CONSUL DEMOCRACY is open-source software for digital citizen participation. Governments and civil society organisations use it to let residents take part in discussion and decision-making. The platform covers debates, citizen proposals, voting, participatory budgeting and the collaborative drafting of laws and regulations. The project is stewarded by Stichting CONSUL DEMOCRACY, which coordinates an international community of users, experts and developers. Organisations install the platform themselves or have certified tech partners do so; a demo environment is also available.
The foundation was established in 2019 and has its official seat in the Netherlands. The software is released under the Affero GPL version 3, so you can inspect, adapt and run the code yourself. No commercial cloud service from the foundation itself is mentioned; the data location is set by whoever hosts the platform, your own organisation or a partner. Choose a hosting provider within the EU if you want residents' data to stay under European jurisdiction, and agree responsibilities for operations and updates with your implementation partner in advance.