Note: This post has been updated to reflect that the e-Democracia platform has more than 27,400 registered users, not 2,740 as originally reported. 

Interview with Cristiano Ferri Faria of e-Democracia:

Organization: Brazilian Chamber of Deputies
Project: e-Democracia platform (Twitter, Facebook)
Country: Brazil
Government Level: National

Overview: The e-Democracia platform offers simple web 2.0 tools to allow citizens to interact with lawmakers on specific issues, helping to connect Brazilian citizens to national lawmakers across thousands of miles of geography. Citizens can use the portal and social media platforms to engage Congressmen, mark-up legislation, and propose and debate solutions to policy problems. The platform has facilitated cross-country dialogue among disparate groups and has thousands of active users. It has also improved legislative transparency.

Background: The e-Democracia platform was launched in June 2009 by the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies around the theme of “virtual legislative communities.” The goal was to use new social media and technology tools, combined with offline legislative events (e.g. committee hearings, conferences, etc.) to engage a range of actors in the legislative process. On the platform, citizens can share information about a problem, identify possible solutions to the problem, and even draft legislation through the wikilegis platform. The platform also maps edits made to legislation, which makes the evolution and current status of a bill easily understandable in a visual format.

e-Democracia was launched in the form of a pilot project. First, discussions based on two specific draft bills in the Chamber of Deputies were organized via forums, chats, and the wikilegis platform. One was on climate change policy and the other on the Statute of Youth. After these successful pilots, the project was launched on a grander, legislature-wide scale. As of August 2013, the portal had about 3,000 debates (forum threads), 17,400 contributions, and 27,400 registered participants. 

Implementation: The project was conceived by a group of young legislative officials and an external consultant who surveyed other legislative e-Government initiatives around the world. Besides having informal conversations with few specialists, the staff of five people considered other projects as inspiration (Chilea’s Virtual Senator website, for example). In the end, the group decided to use a more structured, institutional approach embedded within the Chamber. A deliberate effort was made to slowly create new services in order to provide realistic support to the virtual debates. This all aided in the success of introducing the platform to legislators – rather than something new and radical, it was unveiled and developed gradually.

A key factor in the development of e-Democracia was creating multiple modes of interaction for citizens and lawmakers. The platform includes the following features:

• Integration with Facebook, Twitter, and e-mail
• Live chats between legislators and citizens
• Interactive polling platform for different issues
• Broadcasting for public hearings
• “Video forums” for legislators, where even those uncomfortable with new social media approaches to communication can record short (2-7 minute) video responses using a smartphone to respond to voters directly. 

An initial challenge was getting lawmakers to accept the project. With the support of the Speaker and specific members within the Chamber of Deputies, the e-Democracia website began with a pilot phase aimed at proving its value to other skeptical members. Further, a pilot phase was important in convincing parts of Brazilian society and the media who initially distrusted it as merely a shallow way to market the legislature. To build public awareness of the project, the Chamber of Deputies published articles in national papers, directly invited specific participants and communities, and established an active social media presence.

In the preliminary stages, the cost was relatively low, with the main expenses related to human resources, specifically a) those officials temporarily allocated to the project to get it off the ground, and b) an executive consultant who was in charge to setting up the first virtual discussions. 

Critical Issues & Achievements: There are six critical achievements of the project: a record of real citizen participation in bill drafting, the establishment of a wide variety of participatory mechanisms, increased legislative transparency, increased civic engagement, increased engagement by MPs with their constituents and citizens in general, and increased digital connections formed across the country.

A great example of the potential impact of e-Democracia is the success of the wiki legislation feature (wikilegis) that has allowed citizens to track and comment on pending legislation, article by article. Citizens can also suggest specific new text to be incorporated. In this sense, lawmakers, legislative consultants, and citizens all have equal footing to propose solutions to policy problems.

Another particularly successful outcome is the Youth Statute bill. Thirty per cent of its text was built based on the ideas submitted by e-Democracia participants. A bill on Internet regulation also featured many suggestions from users of the e-Democracia portal that were incorporated into the final law.

There are three primary categories of challenges: 

Social: there is a tension between traditional lobbying groups and the digital lobby, which have different memberships, processes, expectations, and end goals. While the traditional lobbying activities are supported by big corporations and public bodies, often using non-transparent approaches, digital lobbying is generally advanced by individual citizens and groups of people organized to defend specific (sometimes temporary) public causes.  

Political: some politicians still prefer engagement with citizens to occur during elections. They are less interested in mobile and online engagement between elections, when the actual lawmaking occurs. During the session, only a few lawmakers use web 2.0 tools to engage citizens in lawmaking on their own and even savvy lawmakers struggle at times with digital tools. One of the main challenges concerning the e-Democracia implementation process is engaging parliamentarians to post comments or record videos in the virtual debates, as some of them do not believe that it is important or do not know how to use these tools.

Organizational: there is a tension between officials and civil servants who are open to new participatory and open data policies and those who are reluctant to embrace a culture that provides and publishes information. Public organizations such as parliaments face internal struggles between progressive and conservative staffers and MPs. Often each of those groups are supported by different political groups, which exacerbate this split.

Finally, an additional structural challenge is mediating various streams of engagement by thousands, if not potentially millions, and ensuring the system is both solution-oriented and inclusive. Although there is a cost to compiling and organizing this content, the e-Democracia platform offers an arena of debate where citizens and legislators can learn how to explore this new relationship based on more trust, collaboration, and transparency.

Contacts:

Cristiano Ferri Faria, Founder
[email protected]

Additional Resources:

The Open Parliament in the Age of Internet:

can the people now collaborate with legislatures in lawmaking?

Can People Help Legislators Make Better Laws?

Can People Help Legislators to Make Better Laws: the Brazilian Parliament’s e-democracia

This post is part five in a series of case studies on tools PMOs have used that can be replicated or serve as models for organizations in different contexts. To see all of the case studies, click here. To contribute a case study on a project that your organization has created, please fill out the template and email Dustin Palmer at [email protected] with any questions.