Ability to make outputs enforceable through known and viable legal structures and mechanisms (e.g. regulation that requires authority to implement or seriously consider the outputs).

Ability to ensure the relevant technical systems act in directed ways (e.g., via model alignment, control, cryptographic enforcement of outputs, physical limitations, etc.). Caveat: Irrevocable direct binding to outputs should generally be implemented with checks and balances.

Ability to make outputs enforceable through known and viable mechanisms (e.g. formats, structures, or procedures that can actually plug into how organizations already make and implement decisions).

Ability to ensure that, given potential ambiguity of decisions, the authority takes actions as close to the intended ones as possible.

• Process organizers may advise the commissioning authority on how to understand applications to a decision, but most of the time the commissioning authority will simply make a judgement call.

Ability to commit to deliberative outputs and therefore, set up exit costs in case of commitment drift (e.g. reputational damage or stakeholder backlash).

• Commissioning authorities publicly commit to the process or system and to acting on the outputs in some way.
• Citizens' assembly organizers typically ask commissioners to commit to publicly responding to the final recommendations in written form. These commitments are made before the process begins, often on the invitation letters used to recruit participants.

Ability to integrate deliberation in the organizational culture of an authority.

• Process organizers work with internal change management teams and executive leadership to embed deliberative practices into organizational culture.

Ability for processes and outputs to integrate operationally into decision-making processes and cycles.

• Process organizers work with commissioning authorities to create pathways for process outputs to integrate into existing systems.
• Citizens' assembly organizers negotiate with commissioning authorities to ensure recommendations are formatted in ways that can be directly considered (e.g., draft policy language, costed proposals, or structured options). They establish handoff protocols specifying who receives outputs, through what channels, and what response timeline is expected.

Ability to integrate with transnational and interorganizational systems.

• Process organizers coordinate with international governance bodies, regional coalitions, and multi-level governance networks. They map decision-making authority across governance layers to identify optimal integration points.

Ability to automate process deployment.

• Process organizers create some legal, technical, or norm-based threshold for the initiation of a process.

Ability to construct process workflows that achieve intended outcomes in given contexts.

• Process organizers adapt smaller process components together in logical sequences to facilitate groups of people to reach specified goals.
• Citizens' assembly organizers contextually apply deliberative principles and established micro-processes to achieve specified goals compatible with the basic purpose of an assembly process.

Ability to design processes that are optimized for desired outcomes, given constraints.

• Process organizers estimate the impact of design decisions informed by anecdotal experiences and their intuitive heuristics and/or opt to follow more established best practices out of fear of process failure, meaning they generate more 'practice as usual' designs regardless of the unique situation.
• Citizens' assembly organizers combine their experience and heuristics with the political theory and political science literature to make informed design decisions, but the evidence base is insufficient to make strong predictions. For example: stratification quotas for lotteries serve a range of key outcomes; the extent to which marginal decisions impact outcomes is unknown.

Ability to make data open and easily available to researchers.

• Process organizers work in a decentralized manner to share and coordinate on research and learning.
• Citizens' assembly organizers collaborate with researchers in an uncoordinated manner, often resulting in missed opportunities for data gathering, research or evaluation.

Ability to run trials that are good enough to learn from, and fast enough to enable rapid testing of new methods and process comparisons.

• Process organizers typically rely on real-world experimentation to learn from. Existing examples of simulated trials are primitive agent environments and do not track the complexity of end-to-end processes.

Ability to measure desired outcomes to compare methods, processes and systems.

• Process organizers determine criteria for successful processes and develop indicators for when criteria are met.
• Citizens' assembly organizers primarily rely on pre- and post-process surveys for evaluation. Comparisons are typically an auditing exercise against established standards that aren't derived from empirical data.

Ability to gather process data in a cheap, reliable, accessible manner.

• Process organizers factor in data capture methods and balance their intrusiveness with the benefits of measuring for success.
• Citizens' assembly organizers sometimes anonymously record and transcribe deliberations where required for the use of technology. Most use pre- and post-process participant surveying.

Ability to manage, route and surface data produced by the process throughout the process.

• Process organizers create bespoke data management systems suited to processes and information formats.
• Citizens' assembly organizers sometimes utilize breakout group moderators responsible for note-taking, while others use templates to generate outputs from exercises. These outputs are either retained in paper form or sometimes digitized. Transcribing and transcoding data in the process is currently labor-intensive. Automated transcription has technical challenges.

Ability to run time-minimal processes subject to performance and reliability thresholds.

• Process organizers seek to reduce the time commitment for participants to improve accessibility and reduce costs.
• Citizens' assembly organizers facilitate deliberations to support the efficiency of the process, though there are differences of view as to how heavy-handed this support should be.

