The Danish Board of Technology is famous for its work with citizen participation and consensus conferences. This article is based on an empirical investigation of a citizen project on electronic patient records. It investigates the concrete, situated interactions through which the production of a consensus took place. According to the Board of Technology, the democratic relevance of this citizen perspective is validated by their consensus-creating methods. In contrast with this suggestion, the article proposes to view citizen projects as risky, experimental encounters. This view suggests that consensus methods cannot guarantee that learning will occur and that a relevant democratic outcome will be reached. This viewpoint also allows the formulation of specific challenges for citizen projects as currently conceived.
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