Planning Institute of Australia National Winners!
President's Award

Our work with the City of Palmerston in developing the Palmerston Community Plan has once again been recognised.

We have won the National President's award from the presitgious Planning Institute of Australia

The judges said: The Community Plan demonstrates a unique understanding and acknowledgement of the needs and aspirations of a community: the opportunity to rebuild trust in the community, share the challenges and enable key stakeholders to participate collaboratively. The consultation process built understanding of engagement best practice and allowed community members to ‘stand in the shoes’ of their Council, with tangible results.

DemocracyCo used a sortition approach to achieve a diversity of participation - young people, Indigenous communities, families, senior citizens, multicultural communities, people of different economic and educational backgrounds.

Discover: Palmerston - Excellence in community planning

IAP2 Award Winners!

We are thrilled to announce that we have won the IAP2 Core Values Award (Health Category) for 2020 for design and delivery of the Rethink CTP Citizens' Jury!

The judges said...
"...thorough and nimble in its pivot to online during the COVID pandemic, and never compromised the quality of the engagement..."

Read about this amazing project!

Supporting Local Government

We work with local governments to engage deliberatively with their communities. We are currently supporting Victorian local governments as they seek to implement the new Local Government Act.

Deliberation Online!

We have broken new ground with the delivery of an online Citizens' Jury! We’re sharing our learnings and keen to support you to continue your engagement online.

Innovating during COVID-19

We are 'people people' and we always will be. COVID-19 has presented us with opportunities to expand the innovative ways we can help you to engage.

Read our COVID-19 statement here

There are 6 key elements to deliberative democracy

When used in combination, these key elements support successful sustainable policy development.

Explore them here

Our Collaboration with ANZSOG

We are excited to announce a new partnership with the Australian and New Zealand School of Government to offer our unique training program to Australian and New Zealand public servants.

Find out more

Global Deliberative Democracy Experts: helping Singapore raise the Citizens voice

Across the world we are seeing an increasing trend towards citizens wanting to have a voice in how they are governed. We're off to Singapore again to assist them in learning about this field and support them as they respond to the voices of their citizens!

democracyCo is a leader in deliberative democracy in Australia

We support government, community and the private sector to reform together.

“In mid-2017 we decided to embark on our very first citizens’ jury, on a complex and politically sensitive topic – the reform of the Compulsory Third Party Insurance System. DemocracyCo was appointed to design, implement and facilitate an appropriate process. We found democracyCo to be a safe pair of hands. Emma and Emily deeply understood our objectives and were able to deliver on them in a way that was flexible and responsive to need. Overall, we found Emma and Emily to be intelligent and professional. We enjoyed working with them and would recommend them to other governments seeking to involve stakeholders and the community in complex reform.”

Anita Perkins, Executive Director, Communications & Engagement, Chief Minister, Treasury and Economic Development Directorate, ACT, 2018

What we do

Governments cannot achieve change alone.

Sustained change requires the support and combined action of communities, industry and government.

We are experts in using deliberative democracy processes to engage and mobilise communities.

Discover all of the outcomes we help to deliver.

Who we are

There is no other organisation in Australia that’s holistically focused on assisting governments to achieve reform.

We are not a communications or marketing company, we are not a market research/social research company, nor are we academic researchers.. however we utilise elements of these disciplines and approaches (and more) to support the work we do.

Get to know us

Get Involved

Are you interested in how our democracy works? And want to help be part of making it work better? Register to be part of our Deliberative Army, all committed to working with government to develop public policy.

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Planning Institute of Australia National Winners!President's Award