Aspen Policy Academy

• Sean Ahrens

Policy is most representative and effective when it has buy-in from the people. People buy in when they have their voices heard in the crafting of policy. However, based on the tools available, the actual crafting—the authorship—of policy documents has rarely been an exercise for more than one or two authors.

DemDoc is an online collaborative document creation tool, like Google Docs, but with votes of co-authors being the deciding factor as to whether each author’s edits are accepted or rejected. By allowing users to comment and vote on each suggested change, DemDoc embeds democratic values into creating policies. With each sentence crafted through a democratic process, organizations interested in equitable representation will better reflect the ideas of many.

Click right to visit the DemDoc website and watch an explainer video about how to use the software.