The problem   Current decision-making processes are struggling to address the most pressing challenges because they are not fit for the twenty-first century. People want to have a more significant say in shaping the policies that affect their lives beyond the opportunity to vote every few years. However, there are no tools that meet peoples’ new expectations for participation in local decision making. The existing community engagement tools for civic organisations are limited to opinion posting and voting, which cannot integrate different perspectives and do not work well on complex problems. Research has shown that social media platforms may exacerbate this issue because it fragments opinions rather than uniting them. Continuing to use tools that aren’t fit for purpose will negatively affect social cohesion and the likelihood of addressing important complex challenges. 
 
The solution  
People Supported Intelligence (PSi) is an online platform for civic organisations, like a local council, to engage their whole community in deliberative participatory decision-making. PSi is novel because it gives civic organisations a more engaging and social way to hold citizen consultations about a specific local issue without relying on outdated methods like post, comment and like. PSi is more social than other community engagement platforms, so it can leverage the collective intelligence of people online. We have built-in automated group facilitation to improve disagreement management, encourage deeper critical thinking and reduce extreme ideas. 
The Psi algorithm ensures that even large communities converge to a decision. PSi is more effective, faster and cheaper than existing solutions so that civic organisations can sustain a commitment to participatory decision-making.