Ability to host decentralized processes simultaneously or sequentially and productively distill them into one central process.

• Process organizers address challenges of scale and time by connecting sequences or parallel processes in a predetermined logical manner. Different methods may be explored to engage different groups at different times.
• Citizens' assembly organizers operate assemblies that address the same or different aspects of the issue and then develop a principled way of reconciling the work done in the different processes, sometimes by taking a subset of representatives or by completely merging.

Ability to accommodate large numbers of people into a process whilst retaining high deliberative quality.

• Process organizers take processes that work for smaller numbers and apply techniques that support the efficient and fair inclusion of more people. There are early explorations into how digital technologies can support this, but real ground-changing work is limited.
• Citizens' assembly organizers use techniques like dividing responsibilities for entire sections of the issue into subgroups and using technology to more efficiently aggregate views to include more people directly in the deliberative process.

Ability to run deliberative processes at the transnational level by navigating challenges such as legitimacy, logistics, and cultures.

• Process organizers take principles and processes that work in local and national settings and attempt to adapt them to transnational settings.
• Citizens' assembly organizers take principles from national level processes and adapt them to the challenges of facilitating across the globe.

Ability to facilitate mutual understanding and reason-giving, including by supporting the development of critical thinking skills and preferences in individuals.

• Process organizers design workflows that allow for structured individual reflection between moments of discussion or learning.
• Citizens' assemblies organizers design workflows that build social bonds between participants, before they've exchanged perspectives on the issue at hand, to help tackle cognitive biases or assumptions. They design individual reflection sessions and sometimes recommend asynchronous journaling to develop an individual's views further. They often facilitate epistemic skills-building exercises focused on identifying unconscious biases or training critical thinking, and reinforcing these exercises with reminders throughout the process. They also have a range of facilitation methods that create different settings or modes for expression, allowing participants to find a mode that suits them.

Ability to develop appropriate process workflows and support mixed groups to reach successful outcomes.

• Process organizers design process workflows and lead participants through them with varying degrees of involvement (light and heavy touch).
• Citizens' assemblies organizers have facilitation teams that lead the assembly members through a mostly predetermined workflow, focused on ensuring the overall task and outcomes are met within the allotted time. They do their best to be impartial while helping to maximize the processes' efficacy.

Ability to run processes in multiple languages and cultural contexts in real time and account for linguistic differences in the precise intent of outputs.

• Process organizers use human interpretation when working with a small number of languages.
• Citizens' assemblies organizers will use human interpretation when financially feasible, otherwise rely on Google Translate for quick translation of documents. The European Commission’s Citizens’ Panels involve live human interpretation across 26 languages.

Ability to facilitate tolerance, discussions and collaboration across differences (historical and ongoing).

• Process organizers make adaptations to normal methods to account for added complexities.
• Citizens' assemblies organizers will make adaptations, such as not listing names on name badges, to disrupt ethnic profiling before social bonds can be built. They might also rotate the location of the venue to balance time spent in different regions or neighbourhoods. Facilitation teams might be intentionally representative of all sides of an issue or completely distinct. The process overall would spend more time building connections and prioritize hearing from everyone before moving through the workflow.

Ability of participants to collaboratively work together to develop policies and other complex artefacts.

• Process organizers design process workflows that intentionally avoid any data conflicts or versioning issues with participant-produced information, while also creating space for the reconciliation of differing views.
• Citizens’ assembly organizers routinely combine small group deliberations with plenary reporting to divide work, refine and provide feedback as a group, and then act on that feedback in small groups. For example, one very common specific challenge is the reconciliation of multiple versions of a document, created by different subgroups.

Ability for diverse participants to efficiently and effectively learn relevant information, such that they can actively apply their learnings in the process.

• Process organizers provide information and learning activities to bring participants up to speed on the topic.
• Citizens’ assemblies organizers rely on building understanding through a ‘learning journey’ (multiple rounds of informing-questioning-answering) where participants engage with pre-written materials, speakers, Q&A responses, and experiences to build group understanding. Some of this is done individually (async), some is done in group environments.
• Collective dialogues can have a short introductory module with subject matter fundamentals to quickly ground participants in the details. These short dialogues are interactive and allow participants to learn from one another as well as read background information.

Ability to provide complete context to participants, including things like background information, subject matter fundamentals, relevant considerations, tradeoffs, and possible options.

