Maine is a unique place. It maintains deep connections to the past and a traditional democratic sensibility. Perhaps because of that, it’s well-positioned to face the future. Although geographically large, everybody seems to be no more than one degree separated from everybody else. It’s a place where change can happen! Problems can be solved, institutions can be reformed, and bold experiments undertaken. It was therefore the perfect place for a conference about democratic innovation and new modes of digital participation.

At the end of October, in partnership with Bernstein Shur and RadicalxChange, the Roux Institute at Northeastern University hosted Foundations for the Digital Commons. The gathering was designed around the premise that the digital systems we rely on, whether for information, participation, or data governance, need institutional renewal.

The audience reflected this ambition. Participants included technologists, lawyers, policymakers, academics, civic innovators, journalists, and funders, spanning ideological and professional backgrounds. Some were deeply embedded in digital-governance work; others were encountering it for the first time. The goal was twofold:

• To align those already active in the field around a shared, concrete vision for digital infrastructure, and

• To create entry points for new participants by highlighting workable models, real-world successes, and actionable next steps.

Speakers were encouraged to emphasize what is working—tools in use, policies implemented, pilots underway—rather than abstract ideal models. Constructive disagreement was welcome when it revealed tradeoffs or pathways for collaboration.

Why Maine?

Maine combines several features that make it unusually well-suited to lead on digital governance. It is the only state that uses ranked-choice voting for statewide and federal offices, has publicly financed campaigns, and maintains one of the most accessible systems for citizen-initiated lawmaking.

Its civic culture is shaped by deliberate choices, such as banning roadside billboards to protect natural resources, maintaining more land trusts per capita than any other state, and embracing community-centered innovations, e.g., South Portland adopting landlines to promote youth connection.

At the same time, Maine faces sober challenges: the highest rate of childhood hunger in New England, persistent broadband gaps, and some of the longest power outages in the country. These pressures reinforce the state’s pragmatic, community-oriented approach to problem-solving.

This culture was visible at the convening. Multiple gubernatorial candidates, state legislators, and agency leaders participated across both days, not as symbolic guests but as active contributors. Their engagement helped spark several new local initiatives already underway, underscoring Maine’s potential to become a bastion and beacon of digital infrastructure that delivers broad public benefit.

A Cross-Section of the Digital Infrastructure Stack

The programming moved through different layers of the digital ecosystem, from information flows to large-scale public participation to data governance.

Information Innovations: Public ↔ Legislators

Dave Lesher (CalMatters) and Stuart Lynn (Crownshy) opened the day with a look at democratic information flows—how the public learns what the government is doing, and how policymakers can access structured insight from the public. Both organizations underscored that the main limitations are institutional, not technical.

Citizens’ Assemblies for the AI Age

Zabrae Valentine (Public Good Group), Jennifer Chace (U. Southern Maine), and Elicia Wilson (GitLab Foundation) examined citizens’ assemblies as a tool for involving everyday people in complex questions, including those surrounding AI and workforce transitions. The conversation emphasized representativeness, creative solutions, and institutional uptake.

Scaling Deliberation to Millions

Axel Dauchez (MAKE.org) demonstrated how millions of Europeans participate in structured, multi-stage deliberation processes, while Beth Goldberg (Jigsaw) illustrated how the civic-cohesion benefits of deliberation can be sustained as those processes scale.

The afternoon sessions shifted from civic infrastructure to the economic and technical foundations that support it.

Trusted Data Intermediaries

Lacey Strahm (OpenMined), Matt Prewitt (RadicalxChange), and Tom Cochran (Cochran Consulting) discussed how data intermediaries could help publishers and communities negotiate with AI developers, preserve privacy, and rebalance incentives away from extraction.

Cooperatives in the Data Economy

Jeb Bell (Project Liberty), Júlia Martins Rodrigues (Media Economies Design Lab), and Christine Kim (Mozilla Foundation) explored cooperative data-governance models, focusing on the legal and organizational challenges of collective data stewardship.

Institutions That Listen

In the keynote, Beth Noveck weaved together the threads that surfaced throughout the day, highlighting that listening is an institutional capability - something that can be built and improved. 

Workshops and Sprints

On the second day of the convening, attention turned to practical knowledge sharing and collaboration. The day kicked off with two legal workshops run as part of RadicalxChange’s Mutualism project, which is building an informal network of lawyers to support the unique challenges facing cutting-edge civic tech projects.

One workshop focused on novel cooperative structures, while the other took a deep dive into the latest caselaw concerning AI and IP, outlining strategies that journalists and other content providers are developing to protect their content and monetization streams.

In the second part of the day, the Roux Institute led an innovation sprint in which small teams brainstormed data-oriented solutions to pressing problems in Maine’s politics, including workforce development. Ideas presented at the end were judged by a panel of distinguished entrepreneurs and awarded prizes. The winning concept was a cost-transparency portal that incentivizes tradespeople and banks to share construction data, generating insights to strengthen Maine’s housing and workforce systems.

What Connected the Sessions

Several themes tied the day together:

1. Institutional design is the central challenge.

Whether discussing journalism, deliberation platforms, AI governance, or data trusts, speakers emphasized that the most complex problems lie in incentive and governance structures, as the required technology exists and needs recalibration. 

2. Scale changes everything.

Processes that work for dozens do not automatically work for thousands or millions. MAKE.org, Jigsaw, and the citizens’ assembly panel each demonstrated the need for redesigned, not simply expanded, systems.

3. States can lead.

Maine’s active participation from legislators, gubernatorial candidates, and agency staff demonstrated how states can pilot new models before scaling, an increasingly realistic pathway in the absence of federal progress, and that institutional buy-in can be more easily achieved at the state level. 

4. Civic and economic infrastructure are intertwined.

Trusted information, meaningful participation, and equitable data governance reinforce one another. Weakness in any domain undermines the whole.

Takeaways & Early Impact

Across two days, a clearer shared vision for digital infrastructure began to take shape, along with the sentiment that this vision will be refined by actions, pilots, and a willingness to “fail forward.” Expert participants repeatedly emphasized that this work will advance through building, testing, and refining real systems, not by waiting for perfect designs. 

At the same time, new entrants indicated a real commitment to contributing to this work. The effort will be difficult, and some experiments will fail, but there was a shared commitment to learning through practice rather than retreating from risk.

A second takeaway was the fundamental need for interdependence: trustworthy information flows, participatory processes, institutional listening, and equitable data governance reinforce one another. Strengthening any one pillar makes progress in the others more achievable.

Early signs of impact matched this clarity. Several seeds planted during the convening are already taking root. Most notably, exploratory work toward a Maine-wide citizens’ assembly on education policy and new deliberative initiatives using Pol. are underway with high school student leaders.

Closing

Foundations for the Digital Commons did not aim to produce a universal blueprint. Instead, it surfaced a shared recognition that digital infrastructure—civic and economic—is an institutional challenge that requires practical, state-level experimentation.

Maine’s mix of democratic reforms, pragmatic political culture, and willingness to collaborate makes it a promising place to begin building what comes next. Civic technologists are busily creating hopeful possibilities for the future of politics, and these new ways of building technology and democratic institutions can and must be embraced locally. 

This presents vast opportunities for Maine and is a step toward broader renewal of democratic institutions. The work continues, but the foundation is now clearer than it was before.