Valentin Chaput co-founded Open Source Politics to build open-source platforms that let citizens engage with institutions beyond the ballot box. In this interview, he explains why dedicated civic-tech tools matter more than ever, how the pandemic accelerated their adoption, and what it will take to keep democratic interfaces honest in the age of AI and algorithmic manipulation.
Nica: Before we get started, could I ask you one more time to say on the recording that you consent to this ethnographic interview being recorded and used for research purposes of our project, INTERFACED?
Valentin: My name is Valentin, and I consent to be recorded.
From Political Adviser to Civic-Tech Builder
Nica: Thank you, Valentin. I read about you and watched some of your YouTube videos in preparation for this, but for the purposes of a more complete interview, could you briefly introduce yourself and talk a little about your journey? You started out as a political scientist, right?
Valentin: Yes. I’m 38, and in France I studied political science. After that, I worked for a few years as a political adviser, first to a local mayor north of Paris, and then to a member of the Senate. So I was very much inside political life.
About ten or twelve years ago, I started reflecting on how digital technologies could be used to reinvent, or at least improve democracy: digital democracy, participatory democracy, those kinds of questions.
So around ten years ago, together with other co-founders, we created Open Source Politics, or OSP. At OSP, we have deployed, maintained, and developed different platforms and tools based on open-source software. You mentioned Decidim, but there have been others as well.
Over the years, we have supported a large number of projects, more than 200 different clients, ranging from small local authorities and medium-sized cities to the European Commission, and in some cases clients outside Europe as well. For example, the participate.nyc.gov platform in New York, where you are based, uses Decidim, and we also advised them on how to use it.
So our work combines both IT services such as providing open-source tools either as SaaS or on-premise software, and consulting, in many different forms: from framing participatory processes to, in some cases, analysing or evaluating the process and the contributions it generates.
For almost ten years now, we have been working in this field. We are one of the actors in the civic tech sphere.
Interface in Participatory Democracy
Nica: Thank you. As I mentioned, our project is called INTERFACED, and among the project partners we have a lot of lively internal discussions about what that word actually means.
So when I say interface, in the context of civic life — as a kind of connection point between citizens and power, or citizens and institutions — how would you define it?
Valentin: What strikes me is that digital technology always creates some kind of interface. Even between us right now, we are using a video-conferencing tool as an interface in order to see each other and interact.
And more broadly, participatory democracy itself creates an interface between elected officials, civil servants, the population, and different stakeholders.
What is interesting is that every interface comes with both constraints and opportunities. That is exactly why, at OSP, we place so much emphasis on open source. We believe that the way these interfaces are designed has a real impact on the outcome of the conversation.
That is why we promote open-source software like Decidim, but also, more generally, open discussion, even beyond the strictly digital aspect. So yes, I think interface is a very good and very interesting word for exploring participatory democracy and civic technology.
Nica: Do you think that a digital interface, platforms, apps, participatory tools, is simply a way of mediating communication? Or does something about it actually shape or transform how people can access power and institutions?
Valentin: I think the main purpose of these tools is to address a very practical problem. If we want active participation from citizens, the obstacle is often time, space, or both.
For example, if you have a city of 500,000 inhabitants, there is no way everyone can physically gather and each speak for three minutes on a given topic. Nor do you always have the physical spaces where people can meet and deliberate together.
So digital tools create an interface that helps solve those two problems. They make it possible for very large numbers of people — sometimes millions — to contribute.
Of course, much depends on the topic and on how the process is designed, because some issues attract more participation than others. But last year, for example, we saw a record-breaking petition in France on one of our platforms, with more than two million signatures in a short period of time.
Nica: Which platform was that?
Valentin: It was the platform of the National Assembly. There was a petition there against a new law.
Without a tool like that, there is simply no way to gather so many people in such a short time, to mobilise them, bring them into agreement around a shared position, and potentially have an impact. In that sense, digital tools clearly create an opportunity.
Now, do they automatically empower citizens? Probably they can, but it also depends very much on the people in charge. If decision-makers do not use them well, if they do not respect the rules they themselves set for participants, or if they do not take into account what comes out of the platform, then it remains just a tool.
In that sense, it can be distorted or used in a non-performative way.
