Democracy for the Internet Era

In April 2012 a group of activists, entrepreneurs, students and hackers got together in the city of Buenos Aires with a simple question in mind: What is democracy for the internet era? Many of the so-called modern democracies still run the same way they did almost two centuries ago: as citizens we only get to interact with the political system once every couple of years. In an era where online access starts to become commonplace around the world, we are aware of how the internet changed the way we work, communicate and relate with each other. But politics and governments haven’t changed at all. So we set out to find a reliable way to hack the system.

Our first step was to create an open source, free software with an easy user experience for citizens to get informed, debate and vote on every single bill presented in Congress. DemocracyOS evolved to become one of the most used platforms for collaborative decision-making and it got translated into 15 languages. It has been used in Tunisia to debate its national constitution; by the Federal Government of Mexico to develops its open government policy; by the youngest parliamentarian in Kenya to consult his constituency or the Congress of Buenos Aires becoming the first experience on digital democracy in the American continent.