Who we are

CitizenLab is made up of a dedicated team of innovators, strategists, and technologists committed to bringing democracy into the 21st century.

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In 2023, our team focused on elevating our product to new heights, emphasizing inclusivity and operational excellence, more than ever.

We released 23 new features in 2023 to supercharge inclusive engagement and operational excellence amongst open democracy practitioners!

In 2023, we placed the voices of our client community and their residents at the forefront, using their insights as our guiding star to shape our product roadmap. By blending client feedback and industry trends, we ensure our developments align closely with the needs and expectations of engagement practitioners. The product developments focused on a few core themes, including:

Operational excellence

to ensure that busy, resource-strapped local governments could maximise their efficiency and impact with the help of technology.

Flexibility

so local governments could create projects and pages that match their unique contexts.

Lowered barriers to engagement

offering community members ways to engage with their local government more easily and to kick off more inclusive, longer-term engagement journeys.

Impact on decision-making

to ensure that community members’ engagement efforts had an impact on the decisions made through responsive governance.

Our enhanced Events feature, for instance, significantly boosted engagement: 54% of event attendees had never contributed to their local authority's consultation before and 46% participated in other projects! This is the result of significant updates: simplifying sign-ups, enhancing promotion and discoverability, and facilitating better communication to maintain participant engagement.

We've also brought anonymous verified participation, expanding voting methods, as well as improving discussion follow-up capabilities to our platform. These enhancements are crucial in meeting residents at various stages of their engagement journey, whether they're just developing an interest in a topic or are ready to actively vote on an issue.

Irene Pedruelo, Product Manager

Blended engagement

to embrace the growing need to offer both offline and online participation opportunities for local governments committed to inclusive and equitable community engagement.

We are working to make the link between events and consultations stronger by strengthening our offline/online input collection mechanisms, via features like Form Sync, which will help transform opinions and input by residents captured offline into actionable online insights via OCR technology. Now, offline and online participation can both easily become part of analysis, reporting, and decision-making!

Irene Pedruelo, Product Manager

A handful of the features that we released in 2023 to support these core areas included:

AI Assistant Socrates
(operational excellence)

An AI-powered analysis tool to create better insights, faster, across the vast amounts of textual and quantitative data collected during the consultations our clients host with residents all over the world.

Voting Methods (lowered barriers to engagement)

We enhanced our voting toolkit by developing various methods for governments to engage with residents, gathering input on priorities through voting and option analysis. Whether it’s the simplicity and accessibility of Approval Voting, the expressive power of Cumulative Voting, or the financial responsibility of Participatory Budgeting, each method offers unique value for a variety of decision-making scenarios.

Improved Citizen Proposals method (impact on decision-making)

Historically, proposals - often also referred to as petitions - have played a crucial role in facilitating bottom-up participation and allowing residents to influence the local government agenda. In collaboration with the City of Copenhagen, we have enhanced our Proposals method, leading to the development of co-sponsorship and better moderation capabilities. This equips local authorities with the necessary tools to understand gaps in their policy agenda while also managing expectations effectively.

Team gatherings

Our team is made up of 26 nationalities, and as a globally dispersed team, we work remotely. We’ve found it’s important to connect in person throughout the year to maintain our transparent, connected team culture and also dig deeper on important topics that need workshopping. Here’s a snapshot of how we got together in person in 2023:

Certifications

Each year we evaluate which external certifications we want to uphold our commitment to social impact and to maintain a world-class product. Here’s a snapshot of three certifications we focused on:

B Corp Campaign in March 2023

Since becoming a Certified B Corporation in 2022, we engaged with the community by participating in B Corp Month via an impact campaign with our team and clients.

Cyber Essentials Certified in April 2023

We became certified to give clients peace of mind regarding how we protect ourselves against potential major cyber attacks.

Renewed ISO27001 Certification in August 2023:

We renewed this certification to confirm that we take security practices seriously across our offices, employees, products, and services - including our community engagement platform.

Our team & Board of directors

Thank you to all of the team members who contributed to CitizenLab’s mission in 2023!

Adrien Dessy
Alexander Rykhlitski
Alexandra Chandran
Alice Marquet
Aline Muylaert
Amanda Anderson
Amir Ali Bolouryazad
Andrea Conway
Anouk De Meulemeester
Benjamin Gordon
Brent Guffens
Charlotte Helene Schuringa
Charly Puttock
Chrysann Sutton
Claire Tobback
Colette Shields
Dan Keane
Danielle Naidu
Dina Boshra
Edwin Kato
Ellen Batens
Emile Heymans
Emily Alonzi

Emily Horton
Eva Mayer
Eva Rozsa
Francisco Pensa
Fraser Henderson
Hannah Adams
Hugo De Brouwer
Irene Pedruelo
Isabela Sacramento
Iva Kopraleva
James Speake
Jelena Gregorius
Jeroen Van Ransbeeck
Joost Vandenbroele
Jordan Houngbo
Koen De Hondt
Koen Gremmelprez
Lien Carton
Lora Botev
Lucas Van Der Zee
Malak Chabar
Mélissa Martinay
Natalie Ricklefs

Nola Moreau
Pablo Solana
Pauline van Heerdt
Rabiatu Wilson
Roberto Andrade Pérez
Rossanna Mercedes
Sarah Horton
Sébastien Hoorens
Sébastien Levoir
Simon Floré
Simon Tharby
Sören Fillet
Stijn Zwarts
Tomas Deron
Vanja Pantic
Wietse Van Ransbeeck
William Trakas
Yaesul Choi
Yan "James" Aung
Yuri Martens
Zelda Bas

And thank you to our Board of Directors for their continued guidance on Citizenlab’s journey!

Wietse Van Ransbeeck (co-founder)

Aline Muylaert (co-founder)

Koen Gremmelprez (co-founder)

Jan Verbeke

Olivier de Duve

Nico Cras

Beth Noveck

Our partners

Latin America
Pablo Valenzuela, Marcela Ayarza,
and Danitza Vymazal

Denmark

Søren Kielgast and Brian Bruhn

Poland

Artur Kacprzak

Serbia

Goran Segedinac

Sweden

Henrik Challis and Ylva Hamp

Türkiye

Levent Koç and Lider Kara

Norway

Ann-Heidi Paulsen Orvik