Launch Event for “Platforma Moldova”. Remarks of the UN Resident Coordinator for Moldova  Mr Simon Springett .

A very good morning and thank you for joining us today for the Digital Democracy tool “Platforma Moldova”, which is also being streamed live.

“Platforma Moldova” is a project initiated jointly by the Initiative4Peace, swisspeace and the United Nations in Moldova.

The project utilizes open source technology, specifically a tool called Polis, to facilitate online, participatory conversations on current issues of relevance to the future of Moldova.

Polis is not simply a survey, but rather a “a real-time system for gathering, analyzing and understanding what large groups of people think, in their own words, which is enabled by advanced statistics and machine learning.”

Polis has been used in places like Taiwan, where the government has deployed the tool to make informed decisions on divisive issues with participation of more than 200,000 people, by UNDP in several countries to hear from youth on their priorities for climate action leading up to COP26.

Polis has been written about extensively, including by the BBC, the Economist, MIT Technology Review and others. Our colleague Emma Baumhofer from swisspeace will shortly explain the technology behind the project to you.

In Moldova, we hope that the platform can help shed light on what broad sections of the population think about potentially divisive issues, in their own words, which could be of value not only to the engagement of the government with the people of Moldova and its decision making, but which could also help inform UN and development partner programming and larger project initiatives.

A small pilot round was recently undertaken, focusing on young people and their views on what the government should do to make Moldova a better place to live.

Today, we will present the results from that conversation and allow some discussion around this - before we launch the next question or conversation, on which we will also have a panel discussion.

For this and other details, I will now hand over to Alexandru Flenchea, Director of Initiative4Peace. Over to you, Alexandru.