Din Riksdag is a project that aims at developing a platform to enable citizen participation around the activity of the Swedish parliament. It was started in January 2018 by Pierre Mesure, a young French immigrant as a first experimentation with digital democracy.
For centuries, Sweden has been a model of democracy with transparent institutions. It is also a remarkably modern country with excellent digital services. The parliament has set up a remarkable website riksdagen.se that provides anyone with a way to follow the debates and the vote of the laws. Unfortunately, there is no way for common citizens to interact with their representatives through this website.
The idea of Din Riksdag is to take advantage of the opportunities given by the Internet to give citizen participation a new meaning. Through the platform dinriksdag.se, citizens could discuss, exchange ideas and give feedback to their members of parliament. The two could also construct new articles of law together, making democracy more liquid.
What is dinriksdag.se?
dinriksdag.se is a digital platform based on Consul, an open source platform developed by the city of Madrid for its own use. It allows anyone to
- debate about the current discussions and projects of the Riksdag
- vote about the same texts and motions voted in the Riksdag
- submit proposals and seek support from other citizens to get your representatives to vote on them
- comment on draft legislation shared by members of parliament
The project is currently in early phase. The platform has been deployed and is already available online but a lot remains to do before it can welcome real debates.
Here is a high-level roadmap:
- Setting up a prototype - Done
- Onboarding beta testers and getting suggestions/feedback
- Deploying a functional version of the platform (translated in Swedish, appropriate login system)
- Opening debates and proposals to everyone
- Integrate Open Data from Riksdagen.se to allow people to work in context
- Open voting on actual parliament texts and motions to everyone
- Open draft legislation co-construction to everyone
Right now, everyone is welcome to join! I am working alone on this project and wouldn't mind some help!
More specifically, I am looking for:
- developers, especially if you have experience with Ruby on Rails
- designers, to give the platform a more personal aspect and a static website to explain the project
Even if you don't have any technical skills, you could help by:
- reaching out to your representative to ask if they would be interested in joining this democratic experiment
- translating the platform in Swedish (even a few words would help!)
- adapting the content of the platform to the context of the parliament
You can contact me at pierre.mesure@gmail.com.