Arantzazulab at the Open Government Partnership (OGP) Summit in Vitoria-Gasteiz (6-10 October)

The intense week of the Open Government Partnership (OGP) Summit in Vitoria-Gasteiz has come to an end. The event brought together government representatives, social organisations, professionals, and citizens from all over the world committed to open government, participation, and democratic innovation.

For Arantzazulab, it has been a wonderful opportunity to reconnect with like-minded people and organisations, share learnings, and explore new opportunities for collaboration. Conversations with Josh Lenner (People Powered) on the New Narratives on Democracy, Javier Pérez and Thai (Political Watch) on Democracy in the Digital Era, Miriam Zaitegui and Erica Hope (European Climate Foundation), Juan López-Aranguren (Democratic Society), and Mauricio Mejía, Yago Bermejo and Arantxa Mendiharat (Deliberativa), among many others, opened up new possibilities for cooperation and shared reflection. It’s impossible to mention everyone!

Our director, Naiara Goia, took part as speaker in the panel “Designing the Public Participation We Want in a Digitised World: AI and Civic Tech”, coordinated by Political Watch and mySociety. In her intervention, she challenged participants with the following question:How can we harness the potential of digital technologies to design solutions, tools, and platforms that help us convey, learn, and strengthen democratic values? She emphasised the importance of building a shared democratic culture—a foundational base that enables people to participate and collaborate in common affairs. Inspiring ideas emerged on the role of artificial intelligence and civic technology in strengthening these values, especially among younger generations: digital platforms for educational deliberation and co-decision, conversational assistants or chatbots that accompany learning processes on rights, ethics, and democracy, among others.We also took part in the social event Democracy Drinks & Pintxos, organised by Political Watch and the Global Democracy Coalition—an inspiring space that allowed us to continue the dialogue with people from the public, private, and social spheres.

Our Projects Lead, Ione Ardaiz, took part in a working session on “Powering Climate Action Through Democracy”, jointly organised by Political Watch, the European Climate Foundation, and the Democracy for Transition Coalition. During this session, we reflected on how the challenges of democracy and climate are deeply interconnected, and how addressing one can help respond to the impacts of the other. It was a rich and diverse conversation, bringing together actors from public institutions, academia, and civil society.

Together, we explored the symptoms we are observing through our research and practice on these two intertwined issues, and began to imagine shared pathways and responses. From Arantzazulab, we shared our experience in institutionalising deliberative democracy in the Basque Country, and presented our framework based on three complementary strategies: Scaling up, by influencing public policies; Scaling out, by developing new deliberative processes; Scaling deep, by fostering cultural change and shifts in mental frameworks.

An intense week full of inspiration, learning, and new alliances. Let’s keep going!