At the same time, a new wave of democratic innovations is taking off around the world. These range from novel methods to submit proposals, deliberate and vote on options, participate in budgetary allocations, or get real time alerts on debates and decisions. There’s real potential for these tools to help stem the tide of popular disenchantment and disillusionment of our political system. But so far, they operate at the margins of representative democracy.

Nesta has been working on a programme of research, to bring together lessons and insights from some of the most innovative global examples of people using digital technologies to strengthen local and national governance.

At our report launch, on 23 February, we’ll bring together a panel of UK party representatives and experts to discuss democratic innovation. The event will be a chance to put some of your questions to a group of influencers in the field.

In this vein, and as true advocates of the cause, we want to give our audience the opportunity to interact and guide the conversation, so we are crowdsourcing questions from our guests in advance.

What topics do you think should guide the discussion? What are the major areas of excitement, cynicism or concern, in thinking about how democracies can use digital technologies?

We’re interested in hearing your more fleshed-out opinions too. Feel free to leave your thoughts on some of the following questions:

• What actors (parties, local governments, parliaments etc.) are best placed to create meaningful new channels for digital participation?
• Which exciting new digital technologies, from artificial intelligence to virtual reality, do you think have the potential to improve interaction between political institutions and people?
• Digital democracy can refer to activities as broad as online voting, crowdsourced policymaking or open data. What does it mean to you?
• In a world of echo-chambers and ‘fake news’, is digital democracy a realistic or even desirable goal?

To join the conversation, head over to our sli.do page here. If 150 characters isn't enough, feel free to use the comment section below as well.