Public participation in Germany is often slow, cumbersome, and leaves many citizens wondering whether their voices actually make a difference. At the Digital Democracy Lab, Jeannette Gusko and Leon Erichsen are building the technological infrastructure for a digital citizen participation stack. Together with public administrations and government institutions, they test this infrastructure in real-world applications under live operating conditions. These applications include Virtual Assemblies, Digital Citizen Hotlines, coordinated participation processes, and Quadratic Voting—formats designed to make public participation faster, more efficient, and more impactful.

Radical transparency and citizen empowerment are at the core of the initiative: listening to citizens, enabling them to shape decisions, and building bridges to public administration and policymakers so that participation leads to tangible government action.

The model is Taiwan, where public trust in government increased from 9 percent in 2014 to more than 70 percent in 2020 alongside the expansion of digital participation. The goal is to establish a new standard for citizen participation in Germany and across Europe—fast, efficient, and sovereign.