What is Comhairle?
By Andy Paice
about 1 month ago
A Plain-English guide to the platform we’re building
When we talk about digital democracy tools, we mean online tools that help people take part in public or community decision-making.
Over the past two decades, hundreds of these tools have emerged around the world. Some are designed for structured surveys. Others enable large-scale public discussions, map what’s happening locally, or help communities prioritise ideas.
Each tool does something useful, but too often, they operate in isolation. Digital participation ends up reduced to narrow formats: long text boxes, fixed questions, or limited ways of responding.
The experience can feel flat. There’s little room for creativity, dialogue, or learning from others. You submit your response and if you’re lucky you might get to hear what happens next.
From a participant’s point of view, it can feel extractive. From the perspective of those designing the engagement, it can be underwhelming. Despite best efforts, process designers or policy officials running consultations often find they don’t get the depth or nuance of insight they were hoping for.
Comhairle is our response to those challenges.
What we’re building
Comhairle (Scottish Gaelic for council or assembly, pronounced "core-luh") is a platform designed to broaden and deepen participation, offering multiple ways to design digital democracy processes and for people to take part, rather than forcing everything through a single format.
We’re not building yet another standalone tool. Instead, we’re bringing together a set of existing open-source participation tools, each designed for a different kind of input, from surveys and discussions to prioritising and sharing lived experience..
What makes Comhairle different is how these tools are connected.
You can think of Comhairle as a toolbox or hub, a flexible space where different methods can be weaved together into a single process. The result is a richer, more interactive, and more human way to participate.
A modular approach to participation
Comhairle is designed to be flexible. Every engagement is unique, so rather than forcing everything into a one-size-fits-all format, practitioners can build or customise the flow based on their goals, timelines, and audiences
Here’s a quick overview of the range of open-source tools that Comhairle supports (some are currently available, others are being developed):
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Knowledge base Share accessible background information text, images, and videos, so everyone starts from a shared understanding. A tutor chat bot is available to help interrogate and better understand the information.
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Conventional survey Collect feedback using familiar survey formats - open responses, ranking, multiple choice etc.
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Pol.is A large-scale conversation tool where participants submit and vote on each other’s statements, surfacing consensus and disagreement.
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Story gallery Participants share personal experiences via video or audio making the process more human, accessible, and powerful for policymaking.
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Talk to the City Process large volumes of qualitative data, transcripts, recordings, open-text answers using claim extraction to generate clear thematic reports.
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Elicitation bot A chatbot that asks open-ended, context-aware questions to support participants in developing their own opinions.
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Video call feature Synchronous video discussions integrated with the other tools, allowing hosts to configure calls and generate outputs like transcriptions and summaries.
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Offline integration Inputs from offline workshops, citizens’ assemblies, or paper surveys can be imported and merged with digital data, supporting human facilitation.
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Reporting Contributions are stored as structured data, enabling real-time and downloadable reports that are easy to share and fully customisable.
A better experience for everyone
For participants, this makes the experience more dynamic and meaningful. People can learn about an issue, share views in different formats, respond to others’ perspectives, and receive prompt reporting back on the views they have shared.
For researchers, policy teams or community organisers, Comhairle brings together a more complete picture. Conversations, stories, structured inputs, and prioritisation exercises all capture different insights. When viewed together, they reveal not just what people think, but how views relate to one another, where tensions exist, and where common ground might be found.
This is where Comhairle’s connected approach becomes especially powerful. Insights can be explored across the whole engagement, rather than being confined to a single method or output.
Helping people see the bigger picture
Comhairle doesn’t just support better data collection. It helps participants see themselves as part of something larger.
As patterns emerge, Comhairle allows people to understand where they sit within a wider group. They can see how their voice contributes to a collective conversation.
This kind of feedback is empowering. It helps communities understand themselves. People aren’t only heard; they can see how their voices contribute to the overall conversation. Whether it’s a government consultation or a grassroots dialogue, our aim at CrownShy is to empower communities and give them the tools they need to act collectively.
Why open source?
We’re building Comhairle as an open source platform, using open source tools because:
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It ensures transparency. Public-facing tech should be open to scrutiny. Civic tech shouldn’t operate behind closed doors.
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It supports community power. Open tools allow grassroots groups and local authorities to use and adapt the platform for their own needs.
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It prevents vendor lock-in. Comhairle avoids tying governments to a single private provider or proprietary process. As new open-source tools emerge, they can be integrated into the platform.
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Where possible, we aim to build upon and improve open tools, so the benefits are shared.
At the heart of Comhairle is ‘interoperability’
Interoperability means that different tools can “talk” to each other, exchanging data, understanding each other’s outputs, and working together seamlessly.
Through our collaboration with Metagov we’re contributing to shared standards in the digital democracy space, sometimes described as a common ontology. This way insights generated through one method don’t get siloed. They can be combined, compared, and understood in relation to one another.
This is essential for creating a joined-up experience for participants, organisers and policymakers.
Built with government, for real policy work
Comhairle is being developed in partnership with the Scottish Government through the CivTech 10.7 challenge (which we won!) So it’s being shaped by real policy challenges, not just theoretical ideals. We’ve already delivered a public engagement on the review of Scotland’s National Performance Framework and supported the European Rural Parliament in shaping its citizen-led declaration.
Our aim is straightforward: to make it easier for civil servants, community organisers and more to design high-quality public engagement, and to make participation feel meaningful, interactive, and genuinely influential for the people taking part.
Want to find out more?
We’re currently piloting Comhairle with the Scottish Government and a range of international partners and welcome conversations with others exploring digital participation.