PERYCLES

PERYCLES is INNOVADE’s sister project, funded under the same call, with which it has collaborated from the outset to advance digital democracy in Europe. Together with AI4Deliberation, the projects have co-organised a cluster webinar and jointly participated in the AI, Big Data & Democracy Task Force, combining efforts to share knowledge and foster synergies. PERYCLES addresses the urgent need for evidence-based methods to design, assess, and validate digital democracy technologies. While public authorities and civil society increasingly turn to digital tools to enhance citizen participation and policy legitimacy, existing technologies often fall short of delivering inclusive, scalable, and responsive democratic infrastructure. PERYCLES seeks to fill this gap by developing an open-source platform for democratic deliberation that can be applied across local, national, and transnational levels. The project adopts a first-of-its-kind interdisciplinary approach, integrating democratic theory, social sciences, and computing. Its main outputs will include principled assessment methods for digital democracy solutions, open-source implementations that meet these standards, and a library of best practices and recommendations for digital democracy practitioners, citizens, and policymakers.