly, you started as a

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non-profit as a digital lab in Gothenburg. But I mean, meanwhile, when you talk about you have all

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those different cities and parts of cities and other projects you're working on, you also

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meanwhile have a cooperative there to organize like the economic part of this. But what other

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players do you have about Dicidim at Dicidim development? Like, when it comes from Barcelona,

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there are probably other people developing it from there. So, and then you said that there's

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company then in France. Who else is participating here? I think they built like really

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sort of interesting ecosystem around this. So, I mean, there's Barcelona, but they're also like,

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they can still contribute a lot, but also when other cities start using it, like recently,

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Helsinki in Finland, they've also been contributing back to the code. And then there are a lot

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of smaller cities, of course, that don't have the resources to contribute. So, I mean, it's a good

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sort of equalizing thing that the city has the resources they can put, they can put that into

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development and yeah, just general improvements of features. And then there are around

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30 sort of developing partners, which we are Dicidim lab, one of mainly like smaller companies,

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some might be not profits too, I'm not entirely sure, but most of them like small medium-sized

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companies that can work and do like local adjustments, because like for us, for example,

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we might need a special kind of login system for Sweden, or there's a certain way of doing post

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codes or whatever, so there's this kind of adjustment that makes sense to have a like at least

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company in the same country. So, you have this core of 30 organizations who are contributing

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on a regular basis to bring the software forward, and then around that you have

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then other contributors on a case-by-case basis, or when they have resources to participate with.

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Yeah, and I think that, I mean, I think it's an interesting model, and also the way that

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like Barcelona, and I know that like Madrid worked a lot like that, actually like taking

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a lot of input from the citizens, like how do we want this platform to improve. So let's sort of start

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like sort of citizens perspective all the time too, which I think is great. So can you use Dicidim

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to get new features for Dicidim? Yeah, it's funny to actually do this. They have something called

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the Meta Dicidim installation, and they use this for suggesting new features, or this.

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So you can comment and vote for suggesting new features. When you said before that, like for

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example, then it's also used in Helsinki, and they participated there. Does that mean that they

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Helsinki then actually had people from the public administrations themselves who contributed code,

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or other contributions? Or did they contract companies to do this? Oh, I'm not entirely sure, but

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yeah, I think they did both. I think they had some in-house work, and I mean, my impression is that

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that's it is a good model to have some kind of in-house work from the cities to actually succeed

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with these kind of things, like just also just to have someone to actually understand what is

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happening even though they don't do a lot of the development themselves, to have like the in-house

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sort of know-how about how to develop a platform and what kind of contractors to work and stuff

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I mean, that's one of the big advantages. I also often promote for a free software that you can

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use all kind of different models, and you can decide what kind of competency do we want with

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in-house? What of the of my infrastructure is so important that we try everything to get to

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developers of ourselves there, or at least people who understand this technology can therefore

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take smarter decisions on whom to contract and how much to pay for certain features.

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And in some other areas, you might say, well, not so important that we don't need someone directly

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involved with something else. It's okay, we want to have one person always following the

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development so that whatever happens, we don't have to stop letting people participate in our

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processes. Yeah, I think it kind of creates a continuity and it also makes it safer in that you

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know. I mean, that's also a thing I'm not relying on one particular provider with open source.

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There's a lot of these things that make it more stable. For these kind of city platforms,

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I mean, there's also always the risk that the progressive coalition of Barcelona is going to

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lose the next election, and then the next city government might not be as interested in

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platform as the previous one. So that's so I think like the way they've done it with having a

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sort of multi-stakeholder development process is clever that way. And it said also something from

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your experience that they are mainly then local providers, or is it also that people are interested,

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and there is not so many local providers yet to provide the services that you then from Sweden

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work with a public administration in some other European country, or how did that work?

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So now is it mainly Swedish administrations or organizations you then work with, or is that

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something which is easy for you to work with a public administration in Spain, for example.

