When People are excluded from the decision making process their chances to improve their lives are very low. Creating governance systems that are transparent, open and inclusive can pave a pass towards improvements in many aspects of life. Institutional corruption can be reduced by implementing and practicing public participation in decision making processes. To do that on a large scale we need decentralized tools that will be efficient, secure, user friendly and trustworthy.

Our Solution

Consenz is a tool that opens a way to address large crowds, get their advice, and listen to their ideas without being overwhelmed with noise. It does this by focusing the discussion on one document that has been edited by all users, in a democratic manner. The users can vote for alternative text suggestions, comment on them, and publish suggestions of their own. The process is based on an automatic algorithm that calculates the level of consensus that the document as a whole achieved during the discussion.

Consenz is designed to:

• Increase democratic values in the daily work of the political system and other organizations
• Amplify the voice of communities from different socioeconomic backgrounds in policy shaping that impacts their life
• Give a powerful collaborative tool to civic society organizations
  
  

Consenz has been used in public participation processes by municipalities and NGOs in Israel, and by doing so helped to create the processes of decision making to be more efficient, more transparent, while widening the circle of citizens that choose to take part in them.

Our solution offers a simple and intuitive application that gives users a new way to express their views on matters that impact their lives, and gives policy shaping institutions a new way to hear the public and respond to them.