RadicalxChange is delighted to be a presenting supporter of Digital Democracy Edinburgh (DDE), which takes place in Edinburgh on March 11–12, 2027. We encourage our community to submit proposals by November 15.
On October 30, we held a workshop to help RxC community members develop ideas together. DDE curator Alex Parsons joined us to share more about the event and answer questions. Participants then jumped into breakouts framed around Danielle Allen’s description of representative institutions as a “spine” with three vertebrae—participation, decision-making and implementation—as prompts for discussion.
About Digital Democracy Edinburgh
Organised by mySociety with the Scottish Government and the Edinburgh Futures Institute, DDE asks how technology can strengthen democratic decision-making—not only defend democracy’s openness, but help people participate more meaningfully. As curator Alex Parsons put it, the conference’s central question is: “How can we use technology to reimagine democratic decision-making and build a more resilient democracy for the future?”
Alex described three strands:
- Building democratic technology considers the technical challenges, including open source, governance and working at scale.
- Democracy in the digital age asks how available technologies change the ways we can practise democracy.
- Embedding digital democracy around the world looks at how governments and other institutions can incorporate new approaches into their existing work.
These are not intended to be separate conversations: DDE aims to bring technologists, democratic-innovation practitioners and people in public institutions into the same room.
The conference has a practical emphasis. Alex said the organisers want to hear what people have tried, what they have learned, and the challenges of making approaches work. Forward-looking ideas are welcome, but he cautioned that there is likely to be less space for speculative submissions than for those grounded in research or practical experience.
Why RadicalxChange is involved
In opening the workshop, RxC’s Jess Scully described several questions that make DDE especially relevant to the RxC community: how participatory and deliberative processes can be open, transparent and auditable; how AI can play a constructive role with transparency built in; and how democratic practice can respond to the changes AI brings.
Jess also raised Reverse Alignment as a frame for democratic transformation, and the importance of work that has local resonance in different parts of the world, such as the Plural Stack. RxC is working on a number of session ideas alongside the DDE team and hopes to support community members in developing proposals that reflect their diverse global experience.
Developing proposals together
Our October 30 workshop invited participants to explore proposals through participation, decision-making and implementation: how technology can help institutions hear and use public input; how decision-makers can weigh that input and show its influence; and how institutions can deliver on decisions and remain accountable for the results. The framing encouraged participants to consider not just each part, but the connections between them.
The participation room asked how more people can contribute safely and how their input can become useful to decision-makers. Ideas ranged from anonymous but verified participation and crowdsourced fact-checking to adapting Pol.is and Taiwan’s approaches to municipal or national scale, and learning from traditional community wisdom practices.
The decision-making room took up an often-overlooked step: what institutions do with all that input. As AI agents make it easier to flood representatives with messages, the group looked at how tools like Pol.is distill thousands of submissions into a dozen or so perspectives and find bridges between them. Participants argued that decision-makers should show how they interpreted input, including views they couldn’t reconcile, because ignored input erodes trust. Two assessment projects came up: one checks whether participatory processes reflect what people said, the other evaluates how AI firms are governed.
The implementation room focused on moving democratic tools from pilots into real use. Participants named procurement, compliance and maintenance as the main barriers. They discussed making regulatory information public so citizens can hold institutions to account, and how new tools can earn trust before they are urgently needed. Europe’s rollout of digital identity came up as a timely opening for a participatory stack.
You can explore these ideas in more detail in our workshop notes. We’ve also created a Signal group to keep the conversation going. If you’re planning a proposal and want collaborators or a sounding board, join us there.
Practical guide: submitting to DDE
- Deadline: Submit your proposal by 23:59 GMT on November 15.
- Themes: Consider how your work speaks to building democratic technology, democracy in the digital age, or embedding digital democracy around the world. Presentations should be intelligible to a mixed audience of technologists, practitioners and institutional leaders.
- Formats: Individual contributors can propose a 15-minute presentation, grouped with related talks, or a five-minute lightning talk for a focused finding, problem, uncertainty or provocation. Organisations can also propose panels or workshops with multiple speakers.
- Choosing a format: Pitch the smallest format that does your idea justice; Alex said smaller sessions are easier to accommodate. Organisers may suggest another angle or format as they assemble the programme.
- What to emphasise: Evidence of impact, evaluations, practical challenges and lessons learned are especially valuable. Speculative ideas are not ruled out, but have less space in the programme.
- Access and support: DDE is primarily in person, but remote presentations are possible when travel is not feasible. Accepted speakers receive free tickets. Limited travel scholarships are available, with priority for applicants from eligible ODA countries; Alex also described a separate fund to support travel by speakers under 29.