Spotlight: Off the computer and into the park
/Spotlight: Off the computer and into the park
To bridge the digital divide, many participatory programs supplement online outreach with in-person contact. People who run participatory processes frequently cite public parks as prime locations to put up a tent and talk to people. A staff member or volunteer plays the role of “translator,” talking to people about the decision-making process and recording each person's opinion on the digital platform.
Ciudadanía Inteligente runs a participatory design workshop in a public park. Photo courtesy Ciudadanía Inteligente.
In Santiago, Chile, Ciudadanía Inteligente quickly found that the pilot version of its Abre digital platform was difficult for local residents to use, as many people in the neighborhood didn't have a personal computer. So, they talked to people in the neighborhood park and transcribed their verbal feedback into the platform. Talking with people led to platform improvements: The team quickly learned that many of the women they spoke to didn't have the personal email account necessary to register as users. Ciudadanía's developers responded by adapting the platform so that lack of an email address was no longer a barrier to registration.
This and other experiences taught the Ciudadanía team that software was only a part of the work. "The core of the project was not only the platform, but all of the work around it to secure participation," says Colombina Schaeffer, deputy director of Fundación Ciudadanía Inteligente. "We used to do a lot of platform development, and then we realized we had a lot of tools but they were not necessarily used or were used only by specific people who usually already had access to decision-making processes. Building communities around platforms is as important, or even more, than developing them."