Note: Anna Wohlfarth co-wrote the initial Participedia case on BürgerForum Europa.

The Citizens’ Forum is a new form of participation developed by the Bertelsmann Foundation, the Ludwig-Erhard Foundation and the Heinz Nixdorf Foundation. It is a 6-8 week online deliberation embedded in two live events, one at the beginning of the process and the other one at the end. This article describes the second edition of the Citizens’ Forum Europe.

In 2012, the City of Canada Bay Council proposed an innovative method of deliberative democracy  to obtain the advice of citizens in making decisions for the range and quality of council services for the period 2014-18. With this in mind, the Canada Bay Council partnered with  groups such as Straight Talk and newDemocracy to create a panel of 36 randomly citizens. This group worked in parallel to a randomly selected group of council staff.