Case study: Digital Democracy at the local level in Spain — Decide Madrid
This article was written by Savio Cheyaden.
Introduction
Madrid has a history of use of ICT to improve public consultation on city-wide projects. Back in 2004, through Madrid Participa, the municipality of Madrid focussed on obtaining public opinion on how to improve the quality of life.[1] Later, following the 15M movement of 2011 in Spain, Podemos (a political party) was established, which formed a coalition government called ‘Ahora Madrid’ with other political parties in the municipality of Madrid.[2] Podemos had included in its electoral program a commitment to implement tools for citizen participation through the internet and in September 2015 Decide Madrid was created to fulfil this commitment.[3] Even after a change in government in Madrid Municipality in June 2019, Decide Madrid is still being used with seven processes of citizen engagement having being carried out between mid-June 2019 to mid-January 2020.[4] This article will explore how DM is used to practice democracy at the local level through use of ICT, what are the existing challenges and the possible solutions to realise their full potential.
Decide Madrid
Decide Madrid is based on CONSUL, an internet software developed by Madrid’s City Council to support its process for e-government and e-participation.[5] Citizens can participate in DM in four different ways.
Firstly, citizens can directly propose ideas for new legislation called citizen proposals. For a proposal to become policy, it goes through several phases such as the support vote (a threshold of 1% of the census population above 16 years old), the final decision vote, the City Council’s review on legality, feasibility, economic costs and competence. If this is achieved, the City Council creates a Plan of Action.[6] The cycle of this process exceeds a full year. 100% Sustainable Madrid and A single ticket for public transport are the two proposals which are a result of participatory activities enabled by DM.[7] Out of the two proposals, the latter fell out of the jurisdiction of the city council, but overwhelming public support for the proposal put pressure on the responsible regional institution and resulted in the proposal’s implementation.[8]
Secondly, citizens can partake in the participatory budget, a policy process which has a combined yearly budget of 100 million euros for district projects and city-wide projects, and covers a span of 2 months. After the City Council has reviewed both district and city-wide proposals, the most favoured projects are presented online in descending order. Projects are then chosen down the line from highest number of votes to lowest number of votes. If a project exceeds the budget, the project is left out and the next viable project is chosen. After the projects have commenced, the project status and details can be followed online.[9]
The third and fourth feature of the Decide Madrid are debates and consultations, both of which are more deliberative and non-binding in nature. Through debates public opinion on different topics can be gauged as citizens can exchange information and debate on issues that matter to them. Through consultations citizens can voice their opinion on certain proceedings by responding to surveys, making suggestions and supporting or denouncing measures or activities which are already in place. [10]
Additionally, Decide Madrid is also accessible to people with disabilities since the verification processes and almost all participatory activities can also be done offline in any of the 26 citizen attention offices.[11]
Decide Madrid faces challenges majorly related to implementation of the program in the form of contextual factors i.e., decreasing citizens’ interest and organisational factors i.e., lack of transparency about the internal working of the city council, lack of feedback, improper engagement of associations, lack of moderation or other mechanisms to organize debates and proposals, and concerns about the security of the platform and verification processes[12].
Conclusion / opinion
DM can improve transparency and trust in the internal working of its city council by adopting the approach of vTaiwan, where meeting recordings, transcriptions, notes and slides are shared online and are open for access to all. Given the nature of engagement of users in feature three and four mentioned above, it is important to have sufficient staff and resources to ensure a feedback loop and manageability of contributions by moderating, tracking and summarising discussions, for both participants and policy-makers, to enhance quality of contributions. Security concerns arising from the open-to-all nature of the platform due to negative behaviour can be mitigated to an extent through use of public badges to reward and reinforce positive behaviour as in Discourse.
Decide Madrid updates democracy by reducing gaps between principles of democracy and the empirically observed reality by improving transparency, openness in process, and increasing involvement of beneficiaries of policy in the policy making process. Through use of ICT, it increases amount of information in citizens’ hands, brings to light key issues and garners support for the same. It has proved to be an effective tool for people to voice their opinions in matters of local governance and to take ownership of common issues. If proper feedback mechanism on contributions by citizens is ensured, the quality of debates, discussion and proposals can be improved. This could also lead to passing of higher number of proposals and revive citizens’ interest in the platform.
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[1] Michael N. Peart and Javier Ramos Diaz, “Comparative Project on Local e-Democracy Initiatives in Europe and North America,” e-Democracy Centre Research Centre on Direct Democracy Faculty of Law University of Geneva, Switzerland, January,2007
[2] Royo, Pina. “Decide Madrid: A Critical Analysis of an Award-Winning e-Participation Initiative.” Sustainability (Basel, Switzerland) 12, no. 4 (February 24, 2020): 1674–.
[3] Ibid, 7
[4] Ibid, 12
[5] Ibid, 7
[6] Mauricio Mejia, “Decide Madrid : Engaging citizens in binding policy-making ”, Digital Democracy in Practice, 10 January 2020. https://medium.com/the-hitchhikers-guide-to-digital-democracy/decide-madrid-engaging-citizens-in-binding-policy-making-18ac4f78908e
[7] Bernardo Gutiérrez, “Madrid as a democracy lab,” openDemocracy, 10 July, 2017. https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/democraciaabierta/madrid-as-democracy-lab/
[8] Ibid
[9] Mauricio Mejia, “Decide Madrid : Engaging citizens in binding policy-making ”, Digital Democracy in Practice, 10 January 2020. https://medium.com/the-hitchhikers-guide-to-digital-democracy/decide-madrid-engaging-citizens-in-binding-policy-making-18ac4f78908e
[10] Mauricio Mejia, “Decide Madrid : Engaging citizens in binding policy-making ”, Digital Democracy in Practice, 10 January 2020. https://medium.com/the-hitchhikers-guide-to-digital-democracy/decide-madrid-engaging-citizens-in-binding-policy-making-18ac4f78908e
[11] Ibid, 7
[12] Ibid, 14
