Yeah. So what is open source politics? Open source politics is, is a company. We belong in the social economy, sector. But, yeah, we are a company, almost nine years old. We are based in in Paris, in France. And as the name, says, we are, trying to bring open source, to the political, sphere, and impact the political debates with open source software. So we basically provide, open source tools, to run participatory democracy processes. And that we especially use, Decidim, which is one of the those softwares. And, obviously, we have more tools, more technologies, and also consulting and methodologies to in order to to succeed in in those processes. But, yeah, basically, at the very beginning, it's using open source tools for political discussions and decisions. Okay.

Yeah. I think so there are different, obviously, ways to, answer this question. What I can say is that almost ten years ago, in France, and it was, I think, quite typically French at the moment at that moment, we had a lot of projects, that are that we're using civic technologies. And we had a lot of hope, that it will really bring big changes. And it's it was not the only place, obviously. Spain, was advanced. We had connection with Taiwan, with Latin America, with Greece, and all in all those, countries and political backgrounds, there were a desire to use, new tools in order to, do political, action a bit differently. So that was really ten years ago. A lot of enthusiasm, a lot of volunteering, and and and and a lot of projects that we're just starting, bootstrapping. And then we had another, period where, and especially for us in France, it was after the two thousand seventeen election, presidential election. What was before just a, let's say, a movement, became, let's say, a business or market, and and most of the, the people, including us, were advocating for those new tools and new politics, became, companies, became civil servants with, responsibilities on the field. So we really had more, yeah, professionalism, using, those tools. So it became very concrete. And I would say that for the past three, five years, we are in a second, period where we have had the innovations. We we made all the first, pilots and and pioneering, with a few projects. And now we are running, a lot of them, replicating, in different, spheres. And, also, we are starting to also criticize somehow what has been done, what could be done differently. And at the moment, especially in in France, but I say I think in in all, Southern Europe, we have a trend that is slowly decreasing or at least discussing the real impacts of those tools. And I think there are two trends, two options. One is to consider that, and it's open it opens a new direction. It's that we need new tools, new technologies, especially using AI, because, obviously, it will have an impact on those civic technologies. So there is this it's a solutionistic vision. And and then there is also another trend that is, okay, we need to to go deeper with the processes, to make them maybe do a little less, but, make sure that they have an impact, make sure that, they are really relevant, they are involving people, and and at the end, they bring real change and not just, new tools, new innovation, and a lot of communication. So those two trends are interesting, and, actually, we are trying to explore both, at open source politics, because, obviously, from the very beginning, we are saying that, the tools are not magical. They bring a lot, but they're not magical, and we have to make sure that they are really useful.

Mostly in France in terms of number of contracts, but, we also work at the open level. We work with the European Commission, a few European projects, a few European cities as well in other countries, member states. And, also, we have had some projects outside of Europe, especially we are working with the city of, New York in The US, because they also use the CDIM. But, yeah, mostly, obviously, it's in France and, otherwise, in Europe. Yeah.

like, Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, obviously, I I saw I saw those two trends, but I think they are complementary. Like, we we we need to always improve the tools and also reflect on how to use them. I would say that some public institution and some politicians are well aware of, the the potential impact, the the need to use those tools, but also, the interest of developing open source technologies to be sovereign with the tools that we use, especially in Europe, and it's part of the news those days with, what happens in The US with all the the big tech. So for that, there is, yeah, political concern. Probably, some people are really reflecting in in on that. I would say also that there is a a trend, that we see that some other politicians or decision makers, or institutions are considering that the tools they are proposing new ways to interact, but they are not that revolutionary. And somehow, they are sometimes, they they they cannot completely follow the trend and and and always use them. And we see, that some territories are somehow going back, like, reversing what, was done mostly for political for for financial reasons. Like, they do not have the budget to continue, or, it's not considered as a priority in this world where we have a lot of, other concerns. So it's it's really a mixed answer, I would say, on my side. But, for sure, there is also a lot of progress that was made, in advocating open source technologies, in in promoting civic technologies over the past ten years, for sure. Yeah.