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I mean, we've really enjoyed doing the international work here, but I think we've always had

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like someone on the ground like corporate wins and kind of local company or so on, because

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just to have the knowledge of the sort of pure like processes, how those things work on a political

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level and all of that, it's kind of, it's usually easier for someone with a local connection,

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but then there are other things that there are like, I mean, we've been doing trainings in the

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decedent platform and also like designing processes and how to combine decedent with physical

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meetings and reach out, ways of reaching out and all the things like that sort of general

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for every kind of process. I mean, a lot of the actual challenges, obviously some participation

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are the same, but the bureaucracy behind it might be different. You said before one of the success

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factors is that the city somehow has someone on their own or someone who they could trust with

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a very good connection to them to actually implement that. What are the other success factors for

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introducing a power-disappity platform for like a city? Yeah, I mean, there are a lot of

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challenges and I think the ones that succeed are those that actually realize that yeah, this is

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going to be a big task. This is not something that's just going to happen by itself. It's not enough

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to just, it's not enough to just install a platform. I mean, what should we do? Build a new park,

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close to the street. Yeah, successful. Yeah, so I mean, a lot of it is about trust and because

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you might have had like participatory processes in a past that weren't actually that participatory

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or nothing came out of it and then people lose trust in the process or like, especially if it's

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more sort of poorer communities, they might have this like bad experience from dealing with

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city officials in general. So I mean, outrage, communication and connecting to the local community

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and local organizations and leaders and things like that to build up and kind of trust in the process

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and maybe run it a couple of times so that people actually see that, oh, it had an impact like

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something actually happened this time. So yeah, so that's a part also that you meant that it's not

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let's make some suggestions, but that you can then also afterwards actually see this was then

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implemented and how it was implemented. So people see it's not just about online discussions.

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Yeah, and it's just it's not just one of these like suggesting boxes where you don't know where

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where it's going to end up or if it even will end up somewhere. I mean, I could imagine when some

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some people when they hear about that they should discuss with others on an online platform

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about ideas for their city. They might somehow think about some of their worst experiences they

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made on Facebook, Twitter and other such platforms. What was your experience there? I mean,

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when you see all those those huge platforms and how much they they try to moderate or

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yeah, they do the moderation there and they have lots of stuff doing that, but still

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from my perspective, it often doesn't work at all and you have I mean also from from the

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architecture of all of this it's it's built in a way that controversial things and that like

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hatred and other things are are empowered there and are spread more widely. How is that on

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on that seat and then how is the discussion happening there? Do you like when you introduce

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that, do you then need to get five people moderating the processes or what's your experience there?

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I mean, it's important to have a moderation, someone moderating discussion, but also like

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I mean a lot of it is designed and the way that like Twitter, Facebook is it's actually

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designed to create like maximum attention and and sort of divisions like this part of their

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business model, whereas with with decedim it's been it's been sort of consciously designed to have

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in to have a civil discussion and also be I mean the way that you need to be concrete in your

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suggestions like you can you know you're you can't just come and say like oh I think this is about

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this and that you need to be like oh how are we going to use this money to improve my local area?

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and I guess like the connection to your local area, I mean you don't want to destroy that

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I mean there might be stuff that you don't agree with but usually it's like oh should we put

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money into making a football pitch? No I'm not interested in sports, I want like cultural

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activities like that's that's more the kind of divisions you're going to get. But I mean I

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could imagine that some discussions also could get quite heated yeah for example if you think about

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should we close this street and just have this as like for for *****ren playing or do we

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a transfer this street into a bicycle street? So I mean is that then still civilized or then

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other people getting into very heated discussions on the platforms? I mean from my experiences

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you should live very civil and like but I think there's also a balance to think about like I mean

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you do need places where people can vent issues that are important to them I mean you don't you don't

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only create like a hateful environment but you also need like areas of like constructive

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discussions and you need I think like one of the things that motivating me is that I think that

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this kind of I mean opening up to this kind of more constructive discussions I believe could be

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a way to to take like momentum away from these kind of parties that's just political parties

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just about like people being upset and like blaming immigrants or whatever I don't know I think

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there is a lot of like political energy that has to be directed in different in in more constructive

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ways and and I mean unfortunately social media is doing it the completely wrong way but

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we do need like places for for discussion and for discussing with people that we maybe

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not meet in our daily life so yeah so I'm still I mean that's the hopeful view of

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internet based discussion that you can still have a respectful discussion that you tolerate

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yeah person yeah it sounds utopian when you look at like how many things function today but I think

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I mean there is the least I can impossible one question I have is did you see any or where there any

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any processes for the tools where you saw that this discussion isn't working like that in this

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area and you have to change processes because you it's it's handled differently in this culture

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do you experience something like that when when you work with different region when you saw that

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like someone else was using the software and they said like that's not going to work for us we need