I think these tools are not neutral. The choice of tool is political, and the way it is used is political as well. The tool itself is still just a tool, but depending on how it is developed and used, it can become a very powerful one.
Nica: That makes sense. In a democratic or participatory process, what does access to power mean to you? Is it influence over decisions, agenda-setting, oversight, or something else?
Valentin: I think it depends, because there are many different kinds of processes. And sometimes a platform can support all of those things.
It can be about agenda-setting, as in the case of petitions. It can be about finding the best possible answer to a complex problem. It can be about identifying the best projects, based on popularity, comments, or endorsements from the population.
So yes, it can mean many different things. It can also simply be about bringing people together to discuss, deliberate, and improve their understanding of a complex issue. Or it can be about setting the agenda, or shaping the options that are available. I do not think it is limited to one single form.
Digital Tools as Mediators of Access to Power
Nica: All right. In your work with Decidim and Open Source Politics, what are some examples that stand out to you where citizens effectively interfaced with power through non-electoral participation?
Valentin: What is interesting is that Decidim can be used in both a top-down and a bottom-up way.
On the top-down side, we have supported many public consultations on a wide range of topics. One of the most innovative examples at the time was the Citizens’ Convention on Climate in France in 2019. There, 150 randomly selected citizens worked on the issue and developed proposals. At the same time, we used the platform so that anyone else, civil society organisations or individual citizens, could also contribute ideas. There were limits on the number of ideas each person could submit or support, but still, it created a form of collective intelligence responding to a top-down invitation to participate.
On the bottom-up side, one of the strongest recent examples was the very large petition last year in France, which had enough impact to change the legal process. It led to this controversial bill being referred to the Constitutional Council, the closest equivalent we have to a supreme court in France.
I think we have some very good examples.
At the local level, we have also done a lot of participatory budgeting, which is a very concrete way for citizens to influence how their neighbourhood, their street, or their school develops, how public money is used and how collective decisions shape those spaces.
There are many different approaches, and many different kinds of success. But if I had to highlight a few examples, I would mention the petitions and the Climate Convention, because the latter really was a milestone and one of the first initiatives of its kind in that field.
The Evolution of Civic-Tech Infrastructures
Nica: You have been involved in civic tech for quite a long time now, right?
Valentin: About ten years, yes. A bit more.
Nica: Yes, that is a long time, more than a decade. I’m curious about your broader historical perspective. How have the tools that enable this kind of non-voting civic participation evolved over time? And I’m especially interested, as we all are, in the Covid and post-Covid period, because of how much that transformed life online for many of us.
Valentin: Yes, of course.
What I always find interesting is that, at the very beginning of what came to be called civic technology, the term itself was being used quite broadly. I think it came from a report by the Knight Foundation in the US around 2013. At that time, the category included many different kinds of tools, even things like Uber and Airbnb, because they were understood as peer-to-peer tools for connection and sharing. They were being considered part of that civic-tech landscape. Obviously, that is not what we usually mean by civic technology today.
If we focus more specifically on citizen participation, democratic innovation, and institutional transparency, which is also very important, what is striking is that ten years ago we still tended to think of Facebook and Twitter as the public spaces of the internet. They were seen as places where revolutions could begin, where large-scale political discussion could happen, and where people could engage publicly on almost any issue.
And when we started Open Source Politics, that was before the first election of Donald Trump, before Brexit, which of course had a major impact in Europe, before Cambridge Analytica, and before the transformation of Twitter into what it later became. A very different landscape.
Over those ten or twelve years, I think we have learned that dedicated tools are important because they can recreate a public space that is protected from advertising.
We should mention also all the mechanics that can be harmful to public participation.
I think these dedicated tools have improved in that sense. The problem is that they may still be too elitist. We have seen thousands of people use them, but it is still only a minority of the population, almost everywhere. It remains difficult to bring certain groups of people to these tools. That is always a challenge. We have some answers, but it is never really enough.
And yes, we definitely saw an acceleration during the Covid period, because before Covid many people did not take these tools very seriously. Then, during Covid, they suddenly realised they needed them, because it was no longer possible to organise public gatherings in schools or in any physical infrastructure. So we needed video conferencing, forums, voting platforms, all of it.
