Implementing Limited E-participation on Mobility Policy in Bogotá

E-Participation

In recent decades the concept of participation has become increasingly prevalent around the world and across the political spectrum. Initially pioneered by leftist political leaders and parties (Baiocchi and Gies, 2019), today participation can be found in numerous policies of leftist governments but also of those on the right and neoliberal regimes (Guarneros-Meza and Geddes, 2010). It also features prominently in the demands of civil society organizations and in the best-practice recommendations of multilateral institutions such as the World Bank. These different actors do not, however, necessarily understand or promote participation in the same way. For some it is a means to empower citizens, for others an effective social management strategy. Participation has become a dominant paradigm both in wealthy countries in the Global North and in poorer nations in the Global South (Baiocchi and Ganuza, 2016). The normative consensus about participation forces politicians and government officials to embrace participation or at least pay lip service to it, and a failure to provide institutional forms of participation can result in negative political consequences such as the protests that have occurred in Latin American cities over the past decade (Paget-Seekins, 2015).

While there are many ways in which people participate in society, in the present study I follow the definition of Baoicchi and Ganuza (2016), who describe participation as “an instrument, a device that is both technical and social, that organizes specific social relations between the state and those it is addressed to.” Although there is an intuitive connection between participation and democracy, the relationship is complex and influenced by numerous factors. Many frame participation as a key to “deepening democracy” that is an alternative to top-down control by governments and experts, involving processes that overcome conventional institutional forms to enhance the responsiveness and effectiveness of the state and make it fairer and more accountable (Fung and Wright, 2003).

E-participation has three main components: e-information, e-consultation, and e-decision-making (UN DESA, 2020). Conceptually, it can be understood as a subsection of the broader concepts of e-governance, e-government, and e-democracy. It can be implemented in essentially any policy sector and can include a wide range of actions and activities such as online voting, petitions, crowdsourcing, and discussions that allow for interaction among users and government entities. Scholars in various disciplines laud e-participation for its potential to transform the way people interact with each other and with social institutions (Boudjelida, Mellouli, and Lee, 2016; Pogrebinschi, 2017b). However, Fung, Gilman. and Shkabatur (2013) describe six different ways in which information and communication technologies may transform politics and the relationships between citizens and governments, some of which are genuinely transformative and empowering while others are not. Thus e-participation is not an automatic step toward deepened democracy. Instead, the directions e-participation can take and its outcomes and impacts depend on contextual factors and implementation.

Enthusiasm about the potential for information and communication technologies to enable participation began in the 1990s with the initial stages of the Internet and what can be termed “Web 1.0.” In those early days, the Internet was a collection of web pages connected by hyperlinks. Information flow was one-way, meaning that users were mostly passive and had little scope for interaction. Nonetheless, optimists hoped that new developments would increase access to information as well as improving government efficiency and transparency (Bryan, Tambini, and Tsagarousianou, 2002). Subsequent research showed, however, that despite some improvements, the full potential of democracy under Web 1.0 did not materialize because of social and cultural factors and insufficiencies of design and implementation (Breuer and Welp, 2014).

In the early 2000s, a second wave of enthusiasm began around “Web 2.0”—a more interactive and participatory Internet characterized by user-generated content, online identity creation, and relational networking such as social media, blogging, and wikis (Le Blanc, 2020). With regard to e-participation and deepening democracy, the most important distinguishing characteristic of Web 2.0 was bidirectional information flow between citizens and states, meaning that users were no longer simply passive receivers of information on a “read only” Internet but could also interact and contribute their own ideas without the traditional limitations of time and space (Milakovich, 2014). Rather than simply allowing users to view information online, new websites and platforms enabled them to give feedback, communicate (either in real time or asynchronously), and share information with other users. Significant examples of Web 2.0-enabled participation include online consultations on policy drafts, collaborative mapping, feedback on public services, e-petitions, and participatory budgeting (Le Blanc, 2020).

