Decidim Association
Organisation that represents the community responsible for the development and implementation of the online platform DECIDIM.
Decidim (from Catalan "let's decide") is a highly customisable and configurable (in functionality and appearance) civic tech platform. It has a wide range of different "participatory spaces" available - processes, assemblies, initiatives, consultations/voting, conferences/meetings - that can be customised with multiple components - proposals, debates/comments, meetings, surveys, voting, accountability/result follow-up - to serve the overall engagement process.
Decidim is a free and open-source solution supported by a community of developers. It was launched in 2017 from Barcelona City Council's participation ecosystem and it is used by 450+ cities and organisations worldwide.
At a glance
At a glance
| Website | |
| Contact | |
| Company | Decidim Free Software Association (Associació de Software Lliure Decidim), a non-profit association created in February 2019 to maintain the code and govern the Metadecidim community. |
| Country | Spain |
| Multilingualism | Interface is translated into numerous languages (documentation list Spanish, Catalan, Basque, Italian, French, Dutch, Finnish among core ones; 30+ additional languages via Crowdin collaborative translation). Admin content can be multilingual via tabs (manual translation). No automatic translation system implemented by default, but possible. |
| GDPR | Full |
| Accessibility compliance | Partial |
| Hosting | Self hosted |
| Licensing | Open source |
| Maximum Users | Designed as modular and scalable; supports multitenancy (one installation serving many portals). Proven at city scale (Barcelona) and at EU scale (Conference on the Future of Europe, 24 languages, ~5 million visits / hundreds of thousands of participants). |
Content & Features
Content & Features
| Analysis and synthesis of participants' contributions | No built-in AI/NLP synthesis. Synthesis is supported through admin/moderator tools: categorisation, merging of similar proposals, official approval/rejection workflows, weighted comment sorting, endorsement/vote tallies, statistics dashboards and accountability component; proposals/results/surveys exportable in CSV/JSON for external analysis. |
| Data ownership | Data ownership is with the organiser of the process. The project's ethos is citizen-ownership of data with open-data exports. |
| Moderation tools | Reporting by participants; global moderation panel and per-space moderator roles; hide/unhide content; block reported participants; moderation notification emails with direct action buttons. Moderation is primarily post-submission (reactive to reports); some pre-publication validation workflows can be configured (e.g. official approval of proposals). |
| User authentication | Custom registrationSocial media |
Potential
Potential
| Deliberative potential | Modular platform with the potential to organise different types of participatory process. The platform is composed by various components:
Beyond the default components, the Decidim community has developed additional modules to further expand the platform. |
| Scalability | Number of users depend on the server. Decidim is prepared to scale. It is possible to have multiple instances of Decidim with one installation of the platform. At the moment it is not possible to share the content between the different instances. Used at local (e.g., Barcelona), regional/national (e.g., Brasil Participativo federal planning), and EU level (e.g., Conference on the Future of Europe). |
| Observations | Developed using Ruby on Rails. Responsible web app (mobile first approach). Support provided if bugs are found and a patch is required. Recognised as a Digital Public Good (2023), OSOR Award (2023), Sharing & Reuse award (2019), Pizzigati Prize (2025). |
| Support provided | Documentation site (install/config/admin guides), FAQs, Metadecidim community support forum, Matrix chat, community meetings and annual Decidim Fest conference, training; optional paid support/development via third-party providers. |
| Data storage | Determined by the operator's hosting choice (can be self-hosted on the operator's own infrastructure, including in the EU; or with any cloud provider). |
| Licensing notes | Open source (free of charge): software under GNU AGPLv3; content CC BY-SA; data under Open Database Licence. |
| Security | Patches are regularly released (open source approach) and are easy to install. Regular releases of new versions. Security audit available. Emphasis on transparency, traceability and integrity of information; encryption support, including secure voting integrations. |
Related CITIZEN ENGAGEMENT records
Related CITIZEN ENGAGEMENT records
More information and links
More information and links
| Originally Published | Last Updated | 23 Nov 2022 | 30 Oct 2026 |
| Knowledge service | Metadata | Participatory and Deliberative Democracy |
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