INNOVADE Living Lab 2: Envisioning Digital Democracy
At the heart of INNOVADE's innovative approach to digital democracy lies its Living Labs, dynamic workshops that bring together citizens, government representatives, and experts alike to co-create better ways for communities to participate in decision-making. These Living Labs serve as creative spaces where diverse perspectives converge to shape the development of digital tools that make civic participation within digital democracy easier and more effective.
This Living Lab builds upon extensive research covering digital democracy definitions and theoretical frameworks, online participation mechanisms, open governance models, digital activism strategies, e-voting systems, enabling technologies for democratic participation, foreign interference risks, and global trends shaping the future of digital democracies. Participants will work collaboratively to transform these research findings into practical tools and frameworks that can enhance democratic governance and citizen engagement.
The event welcomes project partners, external stakeholders including democracy practitioners and civic tech organisations, as well as subject matter experts in digital governance and democratic innovation. Together, participants will contribute to developing the Interdisciplinary Knowledge Base on digital democracy and the Digital Democracy Grading Toolkit, creating actionable insights that inform future development phases and establish practical frameworks for implementing digital democracy solutions.
Taking place at Hotel Aspethera in Paderborn, Germany, this Living Lab will generate network connections with leading experts in the field, practical frameworks for digital democracy implementation, and a shared vision for the future of democratic participation in the digital age. The collaborative approach ensures that diverse perspectives are incorporated into final frameworks, creating solutions that are both innovative and implementable across different contexts while maintaining principles of inclusivity, ethics, and human-centred design.
Agenda
Day 1
| Time | Activity | Speaker |
|---|---|---|
| 08:30 – 09:00 | Registration Coffee | |
| 09:00 – 09:15 | Welcome Program Introduction | UPB (Christian Fuchs) BtH (Fatih Yilmaz) |
| 09:15 – 09:30 | Ice-breaker activity | BtH |
| 09:30 – 09:45 | Presentation – What is Digital Democracy? | Christian Fuchs (UPB) |
| FOCUSED VIEW – ASPECTS OF DIGITAL DEMOCRACY | ||
| 09:45 – 10:45 | Panel 1: Aspects of Digital Democracy
| Moderated by Fatih Yilmaz (BtH) Joel Museba (UPB) Laurien Coenen (KUL) Valentina Benincasa (CV) Berta Mizsei (CEPS, Belgium) Anastasia Kavada (University of Westminster, UK) |
| 10:45 – 11:00 | Coffee break | |
| 11:00 – 12:30 | WORKSHOP 1: Ideal Aspects of Digital Democracy This workshop focuses on the various aspects and dimensions of digital democracy, exploring their ideal-type features as well as their implications and Splitting into 3 groups, the workshop participants will create mind maps for on the three dimensions to identify ideal-type features and desirable aspects of digital democracy. The results will be presented and discussed. Facilitators (three groups): | ALL |
| 12:30 – 13:30 | LUNCH | |
| 13:30 – 14:30 | PANEL 2: Digital Democracy’s Global Trends and 10’ Global Trends that Will Define the Futures of Digital Democracies | Moderated by Christian Fuchs (UPB) H. Turner (BtH) |
| 14:30 – 14:45 | Coffee Break | |
| 14:45 – 16:45 | WORKSHOP 2: Digital Democracy’s Challenges This workshop focuses on how to deal with digital democracy’s challenges: disinformation/foreign information manipulation and interference (FIMI), authoritarianism, the power of big tech monopolies) Groups will discuss and formulate their own assessment of the challenges (digital) democracy faces and what responses and policies are needed to tackle them. Facilitators (three groups): | ALL |
| 16:45 – 17:00 | Day 1 wrap up and concluding remarks | |
| 18:00 | Dinner (Restaurant Bobberts, Neuer Platz 3, 33098 Paderborn) | |
Day 2
| Time | Activity | Speaker |
|---|---|---|
| GLOBAL VIEW – OPTIMUM DIGITAL DEMOCRACY | ||
| 09:00 – 09:15 | Recap of results from day 1 | UPB, BTH |
| 09:15 – 10:30 | WORKSHOP 3: Towards an Optimum Digital Democracy Participants will discuss how from a macro-perspective and global view, an optimum digital democracy looks like, what its most important features are, what needs to change in order to advance and achieve it. | Joint work on a shared document (1 page, to be published by INNOVADE as a policy brief on the website) Basic question: What is and how do we achieve an optimum digital democracy? |
| 10:30 – 10:45 | Coffee break | |
| 10:45 – 11:30 | The Digital Democracy Grading Toolkit As part of INNOVADE, a Digital Democracy Grading Toolkit (DDS: Digital Democracy Score) that helps assessing digital democracy projects/technologies will be developed. In this session, the basic idea will be presented and inputs on the design of the toolkit will be sought from the workshop participants. | Christian Fuchs/UPB (Facilitator) |
| 11:30 – 12:45 | Start-Up Meeting of Work Package 3 WP3 Advancing the State of the Art: Building Optimum Digital Democracies: presentation, discussion, living lab 2 | KUL, UPB, BtH, ICTLC, HC |
| 12:45 – 13:00 | Concluding remarks and wrap-up | UPB, BtH |
| 13:00 – 14:00 | Lunch | |