Decidim
Barcelona's open-source participatory democracy framework — proposals, assemblies, participatory budgets — governed by its own community under a social contract. The current standard for serious digital participation.
Decidim ('we decide' in Catalan) was born at Barcelona City Council in 2016 to run the city's participatory action plan, and was rebuilt as a general framework: modular pieces for proposals, assemblies, participatory budgeting, consultations, and strategic planning. It now runs Barcelona, Helsinki's OmaStadi, New York's Participate NYC, Brasil Participativo, and the European Commission's citizen-engagement platform, and spread through Japan from the small city of Kakogawa to dozens of municipalities.
Two things make it more than software. First, its governance: Decidim is stewarded by a free-software association through its own participatory community (Metadecidim) under a published Social Contract — the tool for democracy is itself governed democratically. Second, its hybrid DNA: the best Decidim deployments pair the platform with physical assemblies and street-corner support points (see the Barcelona neighborhood-budget story on this shelf).
AGPL-3.0, Ruby on Rails, very active. Self-hosting is real work — a neighborhood would borrow a hosted instance or an ecosystem provider — but the *patterns* (proposals with thresholds, assemblies with minutes, budgets with ballots) remix at any scale.
Neighborhood remix: a single-neighborhood Decidim with one assembly (the block association), one budget (the yard-sale fund), and proposals capped at what's buildable in a weekend.
Details
- maker: Associació de Software Lliure Decidim (Barcelona)
- hosted: self-host or ecosystem providers; no official free tier
- license: AGPL-3.0
- ctfg url: https://civictech.guide/listing/decidim
- repo url: https://github.com/decidim/decidim
- image url: https://texakzqqenzpxawktbgx.supabase.co/storage/v1/object/public/studio-library/tool-screenshots/decidim-2026-08.jpg
- remix idea: One assembly, one small budget, weekend-sized proposals.
- practice kind: tool
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Build prompt
Build: A Front-Porch Digest for One Block
A starter build: fork Front Porch Forum's constitution, not its code — real names, one geography, one email a day, a rotating…
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Build prompt
Build: A Living Asset Map
A starter build bridging both new shelves: an asset-based community development map where the assets are neighbors' own declared gifts,…
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Build prompt
Build: A Third-Places Map for Your Neighborhood
A starter build: a local Ushahidi — neighbors collectively map the porches, stoops, cafés, courts, and corners where the neighborhood…
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Build prompt
Build: Adopt-a-Thing for Your Block
A starter build: the Adopt-a-Hydrant pattern, remixed — a map of small civic objects (tree wells, storm drains, benches, little libraries)…
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Build prompt
Build: Participatory Budgeting for a Very Small Budget
A starter build: run real participatory budgeting on a block association's actual money — propose, develop, vote, do — sized so the whole…
Contributed by Decidim Free Software Association (born at Barcelona City Council; Xabier Barandiaran & Arnau Monterde among the founders) · decidim.org
Original source: https://decidim.org/
See something to fix or add? Suggest an edit on GitHub — the commons lives in git too, and its history is the changelog.
local-civic-techcivic-tech-toolparticipatory-democracyparticipatory-budgetingopen-source