However, a review by Magro (2012) of the literature on Web 2.0, social media, social networking, and their use by governments finds that, despite initial optimism, Web 2.0 also failed to automatically deliver the expected progress, since governments could not keep up with the public’s use of new technologies. Furthermore, governments did not develop new organizational structures and policies that could adequately implement and manage Web 2.0 applications. Other research has identified multiple obstacles to e-participation. A commonly cited and highly relevant issue is “digital divides”—disparate access to the Internet and technologies based on social, economic, geographic, or cultural factors. Digital divides may exacerbate existing inequalities in society and/or create new ones (Anduiza, Jensen, and Jorba, 2012). Drawing on a meta-synthesis of empirical research, Santini and Carvalho (2019) find that socially privileged groups such as those with more education have better access to the Internet and are thus more able and likely to engage in e-participation. Hopes that digital divides would simply fade away with development appear to have been overly optimistic. Despite increasing Internet use in many parts of the world, digital divides have persisted (van Deursen and van Dijk, 2014; Warf, 2014).

A more critical set of explanations focuses squarely on the government’s inability to implement e-participation. Some governments appear stuck in traditional models of constraint and information hoarding (Magro, 2012). Genuine robust e-participation involves providing citizens meaningful opportunities to participate in government and policy making. A review by Steinbach, Sieweke, and Süß (2019), however, finds that e-participation in many governments is limited to sending information and self-promotion because of inadequate designs, departmental rivalries, and lack of resources and capacities. Such obstacles can produce symbolic or token e-participation. For example, Breuer and Welp (2014) describe cases such as the Senador Virtual in Chile, where a team of lawyers, journalists, and a secretary selected certain (generally uncontroversial) law projects and provided information about them on a digital platform for debate by the public. Users were asked to vote on the project, and the results were published and compared with the voting results in the Senate. However, because these results were nonbinding, they appear to have served more as public relations initiatives than as participation. A similar example was the Peruvian Congress’s website, which offered various public discussion forums. However, engagement on this site was rather low and unmoderated, and the impact on formal processes of political decision making was unclear.

Although no government has perfected e-participation, these symbolic or token examples can be contrasted with others that give citizens more significant opportunities for engagement. Two examples here are illustrative. First, since 2009 the Brazilian Congress has implemented multiple digital tools for citizen participation and interaction. An e-democracy platform was created with the objective of becoming a social networking platform with virtual communities to encourage engagement and participation in the formulation of legislative proposals. People can make suggestions on proposals in progress, prepare drafts of bills collaboratively, attend virtual public hearings, and share information (Faria and Rehbein, 2016). While Bernardes and Bandeira (2016) point to ongoing obstacles to full participation, they find that this platform and other tools allow effective engagement that surpasses the efforts of other governments such as that of the United Kingdom. Second, the Decide Madrid platform, launched in 2015 by leftist leaders and political factions that coalesced following the antiausterity movement in Spain, allows citizens to discuss and debate policies, propose projects of their own, vote in polls, engage in participatory budgeting, and provide inputs on various policy processes on an ad hoc basis, all of which can be translated into policy according to detailed guidelines and procedures. For example, a 2015 sustainability proposal known as Madrid 100% Sustainable exceeded the threshold for support and led to policy action. The people of Madrid also voted in favor of a single ticket system for public transport and significantly contributed to the renovation plans for urban spaces including the Plaza de España. The platform still faces obstacles to full optimal participation, but it is nonetheless considered a global benchmark for e-participation and in 2018 was one of the winners of the United Nations Public Service Award (Royo, Pina, and Garcia-Rayado, 2020).

These two cases have not definitively answered all questions about e-participation, and they have room for improvement, but they both demonstrate a more serious commitment by government. They are designed to promote maximum participation and allow some scope for empowered bottom-up, citizen-led actions that in some cases have led to actual policy change. Another critical explanation comes from Castells’s (2007) warning that the state and corporate media have also invested heavily in new technologies and use them in efforts to increase power and control over society. Rather than finding governments unable to effectively implement e-participation, a number of studies argue that some governments seek to use it to further their own agendas. Åström et al. (2012) show that e-participation has been implemented in many authoritarian countries in Latin America and Eastern Europe. Instead of enhancing democracy and improving government, implementation of e-participation in these settings is driven by international norms and needs for legitimation and can serve to reinforce the dominance of incumbent regimes. Johnson and Kolko (2010) show that in post-Soviet states, governments use subtle online methods to co-opt participatory modes of communication and social organization to advance their agendas. King, Pan, and Roberts (2017) suggest that the Chinese government deploys large-scale strategies to manipulate and divert public discussion online. Even in settings that are generally regarded as more democratic such as the United States, fears of government surveillance can have a chilling effect on people’s online activities and stifle minority political views (Stoycheff, 2016). Concerns about such issues and about increasing disinformation can often combine with general mistrust of government to inhibit e-participation. In Colombia online initiatives have been hampered by strong bidirectional mistrust between the state and citizens (Berrío-Zapata and Berrío-Gil, 2017).

