How Digital Platforms Are (and Aren’t) Transforming Urban Governance

Digital platforms can strengthen social inclusion in policy planning in general and facilitate the engagement of at least some social groups at risk of exclusion from consultation processes, such as people with disabilities, carers of dependent family members, or people whose work makes them less accessible. However, creating online participatory and deliberative spaces in cities requires skills of administrative staff, public resources, and – most importantly - governments’ openness to greater lay citizens’ control over decision-making. The increased accessibility of technology, including open-source and non-commercial technologies, has an impact on practices, but not as significant as it might have been or as envisioned when internet technologies were emerging. This paper analyses the development of online participatory and deliberative spaces in Polish cities based on three waves of study conducted in 2017, 2021, and 2025. It has verified the ICT tools available on the official websites of all (2017, 2021) or the 100 largest (2025) cities, alongside practices of their use during public consultations. The analysis covers various aspects of public consultations. We define them as a process of gathering information on residents' needs, preferences, and opinions, initiated by the authorities. We are interested in two-way online communication that can be organised on dedicated platforms (rare even today) or via tools integrated into official websites. We consider a deliberative model for public consultations’ input, throughput, and output. As such, we not only check the data-gathering tools and moderation, but also the availability of information on consultation rules, subject-oriented knowledge-sharing, and reporting of results to enhance transparency of their impact on policies. All these procedural aspects need adequate design support. The features of ICT tools and their use during consultations have been coded and analysed mostly quantitatively. Comparative analysis over time allows tracing trends in institutional performance. Analysing the use of digital tools by local governments to foster more participatory and deliberative public consultations helps verify the narrative of their involvement in support of democratic innovations. While most recently the attention has been focused on the AI’s intervention in public communication processes, we should not disregard the fact that local governments may benefit from more transparent, inclusive, and reflective communication with citizens by putting even older technological solutions to the test. Certainly, patterns of ICT tool selection emerge from local governments’ assessments of costs and returns. We discuss them, among others, in the context of an earlier study of regulations on public consultations and their impact on democratic innovations. This research highlights not only existing challenges but also the transformative potential of thoughtfully implemented digital tools for strengthening democratic governance.