• Process designers work with commissioning authorities to source internal materials, sometimes use independent experts for research or request stakeholder input. The responsibility for translating materials into relevant forms varies.
• Collective dialogues can have a short introductory module with subject matter fundamentals to quickly ground participants in the details. These short learning dialogues are constructed in collaboration with commissioning authorities.
• Citizens’ assemblies organizers typically work with commissioning authorities to compile background information kits that contain basic process information, background subject matter information and other relevant information. The material is usually presented in plain language with diagrams and visual explainers where possible.

Ability to generate lists of likely scenarios, including edge cases, in which decisions will be applied, to help participants better understand the issue space.

• Process organizers rely on experts or organizers themselves to develop scenarios as a way of informing participants.
• Citizens’ assemblies organizers will use scenarios as a way to help participants understand the logic of the issue and sometimes to help test draft proposals.

Ability for participants to evaluate claims made during the process by any actor or source.

• Citizens’ assemblies organizers do not currently systematically evaluate claims. Participants are often provided with critical thinking training and the ability to ask questions of experts, stakeholders and commissioning authorities. A common practice is to take questions from participants at the end of a meeting and provide answers before the next meeting.
• Process organisers seek to provide diverse information sources and support participant reasoning with training for careful prompting.

Ability to effectively and easily model complex systems, to help participants understand the potential impacts of different decisions.

• Process organizers may draw on experts or use rudimentary tools to facilitate ‘if this, then that’ exercises.
• Citizens’ assemblies organizers may be given draft recommendations after the penultimate day to produce analysis to help assembly members understand the possible barriers to implementation and impacts of decisions.

Ability to provide those not in the room deliberating with opportunities to constructively and fairly contribute input into the process.

• Process organizers use mass engagement methods like surveys and submissions to gather opt-in input to informing processes. The outcomes of these engagement programs are usually then shared with those inside the process.
• Citizens’ assemblies organizers will make clear distinctions between those inside the process and those outside. They develop constructive ways for the maxi public to contribute without constraining or contradicting the internal processes of high-context assembly members, such as by asking for contributions on questions, concerns, hopes and information sources rather than rushing to judgement on proposals or outputs.

Ability to route and synthesize data, revealing critical information, e.g. identifying common ground, high-potential ideas, thoughtful perspectives, insightful experiences, cruxes, forecasts, while helping to minimize the time required to do tasks.

• Process organizers generally follow structured plans that stitch together data generation and gathering activities with synthesis and understanding activities.
• Collective dialogue tools such as Polis and Remesh are designed to synthesize across many points of view with bridging algorithms and elicitation inference.

Ability for the process to be open to the public (where possible given privacy considerations).

• Process organizers determine their openness to observation and the extent to which they will make process documentation public.
• Citizens’ assemblies organizers allow public observers under reasonable conditions of distance and non-involvement. Items like background documents, speaker lists, agendas, final outputs and commissioning authority response documents are usually public. Governance processes may involve independent guarantors witnessing key ‘closed room’ decisions.

Ability for integrity of the process to be verified and audited.

• Process organizers' key details are made directly observable by auditors.
• Citizens’ assemblies organizers demonstrate selection processes, allow independent observation for key process details and in some cases record or document discussions for note taking or publication later on.

Ability to aggregate votes and distill more complex forms of open-ended input into outputs and decisions, in fair and understandable ways, such that participants feel their contributions are meaningfully taken into account (and can ideally see how).

• In deliberative polling, ‘final’ outcomes are measured by poll.
• Collective dialogue tools such as Polis use bridging algorithms to cluster inputs, and Remesh uses elicitation inference to help identify bridging statements across a large number of inputs. Some online systems may not surface consensus or bridging, but instead simply log the inputs of various participants.
• Citizens’ assemblies organizers utilize small group work, which relies on moderated or self-led documenting and integration of inputs. Ultimately, voting is used to ‘end’ the conversation in place of finding consensus. These decisions are sometimes made using Likert voting and supermajority thresholds.

Ability to fairly include the perspectives of those that are not represented in the process, including people who are not present (future generations, young people or other representation constraints), and non-human entities (natural phenomena or animals).

• Process organizers can ask participants to critically reflect on the hypothetical views of those not present. There are some exercises that prompt participants to consider or even role-play views that are not present in the room (Deliberative Democracy Digest).

Ability to reach potential participants (e.g., to mitigate biases around self-selection, who is reachable, etc.).

• Panel providers typically maintain large pools of pre-recruited participants from which they draw. They may actively recruit to fill any gaps, as these lists are typically unrepresentative of the wider population.
• Citizens’ assemblies organizers commonly recruit with 2-stage democratic lottery, which involves a round of mailed invitations and then a round of stratified random selection. There is also some use of door-knocking, random phone number dialing, and other recruitment methods. In the global south, where the infrastructure that these approaches rely on can be scarce, alternative in-person methods have been used.