E-Participation in Context

Geographically, e-participation first appeared in Europe and North America and later emerged in developing countries along with the increases in Internet use and general e-government (Le Blanc, 2020). Today there is a wide range of e-participation initiatives, variously implemented, across Latin America (Warf, 2014). Colombia, despite not having leftist governments at the national level, has experienced waves of participation since the early 1990s and is generally considered one of the more advanced countries in Latin America in this regard (Bouzas-Lorenzo and Mahou-Lago, 2015; Porrúa, 2013; UN DESA, 2020). Researchers attribute its relatively high development of e-participation to national-level initiatives that created suitable conditions. In 2000 the national government approved the Connectivity Agenda, which sought to promote the use of information and communication technologies to increase competitiveness, modernize public institutions, and generalize access to information. In 2008 a national-level strategy known as Government Online was launched to make the government more efficient and transparent. In 2010, the Live Digital Plan was created to expand Internet connectivity across Colombia’s diverse geographies and social groups. In the first four years of the plan’s implementation, broadband connections were increased, the number of municipalities with access to high-speed Internet grew from 700 to 1,078, and the number of community Internet kiosks in rural areas increased from around 2,000 to over 7,000 (Garcia et al., 2020). Although participation and deepened democracy were not the primary goals of these programs, which focused more on development and economic competitiveness, increased access and use of the Internet by government and citizens created conditions that were conducive for e-participation. The Crystal Ballot Box, a platform launched in 2010 combining Web 2.0 technologies with more traditional media (e.g., TV, radio, telephone, and text messaging) to allow citizens to participate on various policy issues, had within a few years of its launching reached millions of citizens, received hundreds of thousands of website visits, and assembled nearly 100,000 followers on social media (Líppez-De Castro and García Alonso, 2016; Parra Beltrán, 2015). While the limits and weaknesses of these initiatives, especially their ability to provide meaningful opportunities for decision making, have been documented (Berrío-Zapata and Berrío-Gil, 2017; Silva-Arroyave, 2021), Colombia is still considered a regional leader in e-participation.

However, with some exceptions (Líppez-De Castro and García Alonso, 2016; Martínez, 2019), much of the literature on e-participation focuses on the national level, and less is known about the experiences of e-participation at the city level. More research is needed to understand local and subnational instances of participation generally and e-participation specifically, which may reflect national trends or may vary significantly. From a political perspective, divergences between national and local spheres can result from the relatively decentralized shifts that have occurred in the past three decades. For example, leaders in cities such as Bogotá can often contradict or even oppose the president’s agenda. However, some characteristics of e-participation make understanding subnational experiences crucial. Le Blanc (2020) writes that many e-participation innovations originate at the local level because it can be easier to stimulate participation when citizens’ immediate concerns are involved. Furthermore, some new technologies (e.g., GIS coupled with web/mobile functions or gamification) can be most effectively used for coproduction and cocreation at the local level.

The limited research on e-participation in Bogotá suggests a mixed picture. The LATINNO Database, which records democratic innovations across Latin America, identifies 22 instances of e-participation in Bogotá in recent years. The majority of these initiatives come from civil society actors, but some are led by or significantly involve government entities. However, almost all fail to deliver binding decision making (Pogrebinschi, 2017a). Describing earlier instances of e-participation, Duque Franco (2010) writes that an interactive website created under Mayor Moreno Rojas where citizens could raise concerns and make proposals did not live up to expectations, since it was not frequently updated and failed to provide the necessary information and materials for meaningful participation.

