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This paper provides a framework and design guidelines for designing deliberative digital habitats, and relates them to issues of interest in the current development of open data initiatives. It identifies three dimensions that define deliberative digital habitats: the gemeinschaft dimension; the gesellschaft dimension; and the technology dimension; the latter with four different spaces. It will also show the mutual enrichment that online deliberation and open data initiatives can get from each other: on the one hand, the development of open data improves the quality of online participation by making new resources available to support public discussion and deliberation; on the other hand, the availability of web sites designed according to the proposed guidelines would provide the appropriate context for taking advantage of open data as part of the process of democratic engagement. Meanwhile it would help to avoid an outcome where open data initiatives remain—as unfortunately may happen—solely in the technical domain. Finally, access to the datasets collected in online deliberation web sites gives back to the relevant community, and to interested researchers, the civic intelligence resulting from these grassroots conversations.