There was a real change. Ten years ago, I think we were probably also a bit naive about what technology could bring.
Then Covid came, and that was a paradigm shift. More people, and especially more institutions, began to see the need for civic-tech tools.
And now I think we are at another turning point, because of AI, which is again changing the landscape and the forms participation can take. We have already seen a lot of spam accounts publishing on these platforms, and they are becoming more and more sophisticated. We cannot always know whether something comes from AI, from a spam account, or from a real user. Of course there are ways to check, asking for identification, or requiring specific forms of verification, but those solutions also create new barriers to participation.
There have really been different periods, and it has been interesting to watch that evolution.
At the same time, the core structure of the tools is not radically different from what we were doing ten years ago: proposals, surveys, meetings, votes. But now the use is more mature, perhaps more profound. We know better how to use them, and the main difference is that more people and more institutions are now using them.
Pandemic-Driven Innovation
Nica: As a kind of historical follow-up, because then I want to ask you about AI, do you remember any digital civic tools or participatory formats that had a kind of boom during Covid, but then did not really stick around afterwards? Things that seemed promising at the time, but were maybe limited to the pandemic moment?
Valentin: What we saw with the tools we know and work with was that during Covid they were often used in order to reflect on broader social change, almost on changing the model of society itself. There was a great deal of energy around that, and a lot of interest in using these tools for those purposes.
But I think much of that energy faded once people returned to what felt like normal life.
Nica: Can you be more specific about that? What do you mean exactly?
Valentin: For example, during Covid in France, almost every provider wanted to launch its own consultation about what should come next after the lockdowns, after the pandemic.
I am talking about the civic tech providers. Different platforms tried, either through their clients or in their own name, to launch these kinds of consultations.
And in the end, we had this kind of collective effort to make sense of all the ideas and contributions that were coming from different sources and different tools. There was a real energy around trying to invent something new, although it probably did not last.
That would be one example.
Another example, in terms of technologies that we imagined would become more developed, is Clubhouse. I never quite remember whether it was during Covid or just after, but there was this idea of opening rooms where people could discuss anything. It was like a social network based on open discussion rooms. There was a huge hype around it. And I think it is no longer really working, or at least we do not hear much about it anymore, at least not in France.
That was also part of this broader moment, I think: the idea of reconnecting through digital tools, speaking again, discussing with strangers or with well-known people, but around specific topics. I do not know whether it still exists in any meaningful way, but it was definitely part of that period.
Nica: When you said that every provider wanted a consultation, and that later there was this kind of exchange or synthesis of ideas, did you mean there was some sort of civic tech conference or summit? Where was that energy actually happening?
Valentin: No, it was not targeting professionals. It was targeting the public.
For example, a member of parliament might open a platform to collect ideas. A platform provider might create its own campaign around its own tool. Local mayors in the countryside also launched initiatives. There is also an association of local municipalities, and they started a joint platform to show what Covid was like in their own realities, which were often very different from those of the big cities.
At the same time, there were many different platforms. And it was also, of course, a way for competitors to show that their platform could be relevant.
It was a very specific moment.
Nica: You mentioned that there was a lot of energy around imagining what kinds of society might be possible. What kinds of ideas or visions were actually circulating on those platforms?
Valentin: I think there was a great deal of concern around climate change. We had many processes around climate issues, and I would say it was one of the most discussed topics, even in institutional processes using civic tech tools, over those years.
There was also a lot of reflection around quality of life, around what feels meaningful. That makes sense, because Covid changed our daily lives so profoundly, and people began reflecting more deeply on that.
Then there were also questions around mobility, the use of digital tools, and the more usual topics that can be either local or global concerns.
Over the past two or three years, I would say the focus has shifted more toward AI, the impact of AI, and the governance of AI. We have also seen more and more debate around technology more broadly, for example censorship on social media or age limits for social media use.
So those are the topics we see more now. During Covid, by contrast, the focus was much more strongly on climate change and on quality of life.
Artificial Intelligence & Democratic Participation
Nica: Speaking of AI: in something I either read or watched with you, maybe a podcast, maybe Project Liberty, maybe Democracy Innovators, you said that AI should be part of conversations about new technologies and about solutions that could empower people.
Could AI be considered a promising new interface? And if so, in what ways? How do you think about it?