Prudencia

In 2019, the Secretaría Distrital de Movilidad (District Secretariat of Mobility—SDM) of Bogotá purchased hundreds of new “smart” crosswalk traffic signals and installed them around the city. The new signals were intended to improve traffic flow and reduce accidents. To add an element of participation, the SDM held a voting process over two months to name the female figure depicted on the signals—a low-stakes form of crowdsourcing. In recent years crowdsourcing has emerged as a common approach in mobility planning (Bregman and Watkins, 2014; Maier, 2012). Proponents argue that in addition to generating novel solutions that are highly relevant to the public, crowdsourcing can be useful in legitimizing and promoting those solutions because they are cocreated. In the case of the new traffic signals, participants could either vote via an SDM website or physically drop paper ballots in boxes on a number of intersections around the city. They could select one of six potential names—Prudencia, Electra, Rola, Cachaca, Tránsito, and Luz. In the end, the name Prudencia (Prudence) was chosen after winning around 32 percent of the vote, and the SDM held a public press conference to announce the results. In terms of deepening democracy, one positive in this case was that participation was directly tied to action—the name with the largest number of votes was adopted. However, the limitations of this exercise are manifold. First, the naming of a figure on traffic signals is a relatively superficial action. The public was allowed to participate in this largely symbolic decision but not in more significant decisions such as whether to purchase the new signals or where to place them. The SDM justified the project in terms of expected benefits such as reduced traffic congestion and energy use. Potential opposition based on the cost of the project or concerns about the connection between smart city technology and state surveillance and control was avoided by limiting participation to selecting a name.

Furthermore, the public was given options to choose from rather than being asked to propose its own. This ensured that the eventual winner would be preapproved by the government and may have frustrated or dissuaded potential participants. And finally, although the online voting process was relatively simple, with as many as a third of households in Bogotá lacking Internet access, many residents would have been unaware of the process and/or unable to participate in it. Furthermore, Internet access in Bogotá is highly uneven, with rates above 80 percent in the most affluent neighborhoods and only 40–50 percent in some of the poorer ones (Martínez, 2019). Only 24,582 were cast online. In a city of over 7 million inhabitants, this represents only a minuscule and likely unrepresentative portion of the entire population. This process was slightly more democratic than an entirely top-down process wherein the SDM simply chose a name, but it would be hard to argue that citizens were empowered to influence a significant policy decision.

LABcapital

LABcapital, an “innovation laboratory” created by the Veeduría Distrital (District Inspectorship), a government oversight body operating at the city level, was intended to improve public management through innovative solutions. The project team met with various agencies of the Bogotá city government to identify challenges that could be resolved through crowdsourcing. In the area of mobility, the general manager of the TransMilenio suggested fare evasion in the city’s bus system as a problem to be addressed. Members of the public interested in addressing this issue were invited to do so between May and July 2019 via an online platform on which they would develop their proposals using a “design-thinking” methodology called “Empathy, Intuition, Action”—making observations about the problem and mapping stakeholders, identifying the problem and proposals to solve it, and developing a prototype of the solution to be presented to stakeholders, pilot tested, and eventually uploaded onto the platform. Each of these steps had multiple tasks, detailed instructions, and expected deliverables. Ideas deemed worthy were to be shared with TransMilenio for consideration (Veeduría Distrital, 2019). One of the team members described this type of collaboration as an advanced form of participation—rather than simply informing or involving people, it was giving them a seat at the table and asking them to codesign solutions. However, multiple aspects of the program severely limited genuine participation.

First, although the broad issue of mobility in Bogotá’s zonal bus system is important to a large number of city residents, the government and private companies that operate the system stand to benefit more from solving the problem of fare evasion than users themselves. The choice of fare evasion suggests an attempt to deflect attention away from any internal deficiencies of the system and place it on the behavior of the public. In fact, according to a respected citizen perception survey conducted around the same time, the top priority for Bogotanos with regard to mobility in the city was expanding and maintaining the city’s roads (Bogotá Cómo Vamos, 2019). Thus, because the topic was chosen by the TransMilenio general manager and not the public, the potential to carry out the will of a broader public was limited from the start.

Second, although the digital platform was intended to broaden the scope for participation and participants, several important obstacles may have inhibited full participation by a diverse and representative population. As we have seen, a large number of residents lack the regular access to the Internet and information and communication technologies required to complete this process. Furthermore, in order for their solutions to be considered by TransMilenio, participants were required to follow a rigorous design-thinking approach that was time-intensive and may have limited their scope for creativity and expression. In fact, of the 26 ideas submitted, only 3 were judged to have followed the methodology (Veeduría Distrital, 2019), and one of these was submitted by a university student and another by an engineer working in the city government. This low percentage of successful completion suggests that the methodology was either too demanding (Le Blanc, 2020) or not well-suited to the approaches that participants preferred. What looked like an open invitation to make changes in the city may actually have been a relatively selective system that excluded most people and frustrated those who tried to participate, similar to the supposedly utopian but ultimately neoliberal online public sphere Wikipedia as described by Mirowski (2015).

