Models for citizen engagement in Latin American

Abstract

The paper aims to study the relationship between information and communication technologies and local governance. For that purpose the experiences of the use of Internet in participatory budgeting will be studied. Participatory Budget (PB) involves the direct participation of citizens in setting priorities in public investment. The following experiences of Digital Participatory Budget undertaken by municipalities in Brazil will be presented: Porto Alegre (RS) Ipatinga (MG), Belo Horizonte (MG) and Recife (PE). The methodology that was used includes literature search on the key concepts, discussion of the relationship between local governance and citizen participation, and presentation of experiences that produce findings on the impacts of the use of ICTs in participatory processes. Experiments are under a project carried out by Network Logolink called ELECTRONIC LOCAL GOVERNANCE: LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES and coordinated by the Office Polis, Sao Paulo. Using the Internet, these participatory government budgets can increase citizen participation and allow thousands of people to decide on the allocation of public investment. Five Brazilian cases will be presented along with related challenges of local governance to identify their real capabilities of building a new relationship between government policy and society in Brazil and other countries. This research considers that the use of information and communication technologies, especially the Internet, can be a promoter of citizenship, including citizen participation. However this promotion may be limited by the condition of access to these technologies and the depth and quality of information available to the citizen that would undermine the exercise of citizens' rights.