assembliesto

assembliesto is a digital collaboration platform that was designed to facilitate large‑scale, real‑time participatory decision‑making. The system combines features of online assemblies, decision‑support tools, and interactive record‑keeping into a single web interface. It was launched in 2018 by the open‑source collective OpenGovLab, after a series of workshops held in Barcelona and Berlin that aimed to streamline civic engagement in local government. The name assembliesto is derived from the Italian word “assemblea” (assembly) and the suffix “‑esto”, a playful nod to the phrase “this is” in English; the developers intended the platform to embody the notion of “assemble these decisions”.

Key features of assembliesto include a voting engine that supports ranked choice, approval, and approval–disapproval voting; a live debate forum where participants can schedule synchronous discussions; and a decision‑tracking module that links proposals to policy documents and leads to transparent reporting. The platform also integrates with standard office productivity tools, enabling users to paste documents, spreadsheets, and images directly into proposals. The interface is multilingual and offers an API for custom extensions.

Since its release, assembliesto has been used in pilot projects in over a dozen municipalities across Europe, as well as in a consortium of NGOs in East Africa. Research published in the Journal of E‑Governance found that communities utilizing assembliesto experienced a 30 % increase in procedural transparency and a 12 % rise in voter participation compared to traditional town‑hall formats. The platform remains open source under the MIT license, and a community forum hosts user tutorials, plugin repositories, and a discussion board for developers and civic technologists.