Democracy Data space

Case studies

Reconnecting democratic participation through interoperable digital infrastructures.

Client

A European civic tech initiative led by Open Source Politics, bringing together public institutions, civic tech actors, and social economy organisations to explore new digital infrastructures for democratic participation.

Challenge

Digital democracy tools are fragmented across platforms and territories, with limited interoperability and weak connections to institutional decision-making, reducing the traceability and impact of citizen participation.

Solution

The Democracy Data Space defines a shared, interoperable, and federated framework enabling existing participation platforms to remain autonomous while being connected through common principles, standards, and governance rules.

Results

A shared European vision document defining principles, use cases, and governance foundations

A structured co-creation process engaging a broad ecosystem of democratic actors

Clear foundations laid for future experimentation and proof-of-concept development

Discover more about the project

What’s democracy Data space?

Digital tools for citizen participation have multiplied across Europe, yet democratic processes remain fragmented and poorly connected to public decision-making. Civic tech platforms often operate in isolation, limiting the visibility, traceability, and impact of citizen contributions.
The Democracy Data Space emerged from a collective European effort led by Open Source Politics, in collaboration with Startin’Blox and Bordeaux Métropole, to explore how interoperability and shared governance could lay the foundations for a more coherent, transparent, and resilient digital democracy.

Challenges

Despite the growing number of digital tools for citizen participation, democratic processes remain structurally fragmented.

Participation initiatives are scattered across platforms, territories, and governance levels, making it difficult to connect contributions over time and across institutions. Citizen inputs often lack traceability. Once submitted, contributions rarely remain visible throughout the decision-making process, weakening trust and perceived impact. Civic tech platforms operate in silos, with limited interoperability and few shared standards, reducing collective learning and reuse of democratic data.

Finally, the governance of digital democratic infrastructures remains opaque, with unclear rules on how data is managed, reused, and linked to institutional outcomes.

Opportunities

The current landscape of digital democracy reveals a clear opportunity to rethink how participation infrastructures are designed and connected.

Interoperability between existing platforms makes it possible to link citizen contributions across tools, institutions, and decision-making processes, without replacing or centralising current solutions.

A shared data space enables continuity between participation and public action, strengthening transparency, traceability, and accountability.

It also opens new forms of collaboration between public institutions, civic tech actors, and social economy organisations, while preserving autonomy and diversity.

Finally, shared governance principles create the conditions to treat democratic digital infrastructures as common goods, aligned with European democratic values and long-term resilience.

shared European vision.A collective framework laying the foundations for future experimentation and proof-of-concept development.

20+

organisations involved, including public institutions, civic tech actors, and social economy organisations

step co-creation process. A structured multi-step process combining workshops, interviews, feasibility work, and collective synthesis at European level..

Solutions

The Democracy Data Space proposes a shared, interoperable infrastructure to connect existing digital democracy tools without replacing them.

Rather than creating a single platform, it relies on interoperability to allow citizen participation data to circulate across tools, institutions, and governance levels, while each actor retains control over its data.

The solution is based on a federated approach, where platforms remain autonomous but are connected through common principles, standards, and governance rules.

By ensuring traceability of contributions across participation and decision-making processes, the Democracy Data Space strengthens transparency and accountability.

Finally, shared governance principles structure how democratic data is accessed, reused, and governed collectively, treating digital democratic infrastructures as long-term common goods.

The role of Startin’blox

Startin’Blox contributed its expertise in data space architecture, interoperability, and governance to the Democracy Data Space initiative.

Its role focused on structuring the project as a data space, ensuring alignment with European data space principles while respecting the specific requirements of democratic processes.

Startin’Blox supported the definition of a federated approach, where existing civic tech platforms and institutions remain autonomous while becoming interoperable through shared rules and standards.

It also contributed to framing governance principles that enable trust, transparency, and traceability in the circulation of democratic data.

Through this role, Startin’Blox acted as an enabler, helping translate a collective democratic vision into a coherent and interoperable infrastructure framework.