it's interesting to just tell the story once again. In Spain, 2011, among all the Occupy movements all around the world, they were the the in in in Spain. So as we also said. So political demonstrations, a new generation asking for new innovation, new ways to do the to to interact with institutions, new ways to do politics. Four year four years later, citizen coalitions have won the largest cities, in in Spain, Madrid, Valencia, Barcelona, La Colonia. And and the this new generation started to create new tools. One of them was created in Madrid. It was Consul. It's all it still exists. And the CDIM was created by the city of Barcelona because they they did not agree with, Madrid on the road map for the tool. The city was created from the very beginning as a very modular tool. So as you say, it's a core, engine, and then you you can plug modules. And from the very beginning, it it it lets a lot of freedom to the administrators to create processes, to, assign roles, to use different features, little surveys, IT generation, event organization, participatory budgeting, voting phase, petitions, collaborative writing, blogging even. So it's it's really, they they they wanted to create kind of an alternative and political social network at a local level. And that was, so is is generic. It's it offers a lot of possible configurations. And, it's really the kind of it's the main website for an institution that will want to to open a participatory democracy or use digital democracy. Obviously, it has several competitors that can do almost the same, but are in the same, area of providing different tools within the same bottle. So but I think on this field of generic tools, the CDM is probably the best in the way that it is the most ethical. It is run by an association. It is, 100 open source. It is very interesting in in the covenants aspect also, but we will probably come back to that later. And then there are other tools that are more maybe specialized in one interaction. So for example, there is a tool that exists for almost ten years or so, that is quite famous. It's Polis, pol dot is. And this is, it was in advance in the trend of AI. And from the very beginning, it's, asking users to answer some some some questions or at least to to take a to make a stance on on different questions. And it designs a map of the controversies. Like, it's for groups, people who have the same interest or the same answers, and it can very efficiently, show you if your debate is controversial, or, and what are the two or three groups that can be identified, when talking about something. It was used, for example, in Taiwan almost ten years ago, in a debate on on the use of Uber and other kind of services that are the same, like, car sharing. It was quite new for them, so they they used the tool. And it was one of the best use case probably for that. It has been used. More recently, we have seen, other tools, like, the ones from another French company that is, which is one of our partners. And they have a tool that is very efficient to it's quite simple, in the sense of, it is limited to short proposals made by users and then voting, on those and really fast analytics, and with the idea to reach, a lot of, participants and and then also identify controversies or or more, supported proposals, and are bringing more AI into the into their tools as well, to explain, and and describe all the the aspects of a political debate. So those are more specified, like, specialized tools. And I think it's the it's the triangle. We have we we see both, happening. So very large and generic and and very useful portals, the ceiling being probably, the the best possible option, and and then more specialized tools, with one direction that they really do well. And we can connect all those tools, obviously. Yeah.

What is surprising, and maybe it's an issue, it's, that people that were that are here today were already there ten years ago, at least in France. And and and mostly, if we consider, if we look at, also other countries like this again, the CDIM, it was created eight years ago, or nine years ago. So it's really happening it was happening at the same time. And the world was very different. It was before the first, mandate of Donald Trump. It was before Brexit. It was before Convergent IITICA. It was really a time when we consider that digitalization was the only solution or the main solution, and we were very, again, optimistic about, about it. Twitter was very different, obviously. So, yeah, ten years ago, if I, bring my own story, I was already working in the political field, in in a local institution and then in the French parliament. I was advising, decision makers, and I felt that there was a divide between the population and the the decision making process and, obviously, the politicians. So I was not obviously the only one to see that, but, I decided to to try something else, and I followed, a boot camp to learn the basics of, coding. It was exactly ten years ago. And, in this, boot camp, I drafted, a prototype of a tool that never ex existed, but a tool that could, help citizens understand the process of, writing the law, the new law. And we wanted it to be open source. And after this boot camp, I, met with, the other people who were interested in the field, in Paris. They were already quite a few of them. And among them, I met my, future cofounders. At first, we, published a few a few texts. We organized a few, workshops and hackathons, to improve the the the existing tools. And one of the the events that we that we organized was a way to draft or to to create a new tool for a a city, near Paris. And from there, we received requests to, provide additional tools to other, territories, and we decided to create, the company. But from the very beginning, we really had this commitment to open source. We really considered it was very important, in general, but especially when we are talking about, political technologies or, obviously, digital democracy, that has an impact on decision making. And we were also very attracted by what was, being created outside of our country, and it's there with us. We met people in Taiwan, in Mexico, and in in especially in Spain, and in Barcelona. So the the story of the CDIM and open source politics is really, closely, related because we were one of the first, partners of the CDIM outside of of Catalonia. And, it was really through that we were able to grow as a company, as, also consultants, looking at how we can use those digital tools for this for participation. So, yeah, the story was that. And and and from there, like, obviously, we had one or two first years, of exploration. And after that, it was a a general increase, all the time.

