Montevideo
Project name: Montevideo Participa
Participatory city
Montevideo has a history of citizen participation in political decision-making that predates the Consul Democracia.
The city is divided into eight municipalities, a new grouping of the 18 zonal communal centres created in the 1990s. While the main authority remains in the hands of the Intendencia: the city's central government, municipalities are increasingly taking on responsibilities, one of which is to engage their communities and implement (part of) the citizen participation agenda.
The participatory arsenal of Montevideo's government is broad in the sense that, as a resident of the city, there are many different avenues to participate in city affairs. Every two years there is a participatory budget process, but there are also Neighborhood Councils, citizen labs and 'peatonales barriales' (traffic-free streets chosen by residents).
Participatory budgets and Women with Streets
Consul Democracy came to Montevideo when, in 2017, a delegation from Madrid visited the city to discuss collaboration and possible reforms. A mutual collaboration agreement was signed and published between representatives of the two cities, and in the following years, the Consul platform was integrated into the city's existing participatory processes through its customization, putting the Montevideo Decide platform into production.
Public software and open source were important for Montevideo, says Juan Prada, Director of the city's Smart City department. But the biggest ‘plus’, for him, was the fact that Consul had been developed by a municipality, ‘because then we knew that it had all the necessary requirements from a municipal administration point of view’.
A general motivation for adopting Consultative Democracy, according to Juan, was to add a digital channel of participation to the existing palette of participatory channels and actions, especially with the aim of including more young people. Specifically, it was to add a digital voting option to the existing participatory budget.
At this stage, the following processes or campaigns were developed on the platform:
1) Ideas cycle
In this programme, the Consul Proposals process was used, where each citizen proposed one or more ideas to be developed in the city, these ideas went through a feasibility study, and the approved ideas went through a voting process. The winning ideas were then implemented in the city. This programme was implemented in 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021.
For example, for the 2021 ideas cycle, 281 ideas were submitted, more than 17,000 votes were received and 17 ideas moved on to the implementation phase.
2) Mujeres con Calle (Women with streets)
The Mujeres con Calle project sought to make visible and recognise the contributions of women in history, through their inclusion in the nomenclature, so that they form part of the city's memory and identity.
The campaign arose from the fact that only 7% of the city's streets were named after women.
The proposals were presented on the Montevideo Decide platform, reaching a total of 210 proposals.
In the first instance of the Mujeres con Calle campaign, 22,041 votes were received, while the platform received 63,646 visits throughout the campaign.
Proposals about the names of women of African descent, national and international women, human rights defenders, artists, scientists, pioneers in the struggle for civil rights in the country, among others, were highlighted.
Currently, the City Hall has a visualisation website where you can see roads and public spaces named after women.
3) Participatory budget
In Montevideo, participatory budget cycles take place every two years and although there is a face-to-face vote, it was considered highly relevant to be able to include electronic voting through a citizen participation platform.
In the first cycle where Consul was used in 2018, 602 online votes were cast, the following cycle in 2021 3256 votes, in 2023 7942 votes.
This agenda is closely related to Montevideo's ‘open data’ strategy, says María Decia, Juan's colleague. Alongside its Consul instance, there is the Montevidata platform, on which the city publishes data on health, environment, mobility, etcetera. María: ‘With Montevidedata, we are trying not only to make the city and its administration more open and transparent, but also to enrich citizen participation and the conversations that take place there’.
To ensure the authenticity of each vote, an integration with Agesic (Agency for e-Government and the Information and Knowledge Society) was implemented to use verified user accounts. This development allows differentiating between users' authentication level to determine the processes in which they can participate.
For example, to be able to participate in Debates, level one and two are sufficient, to be able to vote in Participatory Budgeting you must have level 3.
From Decide to Participate
With the arrival of a new local government in 2020, a set of changes related to the strategy of communication and participation with citizens took place, defining or promoting new instances of participation as well as improving the associated tools. This was reflected in the change of name of the Montevideo Consul project from Montevideo Decide to Montevideo Participa.
Also at this time, Juan and María explain, after collaborating with the Uruguayan company Sofis Montevideo started working with Usabi, a company located in Gran Canaria, which supports Montevideo in the tasks of training, updating, maintenance and adaptation of the Montevideo Consul Democracy platform.
Initially, the main changes implemented by Usabi consisted of adapting the platform with the objective of fostering dialogue and participation in the framework of Montevideo's 300th anniversary celebrations.
Citizens were invited to discuss different issues of the city aligned with the following thematic axes:
Montevideo and Creation: science, culture and innovation.
Montevideo Open Montevideo: migration, communities, coexistence
Montevideo and equality: diversity, equity, rights
Montevideo and its generations: Children, youth and the elderly
In the framework of this campaign, 103 debates were entered.
Usabi also supported from a technological point of view the voting of the participatory budget 2023 where there was an increase in participation of more than 200 %.
Montevideo is currently in a process of migration to the latest version of Consul Democracy with the objective of acquiring the functionalities and improvements included in the tool.
Transparency and citizen participation
The participation agenda is closely related to Montevideo's data strategy and transparency agenda.
For example, within the Participatory Budget, the progress of the execution of the winning projects is published. In this way, transparency about the process is created, as well as trust in the participatory process in general.
On the other hand, through the publication of indicators and data, a democratisation of information is achieved. Tools that contribute to this are Montevidata, which is an indicator visualisation portal (health, environmental, mobility, health and other indicators are published) and the Open Data Portal developed with Ckan. Says Maria Eugenia Decia, ‘With Montevidata we are trying not only to make the city and its administration more open and transparent, but also to enrich citizen participation and the conversations that take place there’.
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