When people speak about Democracy and the Internet, they often stop at the ‘online voting’ concept. This is unfortunate, because there is a wealth of ideas and innovation that is lost daily by ignoring the power of web 2.0.

Enitiatives.org, a brainchild of LIFT '06, is a direct democracy platform which makes it possible for each citizen to freely express his political and legislative opinions and to be informed of the actions carried out in his political neighborhood.

In Switzerland, this site facilitates the dialogue and the debate before the “official” launching of an initiative, and makes it possible to profit from the “collective intelligence” of the whole population. Outside of Switzerland, this site allows citizens to become real actors of the political life instead of just simply electing representatives.

One can see it like an accelerator of democracy, or a forum to express complaints towards the government.

The site brings three fundamental innovations:
1. each citizen can create an Enitiative, on the 3 political levels: federal, cantonal or communal. There is no longer any need to go through political parties to bring an idea into public discourse. The community can profit from the ideas of all citizens.
2. it is not a simple forum on the Internet: Enitiatives supported by the majority of the members will be followed by an action. The government also benefits from it, because it sees what the people want, before the situation degenerates. And one can discuss better on the Internet than on the streets…
3. citizens can be better informed of the political life of their country, thanks to search agents, which send emails to the interested members each time a new Enitiative is created, according to individually defined criteria.
4. The site generates a dynamic, snow-ball effect which will multiply citizen involvement: those coming on the site for a specific Enitiative will see others relevant to them. Thus, each citizen will take part more in political life than with the current system.

This type of system could be used in many different settings, including
• National deliberations
• Global deliberations, e.g. about war, peace or the environment
• Commercial innovations, to allow anyone to bring new ideas to the industry

The site already exists and the purpose of this workshop is to present general concepts, the site and how it works. Then, there will be a significant amount of time for discussions, especially
- how to bring it to the next level
- promotion
- financing
- development