Terminology

Term	Explanation
Concepts
Consultations	Consultative actions where citizens can provide their thoughts, opinions and ideas about any planned decision or about some ongoing project. Consultations may include debates, discussions, surveys, votings, or other participative actions.
Co-creation	Collaborative creative action where citizens can plan or formalize something together such as working on a proposal or idea that interests multiple people. Co-creation includes meetings, discussions and collaboratively authoring documents that describe the proposals or ideas in question.
Participatory budgeting	A set of collaborative actions where citizens can collaboratively decide about budgets. The citizens are given the power to decide how the budgets are spent by allowing them to propose ideas, create project plans through co-creation and vote about the actions to be taken with the available budget. The voting can be arranged either by allowing each citizen to utilize the budget as they wish or by providing the citizens the ability to indicate their preferences on which ideas, plans or projects they like the most.
System
Component	A set of features that can be added to a participation space, allowing participants to interact with the system or allowing administrators to add valuable information related to the participation space. Every component displays as its own tab within the participation space for the participants. Every component is different and can provide different features for participants and administrators.
Dashboard	A section of the platform, where content and records of the website can be managed. The dashboard can only be accessed by administrator users.
Participation space	A space where participation happens. Participation space gives the general structure for participation and components can be added under any participation space.
Users
Administrator	A user managing the platform and everything within it, such as content, users, permissions, moderations, etc. Administrators have the permission to access the dashboard where different sections of the platform can be managed. Administrators can also be given different roles with different administrative permissions.
Participant	A user who uses the platform as a citizen. Participants can use the different participation features of the platform, e.g. by proposing their own ideas, commenting on current topics or other people's ideas, participating in debates, voting in active votings, answering to surveys, etc.
Participation spaces
Assembly	A space where a group of people can gather together to discuss about common topics or to address some issues that the group feels needs to be discussed together. Technically assemblies are similar to processes but they do not have phases, start time or end time. Assemblies are always open for participation and do not work in cycles or phases like processes.
Process	A space for participation which has a specified structure consisting of process phases. Every process has a start and end date as well as a specified goal on what to achieve during the specified time frame.
Process phase	One or multiple process phases define the structure for a process and how it progresses over time. The structure should communicate to the participants what happens during each phase. It is a good convention to define the process phases already when the process is created in order to make it clear for everyone what happens during that process. If the phases are changed when the process is ongoing, the experience may be confusing especially for participants.
Process group	A group of multiple processes which can be used to create a hierarchical structure for example based on the topics of the processes or the areas of the city.
Components
Accountability	Allows publishing a list of results or projects for the participants to see. For example, the projects to be realized from a participatory budgeting voting or some ongoing projects within a city that need input from the citizens in form of a citizen consultation. Participants can comment on the projects and follow the implementation of each project or "result".
Budgets	Allows participants to vote on which projects to be implemented with a given budget. In this component, administrators of the process can setup budgets and add projects within each budget for the participants to vote on. The budget voting can be implemented either by allowing each participant to utilize the budget based on their preferences or by allowing the participants to select a number of projects that they like the most.
Page	Allows adding content pages within the participation spaces. Content pages allow adding, for example, information or guidance related to the participation space.
Proposals, ideas	Allows gathering proposals or ideas from participants. Participants can propose their own ideas which can be later evaluated by the administrative employees. Other participants can endorse other people's proposals, comment on them and give supports for different proposals. Administrators can evaluate the proposals and give official answer for them which defines whether there will be any action taken on the given proposal.

Introduction

Participation spaces

Processes

Participation

Administration

Content definitions

Processes

Participants

Components

Proposals

Budgets

Accountability

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