Civic Engagement Platform

Part of the worlds-biggest-software-project initiative.

An AI-native, open-source platform for public comment, meeting notices, and citizen feedback collection that any municipality can afford to run.

The Civic Engagement Platform gives local and regional governments the tools to run public consultations, manage hybrid public meetings, and collect structured resident feedback at scale. It is aimed at city managers, planning departments, and communications staff who need defensible, accessible, and multilingual engagement workflows without the cost or vendor lock-in of incumbent enterprise suites.

Why Civic Engagement Platform?

Enterprise incumbents such as Granicus and CivicPlus run from $100,000 to $500,000+ per year, pricing out small and mid-size municipalities.
The leading fully open-source option, Decidim, is feature-rich but requires significant in-house IT capacity and ships without hybrid-meeting transcription or a modern mobile app.
Most commercial platforms are US- or EU-centric and lack a single workflow that combines meeting management, surveys, deliberation, and accountability tracking.
AI capabilities in incumbents (sentiment analysis, translation) are typically gated behind higher pricing tiers and bolted onto monolithic architectures with slow innovation cycles.
No surveyed tool offers strong demographic representation gap analysis — identifying who is not engaging, not just who is.

Key Features

Consultation & Participation Workspaces

Project/consultation workspace with multi-phase lifecycle management (open, closed, decisions made)
Surveys and polls with multiple question types and file uploads
Open-ended comment collection with moderation and threading
Discussion forums and idea/proposal tools with endorsements and voting

Public Meeting Management

Scheduling, registration, and hybrid in-person/virtual public meetings
Automatic transcription of hybrid public hearings
Agenda, minutes, and attendance records
Live-streaming and online meeting registration

AI-Assisted Comment Analysis

Topic clustering and theme extraction across large volumes of unstructured comments
Sentiment and emotional tone analysis of community feedback
AI-assisted multilingual translation of comments and meeting transcripts
Meeting transcript summarisation with action-item extraction

Accountability & Analytics

Decision accountability tracker linking proposals to outcomes
Demographic representation analytics, including participation gap detection against census data
Centralised audit log linking every comment and meeting to a decision
Public-facing dashboards showing how feedback influenced decisions

Notifications & Channels

Multi-channel resident notifications (email, SMS)
Subscription management for residents to follow projects and meetings
Geographic (map-based) feedback and pin-drop tools
Accessible, mobile-responsive participant UI

AI-Native Advantage

Unlike incumbents that bolt AI features onto legacy suites, this platform is designed AI-native from day one. Real-time multilingual translation removes language barriers without additional staff; topic and sentiment clustering surface dominant themes and outliers in large comment volumes; meeting summarisation extracts action items from recorded sessions automatically; and predictive engagement analytics identify underrepresented communities and recommend targeted outreach. A conversational chatbot helps residents navigate public-comment processes, locate relevant meetings, and submit structured feedback.

Tech Stack & Deployment

The platform is intended to be deployable as either a self-hosted open-source instance (for governments with IT capacity) or a managed cloud option (for smaller municipalities). It targets WCAG 2.2 AA, ADA Title II / Section 508 accessibility, and aligns with NEPA/SEPA public-comment requirements and local open-meeting laws (e.g. the Brown Act). An OpenAPI-compliant REST API enables third-party integrations including GIS/Esri map embedding and ERP/finance systems.

Market Context

Citizen-engagement software is a fast-growing niche within the multi-billion-dollar e-government technology sector, accelerated by post-pandemic digitalisation of public participation. Entry-level tools run $5,000–$20,000/year, mid-market platforms $20,000–$80,000/year, and enterprise contracts with Granicus or CivicPlus reach $100,000–$500,000+/year. Primary buyers are city managers, planning department directors, communications officers, equity and inclusion coordinators, and elected officials' staff.

Project Status

This project is in the research and specification phase.
Contributions, feedback, and domain expertise are welcome.

Contributing

We welcome contributions from developers, domain experts, and potential users. See CONTRIBUTING.md for guidelines.

Important: All contributions must be your own original work or clearly attributed open-source material with a compatible licence. Copyright infringement and licence violations will not be tolerated and will result in immediate removal of the offending contribution. If you are unsure whether a piece of code, text, or other material is safe to contribute, open an issue and ask before submitting.

Licence

Licence to be determined. See discussion for context.