Our project is innovative in two ways:

1) Democratic form of government cannot exist or function well without a democratic way of life. Still, we often focus on the first one, form of government, which includes the institutions and practices of a democratically ruled country. We have created a novel, yet practical approach to shed light and strengthen also the second one: our democratic way of life, which indicates people’s everyday coexistence that sustains equality and freedom on all levels of society.

2) Our approach is a novel and innovative way to approach the development of public services. Instead of a yet another demand or gig applied to top of already full work schedule of overburdened professionals it is a switch of tone of how one approaches the primary task of one’s work. The more democratic encounters we have, the better the services are able to deliver the impacts that are expected from them: learning, welfare, safety, etc.

The need for this innovation emerged in 2022 based on the findings of our Democracy Defence Dialogues, and the Handbook was published first in Finnish in September 2023, and in English in November 2023. At the moment we are training networks (e.g. The Finnish Open Democracy Network; Polarisation Network in Pirkanmaa) and public sector institutions (e.g. Finnish National Agency for Education; Ministries) for implementing democratic encounters. We are also planning a focused online training for public sector employees. More broadly, the innovation is a key part of the Finnish Open Government Strategy, and through this will be implemented in various forms and fields in the future.

The development of the innovation was a collaborative effort between over 500 citizens participating in the Democracy Defence Dialogues (bringing their experiences and perspectives forming the need for the innovation); the Finnish Future Fund Sitra (financing the project and offering expert support); the Open Government and Ministry of Finance (providing the public sector perspective, support and guidance); and our own companies Aretai Ltd and Valtaamo Ltd (providing facilities for work).

Beneficiaries include citizens (in the form of better and more impactful services); government officials (in the form of strengthening the open government strategy and its implementation); and public sector organizations (in the form of innovative approach to developing their services). In a large scale, a major beneficiary would be the whole society in the form of strengthening democracy.

Our innovation is yet in its early stages of implementation, and therefore (and also because of its character as a change of thinking instead of a concrete product) we do not have any numeric results at this point. However, we have received plenty of inspired feedback from our primary target group (the public sector professionals) and reports of the many benefits of democratic encounters in their everyday work. As we continue with the training we expect to see concrete case examples in the near future.

We have not faced any concrete setbacks in this project, but we realise that as many public administration and services are facing major financial pressures at the moment it affects the resources the organizations are able to use in training, for example, and may therefore affect out ability to initiate new thinking and practices within them. On the other hand, the difficult economical context makes is even more important to keep democratic encounters vital.

Necessary for the success have been the open collaboration between the government and civil soviety in reaching people to participate in the dialogues that form the basis for our innovation; our prior expertise and experience in democracy research and developing public service work; sufficient funding; and continuous support from the government in the meaning and impact of this innovation.

Our innovation is aimed at public sectors professionals and organisations, but it can be utilised also in the third sector, as well as private sector companies offering comparable services. Overall, the innovation can be scaled from individual daily encounters to a broad philosophy of action. In the Finnish Open Government Strategy, for example, democratic encounters are a guiding principle, when in the work of a municipal social worker, for example, they are small, concrete steps for action.

We have learned how important it is to initiate dialogue with different group of citizens (also underrepresented groups who do not usually take part in societal discussion) to gain broad understanding of the issues at hand; and how important the collaboration with civil society is in reaching these groups.