So one of the the key ingredients in the recipe of open source politics is that we were four, cofounders, coming from different backgrounds, but sharing the same interest. So on my side, I came from political science. So I attended the and and, really, I was an expert or had previous knowledge and experience, in basically the the area where our clients were, so the public institutions, and especially local ones. But my cofounders, one of them was more, on the product side, of, of, online tools. And one of them, is still the CTO of Open Source Politics, was a developer, for already almost ten years. So, yeah, we had we had all the expertise. And combining our different backgrounds, we are quite successful in the first years because we were very complimentary, and agreeing on the road map, and and, it was it was quite quite simple, yeah, to to to really understand everything that was needed, on the IT side and also the business side.

Probably there were several, but, until, like, I was interested in in in digital affairs, but, I was really not understanding anything, before I attended the boot camp, and that was the reason why I wanted to to be more, I've I've no more knowledge about it. But, I would say probably probably during the the the American presidential elections of, Barack Obama, there was a lot of, interest, like social network where we are growing. He he made his team has made a lot of, progress in in organizing through the Internet. And I I was I think I was more interested in politics than, digital first, and I understood that it was a new way to do the politics. So I think that came it came from there. But, also, I was always interested in in new technologies, new trends, but, really, for a very long time, I was just, not understanding anything about computer science. And I still understand pretty much, or not a lot, but, at least I I understand that a little bit more. Yeah. Yeah. So I think, yeah, it was, so in terms of age, I was probably in my twenties, early twenties, when I started really having an interest for that. Yeah.

Yeah. I think I was also I was also blogging and liking to read blogs. So it's really it was ten twenty years ago. And blogging had a lot of impact. In France, we had this moment, twenty years ago, in 2005, where we had the referendum on the the European treaties. And it was, the, like, the the people rejected the treaty, and and a lot of the debate, has been online, through blogs and and forums. So very old school, but, yeah, that that probably the interest also came from that.

Yeah. So I would say, first, what we have currently, the tools were designed, mostly for, by institutions or for the the interest of institutions. So they are somehow quite top down. Obviously, some of them are made to let emerge new ideas, new proposals, but it's, most of the time, coming from the institution. So they are not completely grassroots and citizen based. For that, we have petitions. I would say that's the main tool, that let people organize. And the other aspect is that the tools are built for an age of writing and reading, and the trend is that new generations, tend to speak and watch videos and and reels and and short formats and not focus on on text. And so the tools are not completely aligned with the basic habits of people on on the Internet, especially younger generations now. So there is an effort, to be made in order, first, to integrate more direct interaction. Probably, for example, letting people just record their voice when they share an ID and bring that ID to the system. At the moment, it's not completely done, but it's feasible, technically. And, also, pro like, using artificial intelligence capacities for an interesting purpose that would be helping people understand the debates, what is at stake because, obviously, no one reads the 30 pages reports, that you should read before, taking part in the in the process. But if you have a summary and you can ask a few questions, then you can obviously be more informed. You can propose an ID and and maybe be assisted in in the raw formulation of this ID in order to make sure that, it's not the same ID as someone else, as those just, published, or it can, in the contrary, create a bridge between different IDs and make sure that, we we cluster those IDs and and and we can enrich them. So for that, I think, yeah, there is a a need for new technologies, new tools. Another aspect is that, and we are looking at it at the moment, with other partners, but, is really doing that. It's, how we make sure that, those contributions are interoperable with other tools. So for example, just before I told you that maybe, for example, make.org as a very powerful tool to make people vote massively in favor or against, different proposals. But the the ID generation is is more powerful on the CDM because on the CDM, you can have categories, attachments, comments, endorsements on proposals. For example, you you could have first proposals on the city, and then you send them to to make the talk in order to have a massive voting on them. And maybe the top 20 proposals, you can enrich them on the city and and go back. So that, would be the kind of interaction that we want to to create, making sure that, also when, I don't know. There is a debate in Italy, on climate change, and there is also this debate in France. And maybe it's interesting to compare or to even share the proposals, because, obviously, the same debates are happening everywhere. Like, the number of debates on governance of AI at the moment, everywhere there is there seems to be one. If we could just have, a larger space where we could share all the the insights from those debates, obviously, the decision and the deliberation will be more powerful. We also need, and I think it's one of the interest of your own work, tools for deliberation, like, to go bit further in the process, not just sharing an ID, a comment, a vote, but really cocreating, co co building, political, public policies. That, that would be necessary to also develop maybe new tools that can, again, blend with what happens, physically in in in workshops, in public assemblies, citizen panels, and and so on. So for all that, I think, yeah, we we might need new tools and to lower the buyer, but also go very, like, really deeper in terms of understanding, analysis, and, and complexity also. Yeah.

