What is openDCN?

The openDCN software environment -- where DCN stands for Deliberative Community Networks – provides on-line dedicated tools to support participation and deliberation.

OpenDCN is able to manage three different kinds of spaces:

• a community space, aimed at fostering public dialog on civic issues and facilitating the rise of mutual trust between participants through free discussions;
• a deliberation space to foster the creation of a shared vision position among the participants, i.e., to finalize a deliberative process in order to produce a well defined outcome. Deliberation space makes up the core of the participatory system; participatory processes consist of a series of deliberation stages, each relying on a different participatory modality and involving different participants;
• a personal space to manage user profile, relationships and personal objects of each user.

Each space is managed by one or more openDCN tools.

Target Users

• Administrative bodies: local Municipalities, Provinces, Regions;
• Profit and no-profit Organizations.

Who uses openDCN?

openDCN has been used within the e21 project in a number of Lombardy Region Municipalities (Mantova, Brescia, Como, Lecco, Pavia, …). Here you can find an updated list of the openDCN instances.

Which technologies are used to develop openDCN?

openDCN has been mainly realised in PHP using CakePHP development framework and Smarty template engine.
The Certified Consultation is developed in Java.

Which license is openDCN released with?

openDCN is released with an Open Source license, more precisely:

• The development framework has been released with MIT license;
• The application undergoes GPL license.