Overview
Our two-day workshop brought together 30+ participants from SORT-EU partner organisations, in-country recruitment and communication teams’ representatives across EU Member States, EU-level deliberative democracy practitioners – organisers of European Citizens Panels (ECPs), deliberative democracy organisations in Germany, and the City of Vienna. The purpose was to assess the current practice of democratic lotteries and collaboratively shape the OpenDLP platform, a tool being developed by the Sortition Foundation, to support recruitment and management of transnational and local Citizens’ Assemblies.
Day 1 began with a focus on understanding current practice. In the morning, participants introduced themselves and shared their experiences with democratic lotteries. Four storytellers presented concrete examples of how democratic lotteries function in their respective countries, during and after which the group worked collectively to map success factors and challenges encountered in these processes. During the afternoon, participants engaged in a series of open-space discussions, identifying what currently works well and where improvement is needed. These discussions evolved into a set of thematic insights and recommendations. Participants emphasised the need to improve processes for selecting recruitment locations, offer better support to individuals with special needs or fixed responsibilities such as farmers, and strengthen feedback loops between field teams and project management. They also reflected on the role of recruiters, suggesting the use of more visible identifiers like caps or clothing, simplified address-tracking systems that could include voice-message options, and the value of building national recruiter networks.
The group also explored ways to reduce refusals during recruitment, highlighting the use of visual materials such as photo booklets or images of previous Citizens’ Assemblies, the sequencing of outreach by distributing letters before door-knocking, improving how programme information is presented, revising FAQs, coordinating with local European Commission representatives, and ensuring that pocket-money is secured when needed. In relation to diversity, participants recommended engaging community multipliers to broaden outreach and showing short videos about Citizens’ Assemblies during recruitment conversations. Regarding citizens’ experience of the process, they identified the need to simplify invitation materials, strengthen the logistics’ providers team, conduct evaluations at multiple stages, develop an alumni network, maintain contact with individuals who were not selected, and systematically collect participant comments and feedback. Publicity also emerged as an important theme, with participants stressing the importance of sharing photos and stories to enhance public visibility, collaborating with local EC representations and news outlets, and providing updates on EC implementation and Citizens’ Assembly outcomes.
Day 2 shifted toward envisioning the future with OpenDLP, a platform being developed by the Sortition Foundation. The morning began with a plenary presentation introducing the OpenDLP open-source platform. Participants revisited the challenges highlighted on Day 1 and generated ideas for how digital tools could address them. Their questions focused on issues such as data ownership, privacy, security, user experience, multi-user environments, communication channels, process mapping, building trust with convenors, and ensuring transparency and accessibility. In the afternoon, breakout groups tested the platform hands-on, assessing its usability and exploring how it might evolve. A product demonstration stimulated further discussion on long-term capabilities for supporting recruitment and process governance for Citizens’ Assemblies.
Several key takeaways stood out across the discussions. Participants appreciated the platform’s multi-functionality, particularly its ability to integrate participant support with recruiter tools, and valued its potential to make practitioners more independent, processes more robust and transparent, and solutions more accessible and affordable, thereby lowering barriers to entry for newcomers. They also saw strong promise in the simplified integration of complex processes, which would make collaboration within larger consortia easier. Finally, they recognised the potential for the platform to serve as a learning tool by analysing data, enhancing sign-up rates, and reducing dropout ratios.