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another we need to redesign this part for us because that's not how how people interact in other in

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our region or in our city or yeah I mean like our our challenges often to get people to to participate

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more like I think I mean and and to sort of also try to adjust this to make it easy to

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to make a suggestion without creating an account for example or or like find ways to where you can

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put down your suggestions easily on just a tablet or something in the street and yeah those kind of

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leveraging those kind of pressures I think like for some of some of this came more natural in Spain

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where they where it's I mean the platform and the people behind it it came out of this social

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movement where there was like a big consensus on we want more democracy we want more transparency

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and yeah so the engagement was already there anyway like so you say that when you go to the

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north of Sweden then you can already be happy when you get a yeah yeah exactly okay yeah

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and but I mean one one thing for me then is of like what what are some nice outcomes you you saw

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there and why you think it's it's worth participating there I mean do you have two or three examples

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what what came up in an inner process which was used on the with that CDM and then the city or the

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region they they had something I thought like I really liked that yeah and yeah what have we got

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I mean I know like on on a bigger scale in when I've done this in Madrid it's been like both

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stuff like having a better coordinated system for the local transports you can use the same card

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for everything within the city which you couldn't before that was one of the suggestions come up

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and another thing was like in a more major to have to make like Madrid carbon neutral in in 20

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years so they've started to and that was actually like decided on the on the digital platform

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and they've started to make measurements for it to happen now Madrid does turn like

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have a right wing okay government at the moment so that's kind of hold to the process a bit but

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yeah there was like some some really interesting like major decisions coming out of of their

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local of the digital platform and the process around it for for our part is more the kind of

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stuff that we do for housing associations or local areas is more like yeah let's do this this

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cultural trade or let's improve this football pitch or whatever but I mean it's still good stuff

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it gets people a better connection to their area so often the small things which might have a

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improvement for for life yeah hopefully oh okay then my last question about this it

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would be like what larger challenges between like parts of getting citizen to participate in

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their what what challenges do you see in general for the for the platform itself in comparison to

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the proprietary environment around which is probably also trying to get some some parts there

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yeah I think I mean I think there like things to be concerned about and it's I mean it's

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extremely clear how different the just the business model around the proprietary software is

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in Sweden like from like the stuff that I know it's so different like you almost always has this

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kind of monopoly situation for each kind of platform like there are like two companies that

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work together and make all the school platforms for Sweden and there was lots of

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attention around this these guys in Stockholm were made their own open source platform but

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so yeah so you have yeah because it's a small market and there's always there's some

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and there's like an instant monopoly situation in an every kind of platform and yeah so my I mean

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my concern would be that you would get this in sits and participation too or that I could have

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a company that create maybe I shouldn't give them the idea but it's probably not listening

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but say that they have a more sort of general platform for local authorities and then they just

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make like the participation thing a plug-in so so it's easy to make it really easy for the local

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authorities to start using this and things like this I mean whereas like with the open source

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community we're a part of it's there's a natural cooperation between different companies different

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cities so yeah I mean there's that on the other hand I mean I think like sits and participation

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is a good example of I mean the advantages of free software and like because it's I mean it's

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crucial that you can control what's actually happening as no one is manipulating the votes for

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example and things like that and also because it it needs to be a platform that is like widely adopted

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by as many people as possible the user interface and the user friendliness is super important so

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so for us I mean even besides all the other points with free software it was so obvious that

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that platforms like Destiny for example where Barcelona's already put in a lot of resources

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into a platform they like weigh ahead of every proprietary platform just from a design perspective

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so yeah so I mean there are tons of advantages it's just like the awareness about this

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on a city level in small cities soft not there well let's see when people are listening

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and they'll tell us what free software tools are already out there maybe that will make a difference

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so we have to come to an end now but there's one question I'm asking every person whom I have as a

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guest in our podcast and that is if there are any free software projects individuals out there

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whom you would like to thank oh I mean I'm happy about the people who started this team

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I maybe I should I worked with the Drupal for maybe eight years and made a living from that so thank

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you to those people too yeah the console platform environment rate city environment rate

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so it's also great so that's my main ones I think thank you Dan

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Peter thank you very much for being here with me thank you so much and yes this was this episode

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of the software freedom podcast the podcast is brought to you by the free software foundation europe

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if you like the episode please subscribe to the podcast recommended to your friends

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and then we will see each other again at the next episode bye bye

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you

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