Current