Bridging the gap: from idea to impact, Panel's innovative tool redefines research participation

Through their unique community and science-based platform, Panel empowers citizens to play a more meaningful role in decision-making.

Image: Mauro Mora

This week, we met Jeroen Ooijevaar, CEO of Panel, a UvA spin-off that was granted a 160,000€ convertible loan from Innovatiefonds Noord-Holland one month ago. During our insightful conversation, Jeroen delved into Panel's cutting-edge software and told us more about their ongoing and upcoming projects. By collating qualitative responses and data, the software enables participants within a group to seamlessly access, organize, and share the outcomes of their collaborative projects.

What is Panel?  

In early 2016, sociologists realized the potential of "open online research" as a tool for social scientific research. They found out that this approach could extend beyond academia and be utilized by society at large, especially in the context of collaborative decision-making. This realization paved the way for the emergence of Panel—a collaborative learning device that serves as a citizen community-based, science-driven, and co-creation-oriented platform. Designed as a tool for qualitative research, it is used to improve citizen participation in decision-making processes.

The methodology involves individuals providing their opinions in a qualitative manner during surveys. Once respondents have submitted their answers, they gain access to view and engage with the responses of others. This interactive feature enables them to organize and share the collective results. By doing so, participants not only gain insights into their community's perspectives but also have the ability to select and share what resonates with them, effectively amplifying their own voices in the process.

How does it make an impact?

Panel's approach goes beyond a mere random survey. Participants are actively included in the process and hold agency over the results, having the ability to view and manage them. People are very often interested in joining the discussion, however, due to their schedule and busy lives, for example, when it’s impossible to get a babysitter, few of them usually show up. Doing this kind of review and process online allows people to decide when and where. Everyone can now join the discussion online, which is much more inclusive. This also prevents the same persons from always having the loudest voice, and some others do not dare to answer or speak their minds.

This becomes particularly significant when considering the widening gap between government and society, coupled with a lack of trust in institutions. Even if they may not fully agree with the final solution, citizens gain a deeper understanding of the reasons behind certain outcomes. They recognize that their perspectives and proposed solutions are taken into account. The impact of Panel's approach is twofold: bridging the gap between society and government and contributing to a reduction in distrust by fostering transparency, inclusion, and mutual understanding.

What type of project exemplifies this impactful approach to collaborative research?

Currently, we are engaged in a project with the city of Amsterdam, working closely with a department that can be seen as a mini-society itself. Our collaborative research focuses on leadership styles, improvement, and enhancing inclusivity and social safety within this department. To achieve this, we follow a two-step process. In the first round, we invite individuals to express their observations regarding areas that require improvement. Subsequently, we delve deeper and encourage participants to propose concrete solutions. For instance, we seek their insights on creating a more socially safe environment, enhancing leadership effectiveness, and fostering inclusivity within the organization.

As you can see, this is not exactly citizen participation: we have discovered that our approach is highly effective in various societal contexts, be it government institutions, municipalities, or even within specific departments of companies. Panel and the way it allows decision-making is also relevant at the municipality level, to gather citizen participation with the Environment and Planning Act in the Netherlands, but also at the neighbourhood level.

How did you come to become Panel’s CEO?

Despite being the CEO, I am relatively new to Panel. I studied sociology at Radboud University in Nijmegen, which has a quantitative-based approach. Besides this, I was politically active in my city's municipality, as a council member, and noticed a lack of citizen involvement despite the government's efforts. The changing landscape of social media, media in general, and software offers more possibilities, yet there hasn't been much innovation. We still rely on small gatherings where only a few (often retired) individuals participate, and I believe we can do better! This inspired me during my time as a council member and later as a deputy mayor, responsible for citizen participation, diversity, and inclusion. I realized that many governmental problems are technical and need technical solutions. However, involving everyone in decision-making processes about those technical matters is the real challenge that lacks innovation.

After my term ended, I was searching for something new and coincidentally discovered Panel, which seemed like the perfect opportunity to utilize my sociology background, government connections, and drive for impactful change. They had a solution to the problem I had been encountering.

Congratulations on obtaining the InnovatieFonds. How do you plan to use it for your future development?

We are actually already using the funds. At the moment we are working on a new sprint: taking the next steps in improving our software. The developers are working on it as we speak. One aspect we are focusing on is the process of "stacking," where individuals combine their ideas into organized stacks. We found out that different users may require different approaches. For instance, we conducted a research project for the persoonsgebonden budget (personal budget), which typically involves older individuals, who may have limited computer experience. We realized that the stacking process should be tailored differently for these persons compared to younger audiences such as students.

Looking ahead, our upcoming project will involve the integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI). AI is an inevitable part of our technological landscape. Our aim is to explore how AI can assist in providing automated stacking of ideas, enabling users to organize their results more efficiently. Nevertheless, it is important for us to prioritize ethics and ensure that AI does not have an unfair impact or control over the final outcomes. Finding the right balance is key because while AI can help, the main goal of our collaborative decision-making process is to make every human voice heard.