Ability to fairly select participants according to some definition of representation.

• Process organizers use existing algorithms and tools to implement the normative selection criteria that they set out. 100+ citizens’ assemblies around the world at every level of governance have used these. They take a pool of willing participants and select a final ‘panel’ that adheres to set criteria.

Ability to simulate the interactions and decisions of actors (e.g., participants, stakeholders, facilitators, experts), subprocesses, or entire processes (e.g., for rapid process iteration).

• Process organizers can infer from recorded preferences for new contexts, but these inferences are usually human estimates and not supported by well-documented algorithms.
• Collective dialogue organizers can run processes with simulated participants, though more research is needed to resolve their fidelity.

Ability to provide accessible, welcoming and compelling processes enabling diverse participation.

• Process organizers provide basic process information, additional context, and address accessibility needs proactively or when onboarding participants.
• Citizens’ assemblies organizers have a ‘concierge’ service for participants, which helps address any reservations, context setting, or hurdles that might come up (OECD, 2021), but this is difficult to scale. Online or predominantly digital processes will naturally exclude possible participants who have low levels of digital literacy or low levels of access to the necessary technology. Some processes have trialled providing in-person support to provide this tech and help operate it, but this is resource-intensive.

Ability to withstand changing contexts and less-than-ideal conditions.

• Process organizers will understand the conditions under which their process breaks, adapting no further than that point where possible.
• Citizens' assemblies organizers will have thresholds for estimating when it will not be possible for a process to meet required outcomes, or when conditions change and adaptations are required to retain process integrity, such as when a significant number of participants do not show up, skewing the representativeness and therefore legitimacy of the process.

Ability to increase, demonstrate, or measure the neutrality of key aspects of a process.

• Process organizers seek to demonstrate their impartiality by creating governance procedures with strong incentives and review mechanisms.
• Citizens' assemblies organizers will hire external facilitation teams and commit to their independence through formal governance arrangements. They will allow external auditors or evaluators to review the process and monitor for bias.

Ability to address, resolve and navigate conflicts that emerge within the process.

• Process organizers will isolate and address conflicting participants to mediate or resolve the issue.
• Citizens' assemblies facilitators will monitor for the potential escalation of disagreements and proactively separate and mediate.

Ability to resist manipulation that would decrease trustworthiness, legitimacy or unfairly influence the outcome.

• Process organizers anticipate vulnerabilities in processes and do their best to mitigate risk with countermeasures.
• Citizens' assemblies organizers design processes with an understanding of where manipulation is possible and more likely, and develop mitigating strategies, such as by reinforcing the epistemic capabilities of participants before interacting with new information, developing selection algorithms with manipulation resistance, and establishing governance protocols for impartiality of key actors.

Ability for final outputs to be adaptable to changing contexts while retaining clear intended outcomes and specificity.

• Process organizers can create workflows that intentionally ask participants to consider adaptability in the development of their outputs, or structure outputs such that they’re inherently adaptable.
• Citizens’ assemblies organizers advise assembly members to design their recommendations so that they do not constrain the organizing authority in the future in a way that would be inconsistent with the intent of the policy recommendation. This relies on the intent being clear to those implementing and them honoring that intent with a new policy if conditions change.

Ability to produce outputs in immediately actionable forms (e.g. policies, budgets, AI constitutions, town plans etc.)

• Process organizers create workflows that structure the development of outputs such that they’re implementable.
• Citizens’ assemblies organizers create opportunities for experts and commissioning authorities to review draft outputs and comment on implementability and scope. Workflows are designed to support the templated development of outputs in required forms. The commissioning authority might provide requirements or guidelines for outputs to maximize their uptake (e.g., town plans, rates, functions)

Ability for final outputs to be nuanced, concrete, decisive, and comprehensive.

• Process organizers create workflows that optimize for desired outcomes, properties such as concreteness and group agreement can be in tension.

Ability to independently oversee processes and ensure their integrity.

Ability to create consequences for accountability failures.

• Process organizers typically have limited recourse to enforce accountability, often relying on creating incentives to encourage accountability.

Ability to monitor the implementation of the process and upholding of commitments to act on outputs.

Ability to communicate the “deliberative journey” of a smaller group process to the broader population (especially critical when providing ways for a mass public to participate back with their feedback, perspectives, or direct power via referendums).

• Process organizers communicate to the wider public through various media with a focus on conveying qualities that build trust in the process.
• Citizens’ assemblies organizers provide insights into the experience through interviews with participants, asking them to reflect on the process without anticipating outcomes. The goal is to build buy-in to the legitimacy of the process without outcome affiliation biasing reactions.