Speaking with Carolina Romero, the president of the Decidim Association.
Let’s start at the beginning. What came first, the Decidim platform or the Decidim Association?
The Decidim.org citizen-participation digital platform was created in 2017, using open-source, safe technology and with democratic guarantees, and the community that supports the project in all decisions. From the very beginning, the idea was to introduce democratic governance at all levels, but the need was increasingly seen for organising in a more formal way through a separate legal status. We studied various organisational models from other open-source software projects to consolidate our project and we finally decided that the best model would be a non-profit association. The decision to be a separate legal entity gave us autonomy with respect to Barcelona City Council, which promoted the project and continues to be one of its main driving forces. In February 2019, the Decidim Association was constituted.
What are the Decidim Association’s objectives?
Mainly to preserve and foster the social contract, which is what we call our Code of Democratic Guarantees and Democratic Collaboration. All the members of the community have to abide by the Social Contract.
The Association also has the mission of ensuring the stability and high quality of IT code and taking care of the project’s community.
What was the City Council’s input for the initial Decidim and what is its current input?
In 2016, Decidim was only a City of Barcelona platform. But in 2017, the platform’s code was completely rewritten and that rewriting enabled it to become a generic participation platform for any organisation.
At the start of the project, it only had input from Barcelona City Council. However, when the Association was formed (2019) and the platform was used by other organisations, such as Provincial Councils, the Government of Catalonia and the Localret Consortium, people then started to think about the project having a distributed governance. Up to that point, the City Council was entirely responsible for code maintenance, but when the Association was created Barcelona City Council, the Decidim Association and Localret signed an agreement to share this governance and represent various interests: the City Council as the project’s main promoter; Localret representing the other city councils in Catalonia and the Association personifying the organised community.
And what about budgetary support? Have the figures changed between 2016 and now?
The figures changed this year for the first time, although the project has received contributions from other institutions. In 2021, a second agreement was signed, establishing that Barcelona City Council and the Government of Catalonia is to make economic contributions (€50,000 each) to provide the Decidim Association with resources for building its own team, promote its road map and manage the main repository of source code. Previously, it was only a nominal association, but it now has funds, so that it can begin real professional activity.
This professional activity is presently focused on activating the community: we have hired someone to coordinate and act as a link between the community and the product team, in order to prioritise those specific developments that will most benefit the organisations that use the platform.
Can you tell us about any improvement?
For example, an installer is being built. Until now, a company or a programmer who knew Ruby on Rails was needed. Now that we will have an installer in coming months, it will be possible to lower costs and many small organisations who want to experiment with Decidim will be able to do so.
This professional activity requires revenue. In addition to public contributions, does the Decidim Association obtain any private income?
In addition to the contributions from the City Council and the Government of Catalonia, the Association’s only revenue comes from membership fees. The idea for 2022 is that the Association will start to offer services in order to generate other sources of income. This is a formula that still needs to be defined and debated. However, for example, one of the ideas is to offer consultancy: most institutions contact us as an Association and ask for information. And they often ask for technical support for the entire installation process and advice for implementing high-quality democratic processes. Until now, Decidim has not offered this service, but it used to recommend other companies. And one idea in the air is to offer an advice service for those processes.
Is the licence for installing Decidim open source?
Decidim is an open-source software project with an Affero GPL 3 licence. The only established obligation is that, if you make any improvements to the code, you have to publish them and share them with the rest of the community. But the Decidim Association does not charge for any licence or canon for its installation and use.
You speak about the Decidim community, which debates and proposes improvements to the platform. How is it organised?
Through MetaDecidim, which is another digital platform open to any individual or institution. The community includes universities, individuals, development companies, etc. The organisation’s channel is basically digital, although it has also held on-site meetings. Initially, the community was very local, confined to Catalonia, but with the onset of the pandemic, there were no on-site meetings, only digital ones, and the community expanded outwards.
Who is behind the Decidim community?
Above all, the largest profile is that of people who work on the project, such as participation specialists who wish to include improvements to the platform, or employees in companies that form part of the Decidim ecosystem. It should be noted that, at present, the Decidim Association does not offer services. If the City Council needs a service associated with Decidim, such as installation or advice on the design of participative processes, they need to hire a company that can carry out the installation or maintenance or provide the advice. And these companies are an active part of the community, as they are normally the ones who provide feedback and propose new developments. And then we have a third profile, which is not as active in the community, but which we aim to relaunch: the area of research.
In terms of figures, we currently have 5,000 participants registered on MetaDecidim: people who at some point have created an account and taken part. But now, there are about a hundred active ones. And 40 people are Association members. But it should be noted that Decidim is now being used in 30 countries and by over 350 organisations. This shows the scope of the community.
Is there a gender bias in the Decidim community?
Definitely! There are a lot more men taking part. There are currently 116 contributors to the Decidim code repository and only 12 are women, which is about 10%. In our favour, it should be said that we are a little above average in comparison to the open source ecosystem, which oscillates at around 6%. As this is a software project, we suffer from a significant gender gap, as happens in other technological communities. In order to reduce the gap, we have launched a programme, DecidimFemDev, to promote the presence of women who take part in creating the code.
And in regard to the origins of the community, as a growing, global community, Decidim has a mostly European focus, although we are starting to reach other countries in Latin America and Asia, such as Japan, for example. But our community is still very Eurocentric.
What are Decidim’s challenges for the future?
Firstly, to consolidate the second agreement signed with the Government of Catalonia and the City Council, and for other governments and institutions to join it. This would be a way to return to a common open source infrastructure sustained by its community of users. This is a middle and long-term challenge of sustainability.
The other challenge is one of scale. Decidim is becoming a digital standard for participation, and we have to enable mechanisms so that we can scale up in a sustainable way, consolidating the association and becoming an increasingly global community.