Finally, participants were clearly informed from the beginning that TransMilenio was not obligated to accept any suggestions it received. The LABcapital platform functioned as a messenger between participants and government entities, but there was no serious commitment in either direction. This may have served as a demotivating factor as potential participants weighed the value of completing a rigorous process to produce something that might not even be seriously considered in the end. In this case, the ultimate decision about to whether to accept proposals from the public remained in the hands of TransMilenio, and thus its risk was minimal. If it received solutions suiting its interests, it was free to adopt them. If no such solution emerged, it had lost very little time and resources in the process and could still claim that it was operating in a participatory manner.

Bogotá Abierta

Bogotá Abierta (Open Bogotá) is an online platform initially created to give input into Mayor Peñalosa’s development plan for his second term. The platform was framed as the central strategy by which the government would engage the public (Secretaría Distrital de Planeación, 2016b). Bogotá Abierta is managed by IDPAC, which invites members of the public over the age of 13 to “cocreate” solutions to urban issues. The platform combines the voting and crowdsourcing elements of the previously cited cases. Users who register on the site can submit their ideas and proposals, along with supporting materials such as photos or videos. They are also asked to “vote” on others’ ideas by “liking” or commenting on them, much as on Facebook, and the platform also features certain elements of gamification such as points and stars that users can earn. Some of these activities are distinct and isolated occurrences that may or may not result in an action by the government. For others, however, it is suggested that they may be integrated into urban planning processes such as the development plans created by new mayoral administrations. For example, more than 14,000 people reportedly participated online via Bogotá Abierta in the creation of the initial development plan for Peñalosa’s administration (Secretaría Distrital de Planeación, 2016a). However, beyond being recorded in an “ideas bank,” it is unclear to what extent these participants and their ideas actually contributed to the final document. Furthermore, “participation” in planning processes under the Peñalosa administration was not limited to citizens. For example, the Bogotá Chamber of Commerce also submitted ideas and proposals for the development plan.

Topics on the platform spanned a wide range of policy issues such as mobility, public space, pollution, and culture. Examples of mobility issues include how to promote the use of bicycles as a means of transport. Thirty-seven unique users participated by giving suggestions or commenting on ideas by other users. The largest number of suggestions concerned improving safety for cyclists (against violence, accidents, and theft) through measures such as increasing police presence and lighting after dark. The second most common group of suggestions concerned adding or improving infrastructure such as bicycle paths and parking. Another instance asked users to identify areas in their neighborhood that could be improved to make them safer for pedestrians. Forty-four different users gave suggestions about improving infrastructure (such as adding traffic signals and pedestrian bridges) and recognition of special populations (like children and people with disabilities). In some instances, users could earn rewards on the basis of the popularity of their suggestions. For example, one action concerning bicycle safety included two cyclist kits that were raffled among users whose suggestions received at least 10 likes. Additionally, the contributors of the five most creative suggestions were to be selected to participate in a panel and considered in future policy-making processes.

Along with the other instances of e-participation just described, Bogotá Abierta is limited in multiple important ways that decrease its potential to bring about democratic shifts and empower citizens. First, because government entities select the problem areas in the first place, it is unclear whether they actually constitute priorities for the public or whether Bogotanos would choose different issues under a more open system. Beyond this, the platform is ostensibly open to anyone, but that does not mean that everyone is able to use it. Digital divides and low awareness may prevent many Bogotanos from using the platform. Even among those who are aware and interested in the site, factors such as language abilities could prevent many members of the public from using it effectively. At the time of writing, a counter on the website claims that 41,115 registered users have participated via the site—a not insignificant number. However, this figure covers multiple years, and in relation to the city’s total population it remains quite small. Furthermore, it is difficult to determine to what extent the entire population of the city (demographics, geography, etc.) is represented, but given the differentiated Internet access rates and general segregation in the city it is unlikely that the sample adequately includes marginalized groups such as those with lower levels of education and resources.

