Be part of it Local deliberation produces collective intelligence. Collective intelligence produces legitimate public mandates. Mandates enter real institutions. Outcomes are tracked and fed back into the next cycle.
Citizen-funded. Nonpartisan. Open source.
Participation is free and always will be.
In developmentbe Heard is being built. This site describes how the system works — it does not report results it has not yet produced.
Online, the loudest voice wins. In institutions, the door can feel closed.
Around a table, something different becomes possible: context, curiosity, disagreement without spectacle, and the time to change your mind. be Heard exists to connect that table to the decisions that follow — and to keep the connection visible afterwards.
Why this matters nowTen stages, then a loop. Civic Gardens are one component of the system — the place deliberation begins, not the whole of it. Each stage below shows what it produces, and where a rule still has to be written.
A public question is proposed. Evidence is gathered, reviewed, and published as short, neutral briefs.
A shared starting point: everyone works from the same openly sourced evidence.
Agenda-setting is powerful. Rules for who may propose, how a question qualifies, and how manipulation is prevented are still being written.
Small, facilitated, in-person conversations where people read the evidence, listen to each other, and explore solutions.
Informed judgment — and local knowledge made visible.
Reports from Gardens and other inputs are shared, organised, and analysed in the open.
Collective intelligence: patterns across communities, not a pile of reports.
What Gardens surface is carried outward. People across regions test and improve it together, online and in town halls.
Perspectives from outside your own network — and collective priorities that become identifiable.
The strongest ideas are shaped into clear, actionable proposals with feasibility and legal review.
Proposals stress-tested for feasibility and legality before they ever reach the public.
Verified participants vote on the proposal through a secure, accessible platform.
A recorded, verifiable expression of support rather than a show of hands.
The franchise is not designed yet — residency, registration, age, and affected non-residents all need defined rules.
A proposal that reaches the required level of support becomes a public mandate for action.
Public legitimacy. A mandate carries evidence of deliberation, breadth, geography, and demonstrated support — not a petition or an opinion poll.
The mandate enters the strongest democratic pathway available in that jurisdiction.
A formal route in: a ballot measure, citizen legislation, a parliamentary agenda item, or another formal and public pressure route.
Pathways vary by place. Direct ballots, citizen legislation, and agenda access are not equally available everywhere.
Governments, parliaments, agencies, or courts take up the mandate where the pathway allows it.
A formal decision where the pathway enables one; public and political pressure where it does not.
Reporters preserve the reasoning produced during deliberation, then track hearings, decisions, delays, implementation, and outcomes.
An ongoing, visible route into public decision-making — and a record of what actually changed.
Institutional outcomes and the lessons around them return to the Commons as evidence.
The next round of deliberation starts better informed. The loop closes.
Small, facilitated, in-person conversations. No debates. No panels. No need to arrive with the answer — just a careful process and enough time to hear one another.
A small, mixed group gathers somewhere familiar: a library, park, café, or kitchen table.
A facilitator keeps the room open. Clear evidence and lived experience make room for everyone to think out loud.
A reporter captures how people reasoned, and that goes to the Commons where local insight meets everyone else’s.
The Commons gathers what communities are learning — not as likes or hot takes, but as patterns, tensions, and proposals worth carrying forward. Wider Deliberation then takes those patterns beyond the neighbourhood they came from.
In-person conversations, one room at a time. Deep, specific, and grounded in lived experience.
Every report, organised and analysed in the open, so patterns across communities become visible.
Town halls and online forums across regions test the ideas, meet people outside their own networks, and turn them into collective priorities.
Illustration, not live data. No Gardens are running yet.
“What would make a neighbourhood feel possible to stay in?”
An illustration of how a question enters the pathway: framed openly, then paired with a brief that anyone can check before they talk.
Read the methodologyEvery conversation starts with a short, transparent evidence brief. Sources are visible, uncertainty is named, and lived experience belongs beside the data. That shared starting point is what makes the judgment that follows worth carrying forward.
Verified participants vote on a specific proposal. A proposal that reaches the required level of support becomes a public mandate — and a mandate arrives at an institution carrying the evidence behind it.
Decision-makers receive evidence of deliberation, breadth, geography, and demonstrated support — not a signature count or an opinion poll.
A mandate enters the strongest democratic pathway available in its jurisdiction. What that pathway is depends entirely on the place.
These routes are not equally available everywhere. Where a pathway enables a formal decision, institutions respond formally. Where it does not, a mandate creates public and political pressure. be Heard adapts to how each community actually makes decisions.
Open question · defining the qualifying threshold and route in each jurisdictionReporting is the part of be Heard that turns participation into a record. Without it, accountability is a promise rather than a mechanism.
During Civic Gardens and Wider Deliberation, reporters capture how people reasoned — the arguments raised, the trade-offs weighed, the concerns that surfaced — not just the final preference.
Why it matters: A vote alone loses the deliberation that produced it. This is what lets a proposal later demonstrate real deliberative quality instead of a headcount.
Once a mandate enters the Institutional Interface, reporters track what institutions actually do with it: hearings, decisions, delays, implementation, and real-world outcomes.
Why it matters: This is what closes the loop. Without someone tracking outcomes, accountability is a promise rather than a mechanism.
The loop closes: institutional outcomes return to the Commons as evidence, so the next question starts better informed.
Deliberation at this scale needs people in defined roles. Most of them are volunteers; some, like facilitation and audit, are professional.
Propose questions, deliberate, and vote.
Hold the room so every voice has space.
Preserve reasoning and track what institutions do.
Assemble evidence and name what is uncertain.
Uphold the rules of the process and the governance that binds it.
Receive mandates and respond through formal pathways.
Make participation possible in any language or format.
Test proposals for feasibility and legality.
Verify participation and publish the checks.
be Heard is nonprofit public infrastructure for democratic deliberation. These are the principles it can be measured against.
By the people, for the people.
Nonpartisan. No special interests.
Open processes, open data, open accounting.
Your data is protected. Your voice is real.
Everyone has a route to participate.
We track what happens and report back.
“Funded by people, not special interests” only holds if no single gift can create dependency. Caps are still being decided, and every contribution will be publicly disclosed.
Join a Civic Garden near you, deliberate online, or help build the parts that do not exist yet. Deliberation, collective decision, and accountability — in one continuous system.