Consul in your municipality in 2 months

Consul in your municipality in 2 months

Consul Conference 2025

Introduction

Block 1: Key preliminary decisions

Block 2: Installation of Consul Democracy

Block 3: Strategic design of Participatory Processes

Closing and Questions.

Key preliminary decisions

What do I want / should / could I use CONSUL for?

Process

Legal

Tecnology

Who can participate where and how do I identify them?

census ?

census ?

collectives?

zones ?

age ?

Politicians ?

all processes =?

TEnants ?

Who does what?

participation area

political decision-makers

technical team

communication

Citizen Participation Area: leadership and decision-making on the deployment of actions on the platform.

Mayor's Office: any relevant aspects or potential impacts should be consulted and communicated.

Communication: planning of communication actions and media presentation of participatory actions

Technologies: collaboration to install on servers, coordination of access to census API, SMTP and SMS.

Network of people in charge of other municipal areas

Installation of Consul Democracy

CONSUL Setup

Run the installer

Create your fork

Custom features

Basic customization

Define infrastructure

Software updates

Maintenance & Upgrades

Update Frequency:

• Updates available every few months.

• Active project with continuous improvements.

Relevance:

• Keep the platform secure and up to date

• Incorporate new features and bug fixes.

2.2.1

2.3.0

v2.1.1

4 october 2024

29 january 2024

21 march 2024

v2.2.0

2.2.2

1 july 2024

15 october 2024

Strategic design of participatory processes

Define clear goals

What Is the Objective of the Process?

Before starting, it is essential to answer the question: What is the goal of the participatory process?

• Prioritizing neighborhood projects with social impact.
• Collecting proposals to improve public spaces.
• Creating a participatory budget with transparency and fairness.

Having a clear goal helps structure the process more effectively and define success criteria.

goals

Adapt or Customize?

Each municipality has its own participatory methods. Choose the best approach:

• Adapt to Consul

Use existing modules (proposals, debates, budgets) if the process fits its structure.

• Customize Consul

Adjust settings or add features if the process has unique needs. Key Questions: What should be kept or adjusted in Consul?Can Consul enhance the process methodology?

Choosing the most suitable process

Each process has its advantages depending on the context. Choosing the right one improves participation effectiveness.

Debates

Active listening to citizens

Citizens can express and share their opinions with others on topics of concern related to the city. It is also a space to generate ideas that, through other Consul sections, can be turned into concrete actions by the city council.

Proposals

Citizens can submit proposals to improve their environment and drive change in the city, gaining support and participation before potential implementation.

Selection

Submission

Support

Feasibility

Proposals gather support.

If they reach the required percentage of support, the citizen participation department evaluates their feasibility.

If the proposal is viable, it is marked as selected, and the voting process can be designed.

Citizens submit proposals and promote them.

Voting

Voting starts when a proposal gains enough support or the city council puts a topic to a public vote.

Key actions:

• Create surveys with proposals and multiple-choice options.
• Coordinate with other departments for specific consultations.

Collaborative legislation

Citizens participate in the development and modification of municipal regulations through a structured process with several phases:

Process phases

Preliminary debate:

The institution ask questions to gather ideas.

Proposals:

Citizens submit ideas or respond to predefined topics.

Comments:

The draft regulation is shared for public feedback and suggestions.

Follow-up:

The institution keeps citizens informed about the process status.

Participatory budgets

Citizens directly decide how to spend part of the municipal budget through a structured process

Process phases

Information: citizens are informed about the process and how to participate.

Proposal submission: any registered resident can submit initiatives.

Support: proposals gather citizen endorsements.

Review and evaluation: the participation department reviews proposals, and technical teams assess their feasibility.

Voting: citizens vote on the viable proposals.

Follow-up: the most voted proposals are implemented and monitored.

Involving key stakeholders

The success of a participatory process depends on collaboration between different stakeholders.

Political and technical leaders

Media and social networks

Define the regulatory framework and allocate resources.

Spread awareness and encourage participation.

Citizens and social groups

Implementation and facilitation teams

Contribute ideas and actively participate.

Oversee execution and process monitoring.

Successful communication and follow-up

A well-designed process needs an effective communication strategy to maximize impact.

Key elements of effective communication: 📄 Clear and accessible information: explain the process, its phases, and deadlines.📡 Appropriate channels: use social media, press, newsletters, and events.💬 Adapted messaging: use inclusive language and accessible formats for all audiences.🔄 Follow-up and feedback: continuously inform citizens and establish channels for participation and responses.

thank you!

Technology makes it easier, but real change depends on all of us.

Examples

SSO and OAuth for Montevideo

https://participa.montevideo.gub.uy

Urban Agenda for Benalmadena municipality

https://participa.benalmadena.es

CMS for Cabildo de Tenerife

https://cabildoabierto.tenerife.es

Reference

Consul docs

Examples

Montevideo

Generalitat Valenciana

Reference

Consul docs

Demo

¿Tienes una idea?

¡Que fluya la comunicación!

Con las plantillas de Genially podrás incluir recursos visuales para dejar a tu audiencia con la boca abierta. También destacar alguna frase o dato concreto que se quede grabado a fuego en la memoria de tu público e incluso embeber contenido externo que sorprenda: vídeos, fotos, audios... ¡Lo que tú quieras! ¿Necesitas más motivos para crear contenidos dinámicos? Bien: el 90% de la información que asimilamos nos llega a través de la vista y, además, retenemos un 42% más de información cuando el contenido se mueve.

• Genera experiencias con tu contenido.
• Tiene efecto WOW. Muy WOW.
• Logra que tu público recuerde el mensaje.
• Activa y sorprende a tu audiencia.

Prerequisites

Ruby

Git

Ruby on Rails

Postgresql

Image Magick

Servidores

Requisitos de sistema mínimos recomendados

Production server:

• Supported distributions: Ubuntu 22.04, Ubuntu 24.04, Debian Bullseye or Debian Bookworm
• RAM: 32GB
• Processor: Quad core
• Hard Drive: 20 GB
• Database: Postgres

Staging server

• Distribuciones compatibles: Ubuntu 22.04, Ubuntu 24.04, Debian Bullseye o Debian Bookworm
• RAM: 16GB
• Processor: Quad core
• Hard Drive: 20 GB
• Database: Postgres

If your city has a population of over 1,000,000, consider balancing your load using 2-3 production servers and a separate server for the database.

Create your fork

• Register a user account on Github if you don't have one.
• Create an Organization on Github with the name of your city or the organization that's going to use Consul Democracy. This is not mandatory, but it will help understand the fork's purpose and future contributions by other users.Fork Consul Democracy using the fork button on the top right corner at https://github.com/consuldemocracy/consuldemocracy
• Clone your fork repository on to your computer.

• Consul Democracy git repo is hosted at Github.com
• You can use another service such as Bitbucket or Gitlab; just put the link in the footer to your repository in compliance with the licence of this project (AGPLv3).