A landscape of participatory platform architectures: Ideas, decisions, and mapping

Abstract

Digital platforms are suitable alternatives to help governments open policy-making and public service delivery to external ideas. Platforms are very flexible and customizable, which makes them effective for a variety of participatory purposes, such as co-creation, co-production, innovation, or transactions. However, this diversity makes it difficult to define how different technical designs could shape the performance of these platforms. Literature has described different types of platforms, based on their participatory goals, but we still do not know enough about the diversity of platforms in terms of technical design. To address this gap, we conducted a cluster analysis to find patterns in the technical design of 52 participatory platforms worldwide. We observed three main architectures: Ideas for the City; Decisions and Debates; and Mapping. These findings are one step forward to better understanding how digital platforms could impose certain dynamics on the participatory processes.