Everything you need to know about how the platform works — features, roles, processes, and the long-term vision.
CIVIC OS is a citizen-powered civic engagement platform that gives communities the tools to self-organize, identify problems, propose solutions, and hold delegates accountable. It is designed as a permanent civic infrastructure — not just an election-day tool.
The core idea: democracy works best when citizens are engaged year-round, not just once every four years. CIVIC OS provides the digital infrastructure for continuous civic participation at the district level.
CIVIC OS organizes civic participation around districts — geographic communities that mirror real-world political boundaries. Each district operates as its own community with its own problems, solutions, and priority balance.
You can select a district when registering or change it later in Settings. Once you join a district, you can see its problems, propose solutions, and allocate your priority points to issues that matter to you.
Problems are the foundation of CIVIC OS. They represent real issues identified by citizens in their district.
Other citizens can confirm or dispute a problem based on their direct experience. This community verification helps surface real problems while flagging potential false reports. Confirmation counts are displayed alongside each problem.
Every citizen receives 10 priority points. These points represent your civic attention budget — you distribute them across the problems that matter most to you.
The district hub shows a real-time visualization of how priority points are distributed across categories. This creates community awareness: "47% of our attention goes to infrastructure, but only 2% to education." No one is forced to change, but the transparency invites reflection.
Anyone can propose a solution to a problem. Solutions include a title, detailed description, estimated cost, and the responsible institution.
Each solution is rated on two independent axes:
This two-axis approach reveals important nuances: a solution might be highly desirable but impractical, or very feasible but unpopular. The scatter plot visualization shows both community and expert ratings at a glance.
Verified experts' ratings are displayed separately from community ratings. This means the community can see both "what citizens want" and "what experts recommend" — without either group overriding the other.
CIVIC OS has a special expert role for users with verified domain knowledge. Experts don't get extra votes — their ratings are simply displayed separately.
On each solution's detail page, you'll see community ratings and expert ratings separately. For example: "Community: Feasibility 3.2, Desirability 4.5 | Experts: Feasibility 2.1, Desirability 3.8." This gives citizens more information to make informed decisions.
Every problem and solution has its own discussion thread. This keeps conversations focused and organized.
CIVIC OS uses AI to assist with content moderation. The AI does not censor — it flags content for human review.
AI flags are visible to users, so the community can see when and why content was flagged. This transparency builds trust in the moderation process.
Online civic platforms are prime targets for manipulation. CIVIC OS implements multiple layers of defense:
CIVIC OS has four user roles with different capabilities:
| Permission | Citizen | Expert | Moderator | Admin |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Read problems & solutions | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Comment | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Report problems * | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Vote & allocate points * | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Expert-tagged ratings | ✓ | |||
| Hide/unhide comments | ✓ | ✓ | ||
| Manage districts | ✓ | |||
| Manage users & roles | ✓ | |||
| Approve expert claims | ✓ |
* Requires 14-day cooldown period for citizens. Admins and moderators bypass the cooldown.
CIVIC OS is designed as a 5-layer civic operating system, to be built in 5 phases:
Basic civic infrastructure — districts, problems, solutions, priority points, discussions, and user roles. This is the current implementation.
Citizens select delegates for each district based on competence. Delegates have public mandates, term limits, and performance tracking.
Citizens participate in allocating real budgets to solutions. Transparent tracking of how money is spent and what outcomes are achieved.
Districts can collaborate on shared problems, pool resources, and learn from each other's solutions.
Aggregated data from all districts informs national policy. The platform becomes a permanent feedback loop between citizens and governance.
Core platform with districts, problems, solutions, priority points, ratings, discussions, AI moderation, and multi-language support.
Delegate nominations, voting, mandate tracking, and accountability dashboards.
Participatory budgeting tools, expense tracking, and outcome measurement.
Federation between districts, shared solution libraries, and collaborative problem-solving.
National dashboards, API integrations with government systems, and advanced analytics.