When democracy meets technology = Democracyhack

The Kõigi Eesti movement stands for a respectful, caring, dignified, and opportunity-filled Estonia. After successfully organizing a social media campaign to raise awareness followed by a concert for 10 000 people, we looked for ways to go further than just talking about problems.

That’s how the idea for a Democracyhack came about.  

Democracyhack organized with Kõigi Eesti, Startup Leaders Club, Open Estonia Foundation brought together developers, entrepreneurs, tech leaders and other experts to develop solutions that would strengthen democracy with the help of data science and technology.

“Democracyhack was brought to life for the simple reason that we believe in getting things done and not just talking about the problems. If only one idea we’ve been working on here is brought to life, we’ve already achieved 100% success” - Liis Narusk

The starting points were problems found in the Estonian society, but most of them with applications globally. To help teams with their thinking, some mentors joined the Democracyhack, including:

• Guy-Philippe Goldstein (FR) - Cybersecurity, Policy expert

• Joao Rei (PT) - Business developer (ex-Havas Group, Elevate)

• Joseph Carson (USA) - Ethical Hacker / Cybersecurity Expert

• Eva-Maria Kangro (EE) - Ph.D in Psychology / Leadership Coach

• Markko Karu (EE) - Service Designer

After 30 hours of coding, discussions, and pivots five main ideas materialized that would continue forward:

• A platform to start, fund and maintain a single-issue party (Karoli Hindriks’ team)

• A visualization tool for the Estonian state budget (Tarmo Jüristo team)

• A platform for citizens to assess the activities of the government, post topics and keep track of the progress of those activities + information will be used as an input for a TV program (Kai Isand/Natalja Kitam team)

• A tool for showing the impact of individual health behavior on the state budget that helps increase citizen awareness as well as promote beneficial behavior with a token system (Tiit Paananen’s team)

• An analysis of extreme political comments in a news site to increase transparency and produce tools that would help combat it (sifr.ai team)

In the coming months, the teams will continue developing their ideas, presenting them to the government officials and validating them with citizens. For example, the Head of Praxis, Tarmo Jüristo, has already discussed his solution and ways of implementing it with the Ministry of Finance.

“Our aim is to have more of these initiatives popping up, whether through an event like this or other mechanisms where civil society and citizens can feel like they can do something about the state of affairs. And to really give power back to people to do something about what’s happening in their country today.” - Joao Rei

Together with Kõigi Eesti, we are very grateful to Startup Leaders Club, Open Estonia Foundation, all the participants and mentors who helped make Democracyhack happen. Power to the people!

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