Roadmap

Ready Already usable

This is in the app today and is used during the pilot phase:

• Motion tracker. Every motion has a visible status – even when it gets passed on across chapter boundaries.
• Arguments with mandatory sources. Factual arguments need a source, opinions are marked as such.
• Searchable record of resolutions. Before you write a motion, you can see what already exists on the topic.
• Meetings with agendas. Motions are tied to specific meetings, with a traceable outcome.
• Votes. Results are recorded instead of fizzling out in the hall.
• Studies and evidence. Sources can be stored as their own objects and reused across arguments.
• File storage per committee. Draft resolutions, minutes and evidence are tied to the group or the resolution – not to a single person. That way the knowledge is preserved, even when a board changes. Deliberately not general file hosting, but firmly bound to groups and resolutions.
• Public page per organ. A plain, fixed page per committee – name, a few paragraphs, an image and a “report a concern” form. Citizens can use it to raise problems and ideas that a motion can grow out of. Because the page is tied to the organ and not to a website of its own, you need no CMS of your own for it – and it survives every change of board. Explicitly not a website builder: one fixed template, not a jumble.

In progress Currently in progress

This is being built right now. It ties directly into what Demokratiemaschine can already do today:

• Live preview for amendments. Play through, before the vote, how a motion would look with different changes – so that no one in the hall has to guess what is actually being voted on.

Envisioned Thinking further ahead

Ideas that are further off – some perhaps even products in their own right. This is where it’s most likely that things will turn out differently in the end.

• Intelligent search & duplicate warning. A search that finds by meaning and not just by keyword – and that warns you on submission when a resolution on the topic already exists. That hits two old problems at once: duplicated effort and “didn’t we already have this?”. If there are ever AI answers to it, then always with a link to the real resolution – never an invented position.
• A living database of positions and resolutions. “What is our stance on X?” as a reliable reference work for elected officials, candidates and press officers. Together with the stored studies and sourced arguments, it becomes a reusable basis for well-founded statements.
• Keeping members engaged between conventions. Year-round workspaces for working groups, member surveys and ballots, plus a right of initiative: if enough members co-sign a topic, it lands on the agenda. So that the platform stays relevant even when no convention is coming up.
• Expertise routing. Members voluntarily note what they know their way around – so that the lawyer finds her way to the legal question and the social scientist to the study review. It’s about connecting ability with a specific motion, not about a member directory – and explicitly not about a ranking of who impresses the most.
• Drafts from the record of resolutions. Propose a draft for a post or a press release from an adopted position together with its sources. The group decides and approves – the human always stays in the loop. Just the draft; sending and distribution lists remain your own tools.
• Statistics on un-dealt-with motions. Motions that fall off the agenda for lack of time vanish silently today. Instead they could be marked as “not dealt with” and counted – so it becomes visible how much preparatory work regularly gets lost to time pressure, and the group can draw conclusions from it.

Where we deliberately draw the line

Not everything that would be possible belongs in here. A few things we deliberately leave out:

• No rating or reputation system. No stage for whoever writes the most or comes across as most impressive – that would reward exactly the dynamic we want to get rid of.
• No generic file hosting, no website builder. Files and pages are tied to groups, organs and resolutions – not floating free.
• No marketplace for resources. A directory of skills and things (“who has what”, right down to the bouncy castle in the basement) would fascinate us – but that would be a standalone project with its own questions, not part of Demokratiemaschine.

Missing something?

Does the order bother you, or are you missing something else entirely? That’s exactly what the pilot phase is for: pilot groups have a say in what gets built next. Write to us.

As of July 2026. This page changes as soon as the priorities change.