Delib is a private UK based ‘digital democracy’ company working on applications, strategies, and web based platforms for encouraging and facilitating open and participatory government and decision making.
Delib see a potential for ‘apps to act as the interface between government and citizens, seeing government as a platform which is enabled and optimised by an ecosystem of innovative apps.’
(Delib.co.uk)
Delib espouse the notion of government as ‘platform’. They figure government should identify problems and challenge the public to come up with solutions. Under their model the government then uses a series of applications facilitating open and participatory engagement in the problem solving process. These applications facilitate the crowd sourcing of solutions, open policy consultation and development, and budget simulation apps that demonstrate the pressures of competing revenue demands while the gauging public preferences for future spending. These and other custom applications provide an interface between interest groups and the bureaucracy who formulate and deliver policy and programs.
Delib began with the production of political satire site for the 2001 UK elections called spin.co.uk. In 2002 they worked on the first UK e-voting pilots in partnership with BT and Accenture allowing people to vote in local elections using the internet and SMS. In 2007 they won the BBC’s innovation awards for their argument visualisation application called aMap http://www.amap.org.uk/. In 2008 they worked with NAPA and the Office of Management and Budget in Washington DC. In 2009 the Obama Administration used ‘Dialogue App’ to run their first Open-Gov crowd sourcing project.
The Delib team have also produced a ‘Open Gov the Movie’ a documentary about the first 12 months of the Obama administration’s Open Gov initiative.
So far the Delib Suite of Applications include:
Opinion Suite : An open sourced suite of applications for managing and publishing information about every public involvement exercise, build consultations, and increase participation.
Dialogue App: Policy and Idea Crowd sourcing and ‘Ideation’ tool.
Budget Simulator: A tool for simulating the revenue demands and priorities in the development of governmental budgets and for facilitating budget consultation.
Quick Consult: Tools for building and running consultations and surveys.
Citizen Space: A tool for managing , organising and publicising consultations in one system
aMap: A beautifully designed online argument mapping application.
Delib is a business of ‘Team Rubber’ a private Creative Industry Incubator.