Tools for Digital PB in Scotland

This resource will highlight some useful digital tools which can support a Participatory Budgeting process. Some of the software tools identified below are ‘All in One Platform’ which means that they support the PB elements of ideas generation, deliberation and voting.

Other tools support each of the separate elements and can be combined to support the whole PB process.

Want to learn more about Digital PB? Check out our research.

All in One Platforms

The digital tools below are ‘All in One Platforms’ which have been developed for a variety of purposes including democratic participation, consultation, and Participatory Budgeting. A lot of these tools can be very similar in functionality and choices are often made based on the design-ease, purpose of the process. These software options often have an attached cost (licence and support) or are open-sourced which means that there may be management or development cost to use the software effectively.

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Social Pinpoint

A comprehensive engagement platform - it features an ‘ideas wall’, a detailed map for plotting ideas, and simple or knapsack style PB voting.

Your Priorities

Your Priorities is an open source online idea generation, deliberation & decision-making social networking platform

Participation 21

D21, is a participatory budgeting platform, formerly Democracy 2.1, is a voting system for PB

CitizenLab

A comprehensive paid (and partly open source) engagement platform, which includes modules for ideation and voting.

Participare

Participare is a tool which provides a do-it-yourself like participatory budgeting platform with idea generation, commenting and voting functionalities.

DecidM

DecidM is free open source tool, meaning anyone with the right skills can freely use

Consul

Consul is an open source tool, meaning anyone with the right skills and hardware (server) can freely use and adapt the code to set this up themselves.

Individual Software tools

The tools presented below support the separate elements of Participatory Budgeting – these are:

Idea generation tools
Deliberation tools
Voting Software

These tools are typically lower cost or free and slightly easier to set up and use than the bigger ‘all-in-one’ PB platforms which require more design thinking, dissemination and moderation. You might use these tools in smaller groups at an event (in-person or online) and so could require less moderation on them but may require some ‘back-end’ work by pulling out and sense-making the information collated from them. The software can be combined to provide a whole solution.

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Whiteboard on Zoom

Zoom is a video conferencing platform and has a whiteboard function within it.

Menti-Meter (idea generation & deliberation)

Create interactive presentations & meetings, wherever you are

Slido (idea generation & deliberation)

Slido is an easy-to-use Q&A and polling app

Padlet (idea generation & deliberation)

This digital notice board is able to feature images, links, videos, and documents, all collated on a "wall"

Miro Board

Miro is similar to Jamboard in that participants can use Post-It notes to put comments on the board

Google Jamboard (idea generation & deliberation)

Jamboard is a virtual interactive whiteboard that can be used collaboratively to mind map and share ideas.

Voting Tools

Tools that enable online voting. Verification, transparency, anonymity, and security are key features for this. There can be a lot of difference between different voting tools. It’s important to strike the right balance between these considerations, cost, and the ease of participating in your process.

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Survey Monkey

SurveyMonkey is online survey software that helps you to create and run professional online surveys, quizzes, polls.

Open Active Voting

An open source PB voting tool, featuring knapsack voting where you divide the budget between projects you want to support

Google Forms

Google Forms has a survey administration software included as part of the free, web-based Google Docs Editors suite offered by Google.

PB Stanford

An open source voting tool. It allows several different ways of voting, including ‘knapsack’ voting, where you split the fund between different projects to vote.