Madrid, 30 July 2019 – The “Think and Do Tank” CIECODE has taken first prize in an EU-funded competition to develop a software tool that aids citizen participation

The competition was organised by Access Info and its partners as part of the YOU4EU project, run under the EU’s Europe for Citizens programme.

The winning application “Personal Political Analyst” was developed with the collaboration of Open Government Chair of Polytechnical University of Valencia and the Valencia Provincial Council. It is a voice assistant built on top of Google Platform that allows queries and consultations of the electoral promises made by the different political parties in the general, European, Autonomous Community and local elections.

“It’s impressive to see the range of civic tech tools currently in development that make a genuine contribution to participation in decision making,” commented Helen Darbishire, Executive Director of Access Info.

“We congratulate CIECODE for this very useful tool that will help citizens hold elected politicians to their manifesto pledges,” she added.

The prize ceremony will take place in Zagreb, Croatia, on 27 September – one day prior to International Right to Know Day – and the winners will receive €2000 to complete development and launch the tool.

The other finalists after two rounds of selection by experts in both public participation and civic tech were Pin’em (anti-corruption tool, Croatia), Izbori_se (tracking law changes tool, Croatia) y “Easy Local Budget” (budget monitoring tool, Serbia) y Fix My City (service monitoring, Montenegro), along with another CIECODE project “Parliament 2030” (SDG tracking tool, Spain).

The other partner organisations are the Belgrade Open School (Serbia), Gong (Croatia), Institut Alternative (Montenegro) and PiNA (Slovenia).