The processes of Bogotá Abierta are somewhat more deliberative than those of the other two examples of e-participation, but there are important barriers to it as well. The issues to be addressed are created by Bogotá Abierta in collaboration with other government entities such as the SDM or the mayor’s office. Users then respond with their suggestions. There is some deliberation between users as they “like” and comment on each other’s suggestions. However, while the government agencies may review the content submitted, there is not necessarily communication flowing back to the users. There may be follow-up for certain content, but this is not guaranteed and does not happen frequently.

Finally, Bogotá Abierta acts as a sort of go-between that seeks to bridge the communication gap between the public and various government agencies. However, this means that the platform’s ability to guarantee action is minimal. An outside consultant charged with managing the platform stated that several proposals from the public had been successfully incorporated into public policy. However, Bogotá Abierta has no control over the decisions other agencies ultimately make, and citizen proposals and ideas may be discarded. In contrast to the situation of the above-mentioned Decide Madrid, there is no protocol for translating participation from Bogotá Abierta into policy, and if it occurs it is on a case-by-case basis. A nongovernmental organization leader pointed out that when, during the creation of the 2016 development plan, the Peñalosa administration sought input from citizens via Bogotá Abierta, one of the highest-voted proposals was to put roofs on the bridges of TransMilenio stations to protect riders from rain while waiting in line to pay, but this proposal was never implemented (K. González, 2019).

Conclusion

Mobility is central to the daily lives of urban dwellers as well as the broader concept of urban democracy. E-participation is emerging as a form of public engagement that has the potential to give them greater control over decisions in the city. There are certainly theoretical grounds for this expectation. As personal Internet and technology use becomes increasingly common, the idea that all urban inhabitants might efficiently participate via their computers or phones from anywhere certainly has appeal.

However, in contrast to the 2009 initiative of the Brazilian Congress and the Decide Madrid platform, little transformative action (Córdoba-Pachón and Orr, 2009) has occurred in the mobility sector of Bogotá. Adopting e-participation is far from embracing it (Porrúa, 2013), and the three Bogotá examples presented here illustrate the limited ways in which e-participation was implemented during the second term of Mayor Peñalosa. Contextual factors such as digital divides should not be overlooked. There remain important variations in the use of the Internet and information and communication technologies use in Bogotá and other significant gaps such as disparate levels of education and free time to devote to participatory tasks. However, most of the limitations to e-participation in this study are directly attributable to the design and implementation of the participation mechanisms themselves, created to give only a modicum of control to the public. Instead of deepening democracy, they provide “thin” participation (Y. M. González, 2019). In the cases described, participation generally occurs after the problem areas and goals are already identified. Furthermore, there is little robust reciprocal communication between participants and organizers. And finally, the government is not obliged to accept the suggestions or proposals of the people, and participants are unsure what will happen with their inputs and proposals. This lowers the stakes for all parties involved and renders participation more a simulation than an official decision-making process.

The impact of participation hinges on the executive branch. Participatory mechanisms in cities can flourish or founder depending on the political will, capability, and effort of mayors (Fung, 2011; Nylen, 2011). In earlier decades radical leftist mayors rose to prominence across Latin America by embracing and promoting participation. Their cities became icons for resistance to neoliberalism and helped pave the way for the Pink Tide, giving hope to proponents of participatory democracy and supporting the theories of Rousseau, Mill, Pateman, Barber, and others (Rhodes-Purdy, 2017). However, more recently neoliberalism has begun using participation as a social management strategy (Guarneros-Meza and Geddes, 2010), and the right has “discovered” the city (Baiocchi and Gies, 2019). We are now seeing shrewd politicians like Enrique Peñalosa using alternative strategies to gain power.

In contrast to the leftist mayors, Peñalosa sought to build his reputation on market-friendly interventions like smart city, urban renewal, and transit-oriented development. In this way he was able to create an international image of a progressive urbanist while inside Colombia he became increasingly aligned with the right. Because of increasing expectations for participation and traditions established in Bogotá by the leftist mayors who preceded him, Peñalosa could not reject participation, but instead of creating a robust strategy for e-participation he implemented it in a way that would give the semblance of participation while generally maintaining control over mobility policy.