technicity - project proposal be your city€¦ · "engaging citizens: a game changer for...
TRANSCRIPT
TechniCity - Project Proposal
BE YOUR CITY a platform to empower citizens
Fabrício Ferreira April 2015
Participatory Budgeting (PB) is a process of participatory urbanism regarding democratic
decision-making, in which citizens decide how to allocate a part of the public budget. It gives the
"ordinary people" the chance to identify, discuss, and decide on public spending projects,
allowing them to be an active part of the cities’ development. When PB is taken seriously and
based on mutual trust, both local governments and citizens can benefit equally.
The first full participatory budgeting process was held in the city of Porto Alegre, Brazil, in 1989.
Shortly after, it spread to other cities in the world. But only in 2006, the first e-PB took place in
Belo Horizonte (BH), Brazil. People could vote on a website for a project related to their
neighbourhood. After 2006, merely two more e-PB took place in BH (last one in 2011).
1. TOPIC
I explored how technology can be used to improve participatory urbanism by making
e-Participatory Budgeting more frequent, reliable, engaging, fair, and efficient in my city.
2. WHERE
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belo_Horizonte
As mentioned, I explored the topic in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. It is the sixth largest city in
Brazil. It was planned in 1890 to become the capital of its state, Minas Gerais. The city is built
on several hills and is completely surrounded by mountains.
According to the statistics, since 1993, only 370.000 people were part of the PB in the city
(less than 15% of the population). With the e-PB, the number raised to 700.000, which is 28%
in total. Around R$ 1.4 billion has been invested in security, urbanism, public health,
education, sports, culture, infrastructure, environment and other affairs so far.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belo_Horizonte
BH has a history of failed infrastructure projects. During the 2014 World Cuptwo people died
and 19 were injured when an overpass under construction collapsed on top of a car, two
trucks, and a bus. The city needs projects primarily in public transportation, security, and
urban planning.
Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/worldcup2014/article-2680961
3. WHAT
There are many ways and tools to support public engagement in cities, as we saw in the
fourth week of Technicity. I also found two other courses where I collected information:
"Engaging Citizens: A Game Changer for Development" and "Metaliteracy: Empowering
Yourself in a Connected World". As we saw how important engaging is for urban
improvements, this report will focus mainly on e-PB (electronic or digital Participatory
Budgeting) in Belo Horizonte and the final product proposed.
Budgeting is one of the most delicate matters to deal with. In Brazil, unfortunately, corruption
and unplanned projects are quite common, which makes citizens angry and hopeless.
Everyday we provide money for the government without noticing: taxes, taxes and taxes. If I
stop to think about it, the toothpaste I bought last week, around 30% of it went directly to
the government. Summing all toothpastes sold in the last year, I bet it's a lot of money.
Basically we provide money to a small group of people, who work for the City Hall (if we
focus on the city area only) and they decide what to do with it. Most of the time, they base on
their experience and what they think it is priority, but not our needs, not what we want.
Frustrating, no?
According to the Oxford Dictionary, frustration is the feeling of being upset or annoyed as a
result of being unable to achieve something. Frustration is followed by hopelessness and
then indifference. All this feelings make cities hostile places, where people don't feel
welcomed or part of it, depreciating the environment. For these reasons, participatory
budgeting makes people more aware about urban decisions and becoming active parts of
the society. When you feel part of something, you care and you want the best for it. This is
what we want for our cities.
e-Participatory Budgeting in Belo Horizonte
Belo Horizonte was the first city to use an online platform for Participatory Budgeting, in
2006. This first edition had more than 170.000 votes and 9 projects chosen, summing almost
R$ 25 million. To increase participation, 152 movable digital inclusion centers were available
to the population along with community telecentres, spread in the city serving as voting
areas.
In 2008 happened the second e-PB. This time the citizens had the chance to choose one out
of five transportation projects, costs over R$ 50 million each, related to road work. The five
choices were studied and proposed by a engineering company. It was also possible to vote
by the phone. The third edition (2011) had 45 proposed projects. Each citizen could vote for
one out of five projects of each nine areas of the city. The last e-PB was in 2013 where the
number of participants decreased 93% compared to the average of other years. It was not
well broadcasted, I reckon, which explains why just a few citizens voted.
Concluded projects around the city. More information (only in Portuguese) can be found in
http://gestaocompartilhada.pbh.gov.br/sites/gestaocompartilhada.pbh.gov.br/files/flash/painel_op_sala_de_situacao.swf
Analysing the data it is possible to infer that e-PB doesn't have a pattern in Belo Horizonte
regarding period, projects and resources used. The budget suffered alterations during the
construction work execution, i.e., the resources consumed extrapolated the initial project
costs. This lack of standardization makes the process unreliable, where citizens are not sure
if one project would cost more (money and time) compared to the others. e-PB has much
more engagement, since online platform is easier to use, whilst not as frequent as PB. The
investment for PB is much higher than e-PB, which brings a contradiction: more money for
projects voted for less people.
