Civic technologies are on the rise. But is everyone being heard?

Civic technologies are having a moment. Digital tools and civic apps are becoming increasingly part of how citizens interact with institutions, express opinions, contribute ideas, monitor public action, and participate in collective decision-making. What began in the early 2000s as a rather experimental field driven by civic hackers, activists and “participation enthusiasts” has grown into something much bigger. A recognisable civic-tech ecosystem now brings together public institutions, technology companies, civil society organisations, foundations, researchers and open-source communities.

The scale of this expansion is striking. The Civic Tech Field Guide lists more than 12,700 curated projects, tools and organisations worldwide. Code for All, founded in 2013, has grown into a global network of 31 civic-tech organisations. The Association Civic Tech Europe (ACTE) highlights its rapid market expansion, and a recent OECD report points to the emergence of a “fourth age” of civic tech, in which artificial intelligence (AI) and other emerging technologies are opening a new phase for the field.

The promise is compelling. Civic technologies can make participation more accessible, easier to scale, and less dependent on being in the right place at the right time. AI and language technologies can take these possibilities further: enabling contributions in multiple languages, supporting translation and simplification, clustering and summarising large volumes of input, and helping facilitators and public authorities make sense of complex qualitative contributions.

But the real promise goes beyond making participation more efficient. It is about who gets to participate, whose voices are heard, and who has the opportunity to shape civic and democratic spaces.

A recent European Parliament study examined the use and impact of 94 digital participation tools from around the world, identifying a familiar gap: technology can facilitate participation without necessarily making it inclusive or meaningful. This is at the core of the IDEAL project (Inclusive Democratic Engagement and Language Technologies in Europe). 

Imagine a deliberative space where one participant speaks Arabic, another Spanish, another French, another German, and another Dari, and everyone can participate in their own language while understanding what others are saying. For people who have previously been excluded by language, this matters enormously. It can change who is in the room, opening up participation to people and communities who are often marginalised or underrepresented.

But is this enough?

AI can translate our words. It can help us understand what others are saying. It can make a conversation technically multilingual. But…can it translate the social and cultural conventions through which participation happens? And ultimately, does being able to enter the conversation mean that we are equally able to shape it?

Access is not the same as voice

Some of the most important barriers to inclusive participation are not visible in the interface. They are social, cultural and institutional. Think about gender, language, disability, migration, age and socio-economic background. These dimensions can shape who participates, how they participate, and whether they feel able to make their voices heard. But also think about something much less visible: participation cultures.

Assumptions about who is entitled to speak, how disagreement should be expressed, whether questioning authority is acceptable, what counts as a legitimate contribution, or whether participation in public institutions feels familiar and meaningful can vary considerably across social and cultural contexts. For some, expressing an opinion publicly or challenging an authority may feel natural. For others, it may feel unfamiliar, inappropriate, risky, or simply “not for people like me.”

Two people can therefore have access to exactly the same platform and experience the possibility of participation very differently. One may immediately post an argument. Another may hesitate because they are unfamiliar with the conventions of public debate.

One may know how institutions work. Another may not know what will happen to their contribution once they submit it. One may feel confident disagreeing with someone perceived as an authority. Another may interpret disagreement as inappropriate or risky.

This is where intersectionality becomes much more than a conceptual label. Barriers to participation can overlap and reinforce each other. Language can intersect with gender; migration experience with digital literacy; age with confidence; disability with platform design; cultural expectations with the norms of deliberation itself.

A technically accessible platform can therefore still reproduce unequal participation.

The next frontier is to develop a deeper understanding of the complexity and multiple dimensions of inclusion in cross-cultural participation. The challenge is not only to make sure that people can enter the conversation, but that those who enter are heard, and pay attention to another dimension that is easy to overlook: the civic space itself.

Beyond the platform: building participation ecosystems

A project launched in May 2026 by the OECD draws attention to the importance of civic spaces where people feel that their views matter, and where institutions listen and respond. This shifts the question from how people enter a conversation to what kind of space we create for that conversation. What does it take to create civic spaces where people can express disagreement in different ways, tell their stories, present evidence, build trust, or work towards common ground? And what role can civic technologies play in such spaces?

A digital platform can provide the technical infrastructure for participation, but it cannot by itself create the conditions for meaningful engagement. What happens around the platform matters just as much: the social and cross-cultural needs, institutions that convene participation, the organisations and people that connect different communities, the rules that shape interaction, and the ways in which contributions are interpreted, mediated and taken forward.

IDEAL takes this broader view by co-creating its tools within an ecosystem of actors, relationships and practices that can help bridge institutional, social, cultural and linguistic differences. Intermediaries can play a particularly important role here. Community organisations, civil-society groups, facilitators, researchers, local institutions and other trusted actors can help people navigate unfamiliar participation processes, build confidence, articulate concerns, and connect individual experiences with collective deliberation.

It’s true: civic technologies are on the rise.

The next challenge is not simply to build more civic technologies, but to build the ecosystems that make meaningful participation possible.

by Mónica Edwards-Schachter