The latest edition of our Digital Participation Tool Ratings evaluates 30 comprehensive tools that have been used to support digital participation all over the world. This year’s ratings offer more information and insights on each tool to help you select a suitable tool for your context and needs. We also researched how AI tools and features fit into the current digital participation landscape. 

For the last four years, People Powered has been committed to providing governments and organizations with digital participation guidance, to enable people leading participatory programs and citizen engagement efforts to effectively select and use digital participation tools by providing guidance and ratings for tools. These ratings are the latest edition of the evaluations first launched in 2022. Further guidance about how to use these tools is available from our Guide to Digital Participation Platforms and Online Training on Digital Participation.

With the influx of digital platforms, it can be challenging for government staff, civil society and non-governmental organizations, and others to find accessible and relevant practical information for choosing a tool. This is why we’ve developed this resource — if you’re looking to engage your community through a digital platform, these ratings are for you and your team! Use these as a guide when you are considering whether a tool: 

  • Is cost-effective,

  • Is reliable and appropriate for your context and program,

  • Requires and/or provides technical expertise to be used effectively and efficiently,

  • Offers support,

  • Offers the features you require,

  • Is accessible for your community, and 

  • Is ethical in its data use, protection of personal information, and content moderation.

How to read the ratings

The ratings below showcase digital participation tools across a range of criteria to help you decide which might be the best fit for you. To further explore the ratings, you can use the filter and sort functionalities to view and compare platforms. You can filter the ratings by languages, countries, features, participatory democracy (PD) processes, and more. You can also sort based on overall platform score and platform name, when sorting by overall score, click “Last - First” to sort the platforms. Click on the cards to view detailed information about the tools.

Use these functionalities to sort the platforms by the categories or criteria that are most interesting to you! For an in-depth explanation of the platform scores, explore the Understanding the Ratings page.

Note: Access the ratings on desktop for the best viewing experience. Accessing the ratings on mobile may not give you the option of using the filter and sort tools or a complete viewing experience currently.

 

Special mentions

New this year: Other tools to consider

Based on our findings, we have also included additional tools that we found valuable, these are some of the leading participation and deliberation platforms leveraging AI, however, they haven’t been rated by our committee yet. They may be considered in the next rating process, but we wanted to share them now because we believe they’re worth exploring.