According to the website of the City Hall, every edition there are 16 steps they follow to make
an e-PB possible:
1. Bidding to define which companies will be responsible for the platform design and
other needed services (phone, SMS, etc.);
2. Obtain database with voters details (who can vote?);
3. Choose the projects by the City Hall;
4. Structure security mechanisms for the voting;
5. Development of the online application;
6. Structure databases;
7. Contract company to design the site and other services required for each edition;
8. Digital inclusion;
9. Map public voting points around the city;
10. Train people involved on the process;
11. e-PB mobilization plan;
12. e-PB dissemination plan;
13. Official voting opening;
14. Process evaluation meetings throughout the voting period;
15. Official voting closing;
16. Official result disclosure.
It shows that City Hall is responsible for deciding the projects and they also need to pay,
every edition, for outsourced services (website, voting system, training). With the product
proposed in this report, it won't be necessary to bear such costs since the system will work
continuously.
Other engagement mean
In 2011, the City Hall of Belo Horizonte created a special department to deal with
collaborative management. This department aims to organise, expand, integrate and
optimise every kind of public engagement on the administration of the city, improving the
collaboration amongst citizens, city hall and city. It gives governors an opportunity to
dialogue with people and understand our needs, enhancing opportunity equality,
transparency and open access to information of governmental decisions.
Although the collaborative management department sounds good, it is not diffused. Just a
selected people attend to the meetings since the City Hall does not use effective means of
contact. I attended to an event about cycle routes and it is not really open to discussion.
They presented the project, which was already planned and had a date to start, but they did
not contact the citizens, nor even a few cycling groups that also attended. It was not a real
dialogue, and it was really frustrating because it lacks real collaboration.
4. WHO
For this project I made a survey shared on Facebook with people that lives in Belo Horizonte.
I tried to get different profiles, from all ages since everyone is affected by public decisions.
The results are presented below.
5. HOW
a. Data Analysis:
Through the gathered data from survey and previous research, I came up with statements,
related to Belo Horizonte, I used as guideline for my project:
1. e-PB is easier for citizens than PB;
2. More people get involved in e-PB than in PB;
3. Citizens are not content with the current system of decision making;
4. Citizens approve initiatives related to e-PB;
5. The current PB and e-PB system don't follow the city/citizen needs;
b. Design:
The intention for this project is to create an accessible and secure platform, with social
networks integration, where citizens would feel more inclined to be part in e-Participatory
Budgeting. A platform that open discussion among citizens, and stop this pattern of
participatory budgeting once in a couple of years. The discussion should be constant,
citizens have to opine on projects and require improvements.
c. Challenges:
Building a web + mobile application takes time so I couldn't do it until the deadline.
7. FINAL PRODUCT
The final product consists in a prototype of application. I built the interaction design of it and
some drafts of interface. With this project citizens will be able to:
- Suggest their priorities of the city, where improvement is needed;
- Vote, which suggestions need more attention;
- Discuss suggestions and improve ideas;
- Monitor ongoing projects;
- Give feedback, evaluate existing systems or government decisions.
With the platform, people will need a registration with documents to prevent fraud and
multiple accounts. The use can be divided in 5 categories:
1. Identify a problem and share with the community: any person can identify an issue in
the city and open a request about it. It ill be possible to elaborate about the topic,
attaching images to make the problem as clear as possible. Anyone can register an
issue any time.
2. Identify solutions to an issue: after some filter, a problem can evolve to the next
category, where everyone can suggest solutions to it. In this stage, all citizens with
diverse skills (professionals or not) are welcomed to contribute in identifying possible
solutions. They don't need to mind about money or time, just think freely about
options. Different from the traditional platform, it is more inclusive since it involves
everyone.
3. Discussing: this is the most important part of this platform. When someone reports
and issue or presents a solution, anyone can reply it, suggesting improvements for
the text or refining the idea. It will be also possible to vote to make relevant
comments visible and avoid spam. It will be also possible to schedule online and in
person events to better discuss the idea (invite friends on Facebook, streaming on
Youtube etc.). City Hall will add important information such as budget needed and
time to complete it.
4. Voting: after City Hall and citizens have chosen the best solutions for the project, they
schedule the voting period. People will vote for their favourite solution. After a period
of time, the most voted solution is elected and City Hall can start working on
executing it.
5. Follow solutions: people will be able to follow and supervise ongoing project. Also
feedback, complaints, evaluate the process and result of complete and in progress
solutions.
The platform will provide tools to allow people to watch problems and solutions (email feeds),
vote/report posts and comments to prevent bad usage, invite friends to be part of it through
social networks (Facebook, Twitter among others). It is also important to add gamification to
the platform to make the experience better for the users, which improves public participation.
The more people involved, the better.