Terms of Service
Legal aspects and conditions of use of the IDEAL Decidim Platform
Basic information on data protection :
Responsible for the processing: IDEAL Project Consortium.
Purpose of the processing: to manage contact with citizens and people interested in participating more actively in the city's events, bodies and participation processes, including the political opinions of users who may publish them.
Legal basis for the processing: is the user's consent through acceptance of the terms and conditions of use.
Recipients of the data: they will not be communicated to third parties except by legal obligation.
Rights: to exercise your rights of access, rectification and deletion as well as other rights recognized in the regulations, you can do so by sending an email to: idealengage@gmail.com.
Additional information: You can consult the complete data protection policy in the section: Privacy policy.
This legal notice provides concise information on the main aspects of the digital participation platform Decidim Barcelona (decidim.barcelona), promoted by the Barcelona City Council. The platform aims to promote citizen participation and direct, deliberative and participatory democracy in the city through different processes, spaces and participation bodies, generating forms of direct and open interaction between the City Council, citizens, and the different social agents of the city. Decidim Barcelona is aimed at promoting citizen deliberation and debate, transparency and traceability of participation (in no case to trace users), and the generation of face-to-face and digital participation spaces.
The citizen who accesses this platform undertakes to accept and comply with all that is provided in this legal notice and all applicable provisions. He also undertakes to make lawful and appropriate use of the contents and services and to refrain from any illegal or contrary to good faith conduct.
This Platform is produced by the IDEAL Consortium in the framework of the European Union’s Research and Innovation Actions programme, under Grant Agreement n° 101178191.
A. Scope of application of these terms of use
The following terms of use for participation in the Decidim Barcelona platform bind all persons participating in this website. When registering, you will be asked to accept these terms.
Barcelona City Council reserves the right to modify the present conditions for the platform and will publish the latest version of these conditions on this website. In order to stay informed of future changes, we advise you to visit this page from time to time. Users will be informed of the modifications when they affect their privacy and/or security.
B. Objective of the initiative
Through the Decidim Barcelona platform, Barcelona City Council wants to promote citizen participation in an open and transparent manner and involve citizens and the different social agents in improving the democratic quality of life in the city as a whole, in the definition and design of public policies and municipal actions, as well as in the assessment, information, discussion, prioritization and decision on those policies and actions, of municipal and public institutions as well as citizen, associative or social initiatives that so wish. In this way, it seeks to address the challenges and difficulties that arise in the city, with the aim of improving it and opening it to all citizens through multiple processes, spaces, bodies and other forms of citizen participation.
The City Council opts for a participatory, direct and deliberative democracy, making visible and promoting initiatives that, both individually and collectively, can contribute to debating, designing and/or evaluating municipal and citizen actions in favor of the common good. The platform also aims to facilitate and make visible the debates, design, assessment, negotiation and modification, monitoring and evaluation of public policies that can be carried out outside the platform, in order to offer citizens maximum transparency. In this sense, decidim.barcelona must be able to host future initiatives of citizen participation and direct, participatory or deliberative democracy, including those that promote disintermediation between the municipal government and the citizens of Barcelona and those that promote and facilitate cooperation, association and self-organization among the citizens themselves.
C. General aspects of participation in the decidim.barcelona platform
Any natural person aged 14 or over who has previously registered on the Decidim Barcelona platform can participate. By accepting these terms of use, the registered person declares that they are 14 years or older. The adults on whom the minors depend are responsible for the actions of these minors on the Decidim Barcelona platform. The platform also allows the possibility of opening the registration to entities, collectives, groups and/or citizen organizations and relevant actors in the city.
Since the Decidim Barcelona platform is a meeting point that aims to promote citizen participation for the improvement of the city, users are obliged to use it diligently and in accordance with this objective.
Barcelona City Council is not responsible for the incorrect use of the Decidim Barcelona platform by users or for the content they contribute. Each user is responsible for using the platform correctly, as well as for the legality of the content and opinions shared there.
It is not permitted to add any illegal or unauthorized content to the website, such as information that has the following characteristics:
that it is false or misleading;
that infringes any right of the City Council or any third party, such as copyright, registered trademarks or other intellectual and industrial property rights or other related rights;
that violates the privacy of a third party, such as publishing personal details of participants, such as name, address, telephone number, email, photographs or any other personal information;
that contains viruses, Trojans, robots or other programs that may harm the City Council's website or systems or the website or system of any third party, or that are intended to circumvent the technical measures designed for the correct functioning of the platform;
that intends to send spam to users or overload the system;
that has the character of a chain of messages, pyramid scheme or game of chance;
that has commercial purposes, such as posting job offers or advertisements;
that is not in accordance with public decency; consequently, the content must not incite hatred, discriminate, threaten, provoke, or have a sexual, violent, vulgar, or offensive meaning or character;
that violates any applicable law or regulation;
to campaign promoting mass voting for other proposals unrelated to the process and the debate framework, and
that creates multiple users pretending to be different people (astroturfing).