Valentin: I think AI is already here. I am not sure it is, in general, a good thing. I also see a lot of limits to it, especially in terms of environmental impact, but also social impacts and the inequalities it can reinforce.
But it is here, and it can also help digital democracy services. There are different ways it can be used.
First, it can help inform citizens better. One of the constant tensions whenever we launch a consultation is whether people are informed enough about the issue or project to contribute meaningful ideas. AI can help by summarising large amounts of information into something more digestible.
That is a first kind of assistance it can provide.
Second, it can help people draft better contributions or develop their ideas more clearly. But I do not really see this as just an individual person interacting privately with AI. What I find more interesting is how AI can support collective processes.
We have already seen that with other tools: like Dembrane or DeliberAide, and a few others, where in-person discussions can be summarised and supported by AI. That is very interesting, because those collective inputs can then be fed into a digital consultation.
That would be a second step.
Then, of course, AI can also help with analysing contributions. One of the big challenges in public consultations is that if you ask people to contribute, you have to do something with what they say. At the very least, you need to respond to their concerns, identify patterns, and explain what is being done with the contributions. That means actually reading them.
And when you have thousands of contributions, that can be extremely time-consuming and very complex. AI can assist a lot in that area.
So overall, I see AI as useful for summarising in-person conversations, making complex information more accessible, and helping analyse large numbers of contributions. In those ways, it can really have an impact.
And of course, I do not mean generic generative AI used to produce useless content or so-called “slop videos.” But when it is used wisely, I do think AI can become an interesting new interface.
Barriers, Enablers, and the Future of Participation
Nica: What do you think are, on the one hand, the biggest barriers, and on the other hand the biggest enhancers, of accessibility and engagement in civic-tech interfaces?
Valentin: I think there are some fairly classic answers to that.
First of all, these platforms are just tools. They do not create participation by themselves. If you want a consultation to work, you still have to reach people, mobilise them, and attract them to the tool. You have to make sure they actually come in and go through the process.
The first barrier is often that institutions do not communicate enough, or are not close enough to people, to attract a wide enough range and diversity of participants. In that sense, the real challenge is communication, mobilisation, and community organising. The tool itself is not magical.
On the other hand, I think there are also groups of users for whom these tools are especially useful. Some people do not usually participate physically, do not vote, and do not join parties or local debates, but they are connected digitally and are able to use online tools. In that sense, civic-tech platforms can help bring in new people and draw them into discussion and decision-making.
So again, it is not neutral. You have to build communication and mobilisation around the tool if you want it to succeed.
Then, on the side of the tool itself, accessibility matters a lot. The more you can simplify access, for example, by avoiding overly complicated log-in systems, the better. You also need a clear call to action, and the process has to offer people some real power, real impact, or at least a sense of agency.
And finally, it is very important to follow up with people: to provide feedback and let them know what happened with their contributions. That is essential.
At this point, I think it would be very difficult to run participatory processes at scale without digital tools.
Nica: That makes sense. I was reading some of your writing and listening to podcasts with you, and I saw you say something interesting about Decidim. You said that it was originally developed according to a certain vision of what a participatory platform should be. But now, ten years later, there are things it does not do, and it would be useful to think about what we actually need now — in 2026, and also looking ahead five years.
I would love to hear more about that. What do you think we need now, and what do you think we will need in five years, in terms of these kinds of interfaces?
Valentin: I think one thing we need is for these systems to become more robust in detecting what actually comes from real citizens.
Nica: As opposed to bots or AI?
Valentin: Yes, bots, AI, or coordinated manipulation. We have seen this before: people sharing the same content, promoting the same proposals, or coordinating votes in order to influence the final decision. In French we often talk about this through the concept of astroturfing, creating the illusion of grassroots participation while actually manipulating the process.
We need stronger protection against that.
The problem is that doing so usually requires stronger authentication systems. And authentication itself becomes a barrier to participation, because people then have to prove their identity, provide ID, or go through verification steps. So it is a complicated issue.
More broadly, I think these technologies should become much more embedded in everyday local life. At the moment, more and more projects use participatory platforms, but they still remain quite institutional. That can make them feel abstract, or not concrete enough, for many citizens.
