Consul in your municipality in 2 months

Consul in your municipality in 2 months

Consul Conference 2025

Introduction

Block 1: Key preliminary decisions

Closing and Questions.

Block 2: Installation of Consul Democracy

Block 3: Strategic design of Participatory Processes

Key preliminary decisions

Legal

Process

Tecnology

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

Who can participate where and how do I identify them?

census ?

census ?

TEnants ?

all processes =?

Politicians ?

age ?

zones ?

collectives?

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

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

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

Network of people in charge of other municipal areas

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

communication

participation area

technical team

political decision-makers

Who does what?

Installation of Consul Democracy

Software updates

Custom features

Run the installer

Define infrastructure

Create your fork

Basic customization

CONSUL Setup

2.2.2

15 october 2024

Relevance:

• Keep the platform secure and up to date

• Incorporate new features and bug fixes.

Update Frequency:

• Updates available every few months.

• Active project with continuous improvements.

Maintenance & Upgrades

2.3.0

29 january 2024

2.2.1

4 october 2024

v2.2.0

1 july 2024

v2.1.1

21 march 2024

Strategic design of participatory processes

goals

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.

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.

Active listening to citizens

Debates

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.

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

Proposals

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

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

Citizens submit proposals and promote them.

Selection

Feasibility

Proposals gather support.

Support

Submission

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

Key actions:

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

Voting

The institution keeps citizens informed about the process status.

Follow-up:

The draft regulation is shared for public feedback and suggestions.

Comments:

Citizens submit ideas or respond to predefined topics.

Proposals:

Process phases

The institution ask questions to gather ideas.

Preliminary debate:

Collaborative legislation

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

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

Voting: citizens vote on the viable proposals.

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

Support: proposals gather citizen endorsements.

Proposal submission: any registered resident can submit initiatives.

Process phases

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

Participatory budgets

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

Implementation and facilitation teams

Oversee execution and process monitoring.

Media and social networks

Spread awareness and encourage participation.

Citizens and social groups

Contribute ideas and actively participate.

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

Involving key stakeholders

Political and technical leaders

Define the regulatory framework and allocate resources.

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.

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

Successful communication and follow-up

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

thank you!

Reference

Consul docs

SSO and OAuth for Montevideo

https://participa.montevideo.gub.uy

CMS for Cabildo de Tenerife

https://cabildoabierto.tenerife.es

Urban Agenda for Benalmadena municipality

https://participa.benalmadena.es

Examples

Demo

Generalitat Valenciana

Montevideo

Consul docs

Reference

Examples

¿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.

Image Magick

Postgresql

Ruby on Rails

Ruby

Git

Prerequisites

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.

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

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

• 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.

Create your fork

• 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).