  The development of democratic systems is a crucial task as confirmed by its
selection as one of the Millennium Sustainable Development Goals by the United
Nations. In this article, we report on the progress of a project that aims to
address barriers, one of which is information overload, to achieving effective
direct citizen participation in democratic decision-making processes. The main
objectives are to explore if the application of Natural Language Processing
(NLP) and machine learning can improve citizens' experience of digital citizen
participation platforms. Taking as a case study the "Decide Madrid" Consul
platform, which enables citizens to post proposals for policies they would like
to see adopted by the city council, we used NLP and machine learning to provide
new ways to (a) suggest to citizens proposals they might wish to support; (b)
group citizens by interests so that they can more easily interact with each
other; (c) summarise comments posted in response to proposals; (d) assist
citizens in aggregating and developing proposals. Evaluation of the results
confirms that NLP and machine learning have a role to play in addressing some
of the barriers users of platforms such as Consul currently experience.