Ideally, they should become part of daily life. Since people already have their phones with them, maybe participation should become as simple as being able to access your city’s or your state’s platform directly, record your voice, film something in your environment, upload it with your identity attached, and receive feedback almost in real time.
Something like that could make participation much more immediate.
We have also worked a lot on the question of interoperability between different platforms. The idea is that if different systems use the same data formats, then contributions coming from different places can still be analysed under the same standards. That would allow us to move away from siloed participation spaces and toward a more global conversation on a given topic.
For example, we could compare contributions from different sources, or add new layers of information on top of ideas that already exist, instead of starting from a blank page every time there is a new policy, a new mayor, a new election, or a new consultation.
Because that is what often happens now: institutions reinvent the wheel every single time they launch a consultation, even though online participation has already been around for more than ten years.
I think we need to get much better at making sense of the data already produced through these tools. And that data can come in many forms: voice, written contributions, maps with geolocated ideas, surveys, and many other kinds of interaction.
In that sense, what we really need is a toolbox, something flexible that can combine all these different interfaces and use them together.
And ideally, participation should become a habit. If these tools are used regularly, and not just occasionally, then people become more familiar with them, the barrier to participation drops, and participation becomes more systematic.
At the same time, all of this only makes sense if the space remains safe from manipulation, bots, and excessive external influence.
Nica: I have two closing questions. First, is there anything you would like to add — perhaps an important question about interfaces, civic participation, or open technology that I have not raised? And second, are there other people or experts you would recommend I speak to about these topics?
Valentin: There is one concept I have always loved, although it goes back maybe ten or fifteen years. I think there was at least one pilot project based on it, and for me it really captures what an interface can be.
There were experiments with physical portals connecting different cities through live video. So, for example, in the main square of one city you would have a portal-like installation, and it would broadcast what was happening live in another city, in another country. It became a kind of window or gateway to that other place. Sometimes the connected city would even change from day to day.
For me, that is a very powerful interface, because it allows people to experience diversity directly, to encounter difference in a very immediate way.
Nica: I think we actually have something like that in New York with Dublin, or with some Irish city.
Valentin: Yes, I think there have been several pilots of that idea. It was proposed quite a long time ago, but I still love the concept. I would really like to see more of it.
Another example of a technology or initiative we have not mentioned, but which makes a lot of sense to me, relates to the fact that many people today are experiencing loneliness. Taking part in decision-making or deliberation can also be a way of connecting with other people.
There is an initiative, I think it started in Germany, called My Country Talks. We had a pilot of it in France last year or perhaps two years ago.
The idea is that you answer a survey, and then you are matched with someone else from your area who has different opinions from yours.
Nica: Different political opinions?
Valentin: Exactly. And the point is that you have to meet in person. You are also given a kind of discussion guide. So you meet someone else, probably with different views, and through that real-time conversation you develop social skills and deliberative skills.
I really think it is an answer to many problems. You are connected through a tool that can basically match different profiles.
Nica: I can totally see how it helps develop deliberative skills. Would you say that this kind of tool or setup is an example of a more horizontal participatory-democracy interface?
Valentin: Yes, I think so. And it is not only institutional. It could also be organised by civil society itself.
Nica: Yes, absolutely — peer to peer.
Valentin: Exactly.
As for other people you might want to talk to, it depends on whom you have already interviewed. But I think it could be useful to speak with people who organise campaigns using political tech, because that is a closely related field — not exactly the same, but part of the same family. These are tools for organising and mobilising people, running campaigns, and so on. That could be an interesting angle to include in your analysis.
Otherwise, I would suggest connecting with either Dembrane or DeliberAide, who are developing AI tools to facilitate in-person discussions.
Nica: That would be extremely interesting for us. So these are organisations, Dembrane and DeliberAide are developing AI tools to facilitate in-person discussions?
Fantastic. If we get in touch with them, would it be okay to say that I learned about them from you?
Valentin: Yes, absolutely.
Nica: Thank you so much for your time. This has been so helpful. And if you would like access to the video of the interview or the transcript, we would be happy to provide it. We post a public version on the platform, and then a working version for our ethnographic coding.
I really appreciate your time. This was extremely interesting and useful.
Valentin: Thank you.