Colombia
Instituto Distrital de la Participación Ciudadana (IDPAC)
Since February 2016
12th.
Bogotá Abierta is the digital platform for open innovation and citizen participation where citizens contribute ideas to find solutions to different city challenges
Improve the quality of public decisions through mechanisms of participatory democracy
More than 38,000 citizens from Bogotá registered (May 2019)
Bogotá Abierta (Open Bogota) is part of a permanent strategy in the time of citizen participation and innovation of the District Government, led by Participación Bogotá -IDPAC- (District Institute for Participation and Community Action), where the challenges and problems of the city become opportunities for positive transformation that citizens drive with their ideas, contributions and content. In Bogotá Abierta you participate by responding with your ideas, proposals or content to open challenges about different problems or issues of the city that are launched to the inhabitants of Bogota. We are a new channel of citizen participation and co-creation, agile and easy to use, that promotes and bets on creative and proactive citizen participation:
The district entities have found in Bogotá Abierta a strategic management tool to validate and support different decision-making processes. It is a fun, accessible and easy-to-use tool that promotes a fluid and proactive approach between city government entities and citizens. At the beginning of the process through the digital interaction proposed by Bogotá Abierta through its challenges, and later in the process, with face-to-face exchange meetings and work sessions where participating citizens and public officials responsible for the issues share consulted. The interactive operation of the platform, similar to that of a social network, where participants are allowed to vote and comment on ideas, encourages the arrival of citizens to the proposed conversations about the city. The incentive to participate is also achieved through the concept of gamification that is behind the design of the platform, which raises the participation of citizens as a positive and constructive competition of ideas and content about the city. In general, challenges are accompanied by incentives associated with the implementation of the idea and also by prizes for the best participations.
The platform provides the entities of the district, which are the responsible for the analysis of the content resulting from citizen participation, an orderly systematization of the information captured. On the other hand, the dynamics of voting for the different ideas and the proposed contents help the entities to better understand the citizens preferences, and the citizens assessment of the different topics. The Bogotá Abierta´s team maintains a fluid communication with the participating citizens. The success of the platform, its positioning and consolidation process, depends to a large extent on it; we have to tell them in a fluid and permanent way to the citizens what is in Bogotá Abierta and what happens with their ideas. The initiative needs a strong culture of accountability that is expressed through good and constant communication with its users.
The contribution of the platform for the POT and for the 2016-2020 District Plan is considered positive, allowing to collect ideas, opinions and comments.
However, at the international level, the proposal that is certainly possible to transfer in other Colombian cities, is limited innovation in the field of Participatory Democracy [there are multiple digital platforms].
Although it is an interesting instrument for the design of communication campaigns, it was not completely clear how the platform is linked to the hundreds of thousands of citizens who do not have access with the digital world.
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