Periodic Reporting for period 1 - civiciti (CIVICITI: THE CITIZEN PARTICIPATION PLATFORM) Reporting period: 2018-09-01 to 2019-02-28 Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project Plataforma Civiciti, S.L. is an ICT company specialized in e-participation tools whose aim is to globally commercialise its main product: CIVICITI.Civiciti started business in Spain as the only e-participation platform in the market offering a secure e‐voting technology that can be instantly deployable, scalable, responsive, multilanguage and user-friendly. Civiciti cloud environment and App offers a simple and intuitive webpage where there is no need of downloading any software or having special hardware to use it. Our experience and first pilots in 2016 kept us improving the solution and providing the very latest participation innovations. Over the last two years, Civiciti has accrued more experience working with municipalities around the world and other organizations interested in engaging its users and promoting participation. This experience has fuelled everything we do, every product we develop and every project we deliver. Every feature in our portfolio has been created and it keeps improving thanks to our customers. The company strongly believes that a participatory solution able to combine independence with continuity, scalability, security, open data and exchange of experiences between public entities, has the ingredients required to achieve the craved result: closing the gap between representatives and citizens. After 2 years in operation, other private organizations found the cloud e-participation solution perfect to fulfil their engagement needs. A cloud platform with and easy, responsive participation and voting system for everyone expanded our initial segment and increased the scope of applicability. Civiciti has been successfully delivered in more than 100 projects worldwide, some of which represent breakthrough projects for the e-participation market. Our solutions have been deployed in over 9 countries across the globe, including Brazil, Spain, Argentina, Colombia, México, Perú and Chile. This innovative tool called CIVICITI responds to a global priority and concern, as it closes the expanding gap between citizens and governments, regaining trust and promoting engagement. Currently, public participation is regarded as the potential solution to rebuild the lack of trust in politicians, enhance democratic ideals and even improve the quality of political decisions as the systems functionalities are being redirected by the new digital era. At it is stated in the reflection paper on the social dimension of Europe: “Building confidence and trust is essential for progress, modernisation and openness to change”. CIVICITI responds to the global need and concern of building trust and promoting engagement between the citizenship and the public sector. The incorporation of ICTs in the public sector encourages a two‐way interaction and strengthen stakeholder engagement. In addition, it increases the will of citizens to participate in public affairs and the will of public administrations of receiving reliable feedback and optimize resources. It is also proven that e‐voting techniques increase the total turnout of citizen participation and are mainly used by new participants rather than just for convenience for those who were already mobilized. Online participation can increase public inclusiveness, trust in government, reaching minorities and accessibility.The company’s main mission is to reinforce participatory digital democracy, enriching the relationship between the users and representatives. Its vision is to be the global standard for digital participatory democracy. Based on a SaaS environment and using patented e-voting technology, CIVICITI is able to provide disruptive solutions to public institutions and private organizations regardless of their size. Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far Over the last months we have assessed the technical, commercial and financial viability of Civiciti to confirm the feasibility and expansion opportunities for our project. This study was made considering both geographical opportunities and product adaption to approach new market sectors. The feasibility study helped to validate our business model and expand our product to other sectors. We have performed a detailed market analysis and deep into the commercial potential of Civiciti in different markets. We have also better defined our market strategy, specify our target countries and set the geographical expansion strategy to start commercialization in the target countries in the following years. Finally, we have analysed our software to secure our freedom to operate and changes required (both product and operational) to succeed in those markets and expand to other sectors. Altogether, the feasibility study helped to validate and improve our business model, analysing our opportunities in LATAM, EU and North America, and confirm our diversification strategy to other sectors. Civiciti has acquired experience working with municipalities in Europe and America, increasing citizen participation in all its projects, and plans to expand worldwide, as our feasibility study concluded that it is possible to easily introduce our product to new countries in North and Latin America. Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far) The core objective of Civiciti has always been to improve engagement in organizations using the latest e-participation technology and know-how. Civiciti was created to help public administrations, organisations, companies and the overall citizenship to discover, discuss and take decisions about their issues of concern. In our first three years, we have already deployed Civiciti in different locations abroad with diverse cultures and profiles. We have helped small municipalities in their participatory innovation processes; private organizations to take important decisions and national governments to choose where to invest a part of their budget. Once we have already tested, deployed and improved our e-participation portal in these markets, our plans are to exchange our experiences with organizations abroad. Civiciti plans to further expand to other markets once the project objectives are achieved. Apart from the product improvement, which is constantly updated as inputs are received from customers, we are deep into a period of customer diversification. Following our validated diversification strategy our next features will be focused in these organizations planning to engage its users and promote participation. This is just a consequence of the modernization that the global industry is experiencing, with a rising demand of participation in every institution. As a result, the demand of the kind of the products we offer from private sector will be strongly increasing. Civiciti