Barcelona City Council is not responsible for the quality, originality, authenticity, legality or security of the content that users contribute to the platform. However, Barcelona City Council reserves the right to remove from the Decidim Barcelona platform any opinions, information, comments, proposals or files that contradict these conditions of use, and may install filters for this purpose. All of this will be done solely with the aim of preserving the fundamental objective of the Decidim Barcelona platform. Barcelona City Council also reserves the right —without prior notice— to temporarily suspend the activities of a participant on the platform, deactivate their account in any way, delete their content, delete their account or send a warning, especially, and without limitation, in the following cases:
if there is a violation of these terms of use of the participation platform and
if the City Council believes that the participant's activity is harmful to others, to the website or to the City Council.
The participant is responsible for the content of their contributions and for any damages or claims from third parties that may arise from them. In no case will Barcelona City Council be responsible for the improper use of the platform site or the content shared there, nor will it be responsible for the use that an individual makes of the ideas contributed, or for the suitability of these ideas, or for the results derived from them. In the event that the content includes a link to another website, Barcelona City Council does not assume any type of responsibility for damages and/or losses due to access to the contents of this link, nor for the content that may be contained in this same link. In the event that a dispute of any kind or for any reason arises between the participants on the website or a third party, Barcelona City Council is exempt from all liability for claims, demands or damages of any nature that are in any way related to this dispute.
D. Platform operation
Participants can access and browse the Decidim Barcelona platform freely and anonymously. Only when they want to perform any action that involves creating, supporting or commenting on a proposal or participating in a debate will they need to register beforehand. The registration that will allow them to participate in the platform by making comments in a section or creating proposals must be done by entering the following data: username, email, password and acceptance of the terms of use. The user will be required to verify their account by confirming that they are 14 years old or older and that they are registered in Barcelona. For this purpose, three pieces of information related to the registry will be requested (ID, postal code and date of birth). This data will be used for the sole purpose of verifying the account, and will not be used subsequently.
The platform also allows the possibility of registering entities, groups and/or organizations, and in this case, the following data will be requested: name of the organization, person responsible, email, telephone, password and acceptance of the terms of use.
The registered person can interact with the platform through the different functionalities enabled by each of the participation processes (debates, proposals, meetings, etc.). The verified person will be able to support the proposals and participate in the prioritization processes.
E. Conditions for the processing of content provided by users
These conditions regulate the terms applicable to the content sent by users of this platform through the corresponding form (hereinafter, the “content”). The content does not include those personal data (except the user's public name) that are provided when registering and verifying, it only includes the public content provided by the user (comments, proposals, etc.). These conditions apply both to the content initially sent to the Decidim Barcelona platform and to any content that is sent later or is reported to the Barcelona City Council:
Non-confidentiality: All content sent by the user to Barcelona City Council must be capable of being known by the general public. Therefore, Barcelona City Council will treat said content as non-confidential information.
Procedure : In the event that the Barcelona City Council is interested in the content sent by the user, it may contact him to request additional information, without the City Council acquiring -by this fact- any commitment with respect to the user. This information will be non-confidential, without prejudice to the fact that, in the event that the parties consider it necessary to exchange confidential information, a confidentiality agreement will be signed. All this without prejudice to the provisions of the section relating to “Intellectual and industrial property rights”.
Advertising or dissemination of the contents presented : Participants in the Barcelona City Council's Decidim Barcelona platform declare that they are aware of and accept that the information provided may be published on websites owned by Barcelona City Council, as well as through other means that the organization deems appropriate to publicize this initiative.
Intellectual property : Unless otherwise indicated, the content protected by intellectual property that the user contributes to this website will be subject to a Creative Commons - Attribution-ShareAlike (CC-BY-SA) license.
Notice and withdrawal procedure : Any person, with good reason, may request the removal of content that violates the legal notice and the present conditions of use; The request can be made through this form: Barcelona City Council > Online Support > Web Queries > Incidents on the Decidim.barcelona platform, in user management and participation spaces (External link)Barcelona City Council will process these requests and reserves the right to carry out the appropriate checks or verifications prior to the removal of any content.
F. Copyright, reuse of information and other rights over the website and its contents
Barcelona City Council encourages the use of open licenses, the creation of derivative works and the reuse and modification of the works contained in this website, provided that the original authorship is acknowledged and the same license is maintained for the resulting work. Unless otherwise indicated, the content protected by intellectual property disseminated on this website is subject, by default, to a Creative Commons - Attribution - Share Alike (CC-BY-SA) license. According to this license, anyone (including the City Council) may use the protected content, both for commercial and non-commercial purposes, provided that the authorship is acknowledged and the resulting work is disseminated under the same CC-BY-SA license. This license will apply to both the content provided by the City Council and the content provided by users of this website.
Barcelona City Council allows the reuse of all information and data disseminated through this website, subject to the following conditions:
You must properly acknowledge authorship, provide a link to the license, and indicate if any changes have been made.
You may not imply that the City Council sponsors or supports the activity in which the information is reused.
Barcelona City Council will respect all intellectual or industrial property rights over the content submitted by users, and assumes no responsibility, direct or indirect, for any type of controversy, dispute and/or litigation that may arise from the publication, disclosure and/or dissemination of the content provided without the mandatory consent of its legitimate owners or without the protection of any use permitted by law.