Yeah. I think it's very deleted. Yeah. Yeah. But I think it was all also, it it was always the the debate. Should we improve the current functioning of, our institutions or somehow generate new ones or or or even, yeah, create new ones and and and consider the current ones are not working. So, obviously and I think the two, again, can evolve in parallel. And for example, the CDM, it's a tool designed by an institution for other institutions. And in some ways, we when we provide the tool to new institutions, they are just functioning as they are. They are bit more open maybe than ten years ago, on some topics, on some processes. But, probably, it's not revolutionary. It's not changing the rules, enough. So there are also voices that, want to really bypass the current institutions and somehow generate more citizen engagement, creating projects, using the the power of technology. And I think, what is interesting with open source is that, with the same tool that the institution help, designing and and creating, developing, we can have other types of movements that will use the same tool, benefit from the public investment, and generate more engagement with that. That's what we could hope for. Yeah.

Yeah. So I think, what I have seen is that most of our competitors, Jira companies that created tools, they created their own tool. So it's difficult for them to go beyond their tool, because they always want to improve it, and and sell it and and and sell it more. With the C team, we have a different approach. We consider that we have to be all collaborating on the same tool, and it's what is also very interesting. Like, we we consider that, for example, the other companies deploying services providing services around the city, we we do not consider them as competitors, but as as partners. And, obviously, sometimes, they will gain a contract that, we will not have. But, it's it's more important that we have this common project where we all, share, our resources. We contribute really to improve the CDM. And for that, the CDM was really a very interesting project because, as it is a digital democracy platform, it was used by the creators of the CDIM in order to run the project demographically. So, there is now, so it came from the city of Barcelona, but, for several years now, it is run by an independent, association, with different type of partners. Some of them are, companies, others are institutions, or there are more technical side. There are universities. There are also, researchers and and and citizens that are really interested in committing to the to the common, to the real project. And, we have this process of, an open road map of the tool. Anyone can share new ideas, for new features, and I think you did so. The the tools are the the the the options are then evaluated by a professional product team, some of them being, then funded by, public institutions, and, different providers who, share the same standouts, in order to add, new features to to the platform. So that has been really a success. Maybe it's not the tool that evolves the fastest, but, it it is one of the the richest in terms of tech of, spaces, features, combination that you can, create. And it's also the one that is the the most transparent. Like, you can access all the history of the tool online. You can really be part of it, contribute. So for that, again, I would say it's a it's a it's really a good inspiration for someone discovering civic tech to look at what the city has done. And, again, in order to expand that, it's what we want to do with interoperability. So it's really making sure that we create a standout to share content from one platform to the other. And we can imagine that in five, ten years, no matter the tool that you use, all data will share the same, protocols, the same standards, and you would be able to, as a user, as a citizen, bring your own data and do not, and not store it on the the platform itself, and then interact with people using different platforms, probably in different languages, in different countries. And all that being, also facilitated by, machine translation, AI analysis, that would be that would be interesting to see, yeah, how we can, move from everyone, every institution having its own platform, every company, developing its own software to a real, public space, very distributed using different technologies, open source standards, at a larger scale. That that could be really interesting.

