CivicEvolution is an online public utility to help citizens influence their communities by collaboratively developing proposals to solve problems.

The structured dialogue process of CivicEvolution leads participants through problem definition, brainstorming alternative solutions, analyzing pros and cons and making and defending a recommendation. Within each step participants engage in a process of dialogue, brainstorming, collaboration, and deliberation.

CivicEvolution is a flexible platform for engaging citizens and stakeholders in truly collaborative and deliberative community problem solving.

CivicEvolution goes far beyond the typical inform and listen model of consultation and engages stakeholders in small teams that start with dialogue and strive toward detailed, actionable proposals. We have designed and hosted a number of important projects in the U.S. and Australia.

CivicEvolution hosted the Australian Citizens' Online Parliament

The first ever Australian Citizens' Parliament was held February 6-9, 2009 in Canberra, Australia when 150 randomly selected Australians met for 3 days to answer the question: "How can Australia's political system be strengthened to serve us better?"

CivicEvolution designed and hosted an Online Parliament from mid-October to mid-January. Over 300 randomly selected Australians signed up and more than 100 were active through out. The detailed proposals they developed helped form the agenda for the February event. 11 of the 12 proposals developed online and deliberated at the Citizens' Parliament were adopted in their final recommendations to the Prime Minister, Parliament, and the media.

The Citizens' Parliament recevied a Special Recognition Award from the IAP2 in September 2009. Learn more in the video below and visit http://www.citizensparliament.org.au/

CivicEvolution designed and hosted an online engagement for the Countywide Community Forums in King County WA.

Countywide Community Forums is designed to make democracy more user-friendly and to bring the public forum to your kitchen table, neighborhood, and workplace. Over 1800 Citizen Councilors are registered and making their opinion count while building stronger connections to their community.

John Spady, Deputy Councilor Coordinator, approached CivicEvolution to give the citizen participants greater say in the development of the forums. He recently praised CivicEvolution:

Your CivicEvolution environment provided the opportunity for our Citizen Councilors to fashion statements and questions that have contributed to our final Opinionnaire® survey on the topic of Public Safety: Law and Justice. I am happy to recommend your environment to other organizations with a need to involve people at the front-end of a collaborative process. With earlier involvement comes a greater sense of personal investment in the final results.

CivicEvolution designed and hosted an online engagement for the National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation in mid-2008

NCDD engaged in an innovative online dialogue at CivicEvolution to explore how can we leverage the 2008 NCDD conference in Austin to make some real progress on some of the major challenges facing the D&D community. Members of the greater NCDD community were invited to join together, using an online platform for dialogue, deliberation, and action planning, to determine how they can make progress on seven major challenges facing the D&D community.

CivicEvolution designed and hosted an 8 week online deliberation assignment for a Participatory Planning class at Curtin University in Perth, Western Australia.

Ninety-one students formed 16 teams to develop detailed proposals for Curtin University's Sustainable University City project. Students were tasked with developing proposals that address a planning problem or opportunity related to the Sustainable University City concept. Each proposal was required to define a problem or opportunity, consider options for planning a response, evaluate the pros and cons, and plan how to involve the public in deliberations on these options.

Over an 8 week period, 91 students made 2286 comments, brainstormed 1000 ideas, and refined their proposals to include 430 key points.

CivicEvolution is in the midst of an important redesign

We will start hosting new projects in February 2010. If you would like more info, please email us at info@civicevolution.org

Here is a short video demonstrating a recent design of CivicEvolution.