Robert Bjarnason, President, and Gunnar Grimsson, CEO, Citizens Foundation, Reykjavik, Iceland.

1. Citizens led urban planning
Lessons from Reykjavik and elsewhere
Gunnar Grímsson - Robert Bjarnason - citizens.is
Helsinki - June 2016

2. Citizens Foundation Vision
Citizens must have a strong voice
in policymaking with
formal and persistent participation
in the political process
citizens.is

3. Your Priorities
● Helps people to have real influence
● Allow large groups to speak with one voice
and organise with ideas
● Free hosting for your community and
groups at yrpri.org
● Open source eDemocracy software
citizens.is

4. citizens.is
Better Alamance

5. Your Priorities highlights
● We’ve had over 700.000 unique visitors
since 2008
● It scales well and is easy to translate and adapt
● Estonia, Australia, USA, UK, Romania, Slovenia,
Hungary, Croatia, Iceland and elsewhere
citizens.is

6. Interface inspires debate
● Points for and against are in different
columns which makes it hard to argue
● This encourages rational debate and positive points
instead of negativity and personal attacks
● Minority and majority views have equal
weight which helps facilitate consensus
citizens.is

9. Better Reykjavík
citizens.is
● Opened a week before the 2010 elections in
Reykjavik, independent of political parties
● Over 40% of voters participated, 8% added
content and over 1000 ideas were created
● The Best Party needed a policy and shouted out:
‘Come to Better Reykjavik to tell us what to do’

11. Better Reykjavík
citizens.is
● Formal collaboration with the city of Reykjavík since
2011, hundreds of approved and realized ideas
● Over 70.000 people have participated with new ideas
being processed every month
● Currently working with Reykjavik City
on our future of citizens participation

12. Idea generation in our PBs
● We use Your Priorities to collect ideas from citizens
● Ideas from citizens are often different than
ideas from city authorities, ‘out of the box’
● It’s for the citizens and with the citizens
citizens.is

13. citizens.is
Better Alamance

14. New version of Your Priorities
● A complete code rewrite using state of the art Web
Components, Polymer and Material Design
● Greatly simplifies application development
and integration with other websites
citizens.is

15. citizens.is
Better Alamance

16. citizens.is
Better Alamance

17. Placeholder
citizens.is

18. ● Works smoothly on mobiles and tablets
with app-like behaviour
● All tasks at your fingertips using standard
Google Android Material Design user interface
citizens.is
Mobile native

19. What are we gaining?
● A modern standards based software
environment that improves productivity
● App like experience on mobile
○ Mobile usage is now 42%, was 12%
● Better user experience which
increases participation and quality
citizens.is

20. Improved participation
● Around 70% of visits are from FB sharing
○ Ideas go viral
○ Participation has doubled since 2015
● Bounce rate is down to 18% from 48%
● Ideas are more interesting, better thought
out and images illustrate them well
citizens.is

21. Better Neighbourhoods
● Participatory budgeting in Reykjavik,
capital of Iceland from 2011 to 2016
● 300 million ISK (2+ million EUR) each year
○ 450 million ISK in 2016
● Ideas from citizens on how to improve
the neighbourhoods of Reykjavik
citizens.is

22. citizens.is
Best Practice 2015
Better Neighborhoods won the
Nordic Best Practice Challenge in
category 1 "Public Communications"
“The aim of the project is to improve the
quality of the inhabitants surroundings.
Through this inventive project, the residents
are offered influence beyond what is
normally seen in a representative
democracy.” More...

23. Better Neighbourhoods process
1. Citizens submit their ideas
2. City of Reykjavik evaluates their cost
3. Citizens vote on the ideas
4. City of Reykjavik executes them
5. Citizens use the results
citizens.is

24. citizens.is
Better Alamance

25. citizens.is
Better Alamance

26. Citizens process in voting
● It’s a binding vote in four steps
a. Authentication
b. Choose a neighbourhood to vote in
c. Choose projects to vote for
d. Vote
citizens.is

27. Screenshot from authentication
●
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28. Educating citizens having fun
● Each voter has the same budget amount as the total
and chooses which projects she wants to vote for
● Our e-voting software teaches
citizens the realities of budgeting
● It must be fun and rewarding to participate
○ We’re competing with Facebook etc.
for people’s time and attentioncitizens.is

29. Screenshot from authentication
●
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30. Screenshot from authentication
● A screenshot with a few projects chosen and some grayed out
citizens.is

31. Screenshot from authentication
● A screenshot with a few projects chosen and some grayed out
citizens.is

32. PR and marketing
● PB projects will fail without good marketing
● Social media campaign must be
planned and monitored constantly
● Traditional media can support online marketing
but does not work on it’s own
citizens.is

33. Voting integrity ensured
● Separate well defined roles with
different entities responsible for each
● Voting fraud impossible except through a
conspiracy of at least two entities
● External experts do a security audit every
year, before, during and after the voting
citizens.is

34. In general
● 420 ideas have been approved by citizens
in Better neighborhoods from 2012 - 2015
● The vote is electronic, binding and secure
● All neighborhoods of Reykjavik have been
improved visibly through Better Neighborhoods
citizens.is

35. Placeholder
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36. Placeholder
● Needs photos from executed projects, collage
in one slide
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37. Placeholder
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38. Disseminating PB experiences
● We’re partners and advisors in PB projects in many
countries, amongst others:
○ Croatia, Slovenia, Hungary, Spain and
Scotland
● All mix online and offline processes, we
supply software, processes and expertise
citizens.is

39. Thank you
Róbert Bjarnason - robert@citizens.is
Gunnar Grímsson - gunnar@citizens.is