Yeah. Yeah. So apart from the ones that we are already involved in, I don't know if there will be projects really directly related to what we what we talk about. Yeah. I would say the project so I consider that, civic technology, they they're interesting when they interact with, the the the life cycle of a a public debate, public decision. So at first, there is really this importance of, information and quality of information, and it's something that has, it's really the battle at the moment. We have seen a lot of, fake news spreading, for the past ten years. We we we see with, AI and deep fake that, now it is more simple if you have the the the funds and the knowledge to even disrupt political debate, political elections, and we are already at risk, with that. We look at what happened in Romania with someone emerging in in one month and a half with, just, content and fake news and and able to almost win a presidential election. We see what happens in in Germany at the moment with, Elon Musk, supporting, the far right, and they they are raising in the in the polls, dangerously. So we we see that the it's it's really important to have, to improve the quality of information and to resist to all the attacks, that we see. And for that, there are new new tools, that probably are being developed, that will also help people, like, detect, when there is a manipulation, where there is a fake news, and we can automatize that. So that that's interesting. Then we have tools to so information, then mobilization. You are informed. You want to you want to act on that field. I think, they are, very powerful tool that already exist to organize campaigns, fundraising. So that, I would say, is already almost covered, which will obviously improve, but, it already exist. And then when you are mobilized, you you you have your debate, and you you you need to make a decision. You need a better deliberation. And I think, yeah, among, the different, tools that, should exist and and, being envisioned and maybe developed already, there is this, this whole objective of recreating the the advantages of face to face discussion, in order to bring deliberation online at a larger scale, maybe multilingual, maybe, on very different, difficult topics. And for that, there are there are some new technologies. It could be summarizing discussion with, real humans, online in order to, help. Yeah. Because it's it's we always share more when we discuss, than when we write down a comment, and and we wait five hours before there is an answer. So it's it's this recreation of a face to face interaction in a larger group or bilateral, thanks to synthesis made by AI, thanks to, maybe translation as well. That's that's really interesting and important, probably, if we create that. And then so there are the four steps, information, mobilization, decision slash deliberation. And then I think, what is important is also evaluation and, ensuring data, sharing knowledge, thanks to thanks to, again, all the open data analysis. We have new tools, new visualization. It's it's simpler than ever to really understand what came from 1,000 IDs that are written on the platform. So, yeah, there are some tools that are really interesting as well in this field. And I think if we can make kind of a coherent ecosystem of different tools addressing all those, parameters, we will improve, the quality of digital democracy. Obviously, it's a big challenge also because, as you said, it's a small niche. The arm there is not a lot of money in in in this sector anymore, and and there are very powerful tools outside of it that do not want to have a long and peaceful deliberation. So it's, it's a big challenge, but, I think, yeah, there are some interesting stuff.

you know, post Yeah. I think, I think, most importantly, open source. Like, it's, as you said in in a previous question, it's important to, consider that the core already exists. We already have tools. We already have networks, to discuss that. We have to be modular, bring new modules, new features, new ideas, new people. And and, yeah, that's the way we will create a digital common that is more powerful. And, so, yeah, the the the the suggestion would be just to connect with people already in the field, share the ideas, try to, do a little proof of concept of what it could be, and then make sure that it is interoperable with what already exists. Because, yeah, we need so much more developers, so much more designers, so much more political leaders, really contributing to to bring this field to the next level. And, so it's it's open. We we need more, people. And, and the good news is that the basis already exists. I think it's it's quite solid. It's quite stable, but, we have to to extend it. Yep.

No. I would say thank you for the the invitation, the discussion. It's interesting to see that, there is a new interest in in this, for this project in general, new energy, also from, maybe new parts of, of Europe. And, so, yeah, thank you for that. Good luck for this podcast, and the future episodes of this podcast podcast. I was really happy to to be part of it. And and then, yeah, let's discuss again further on how we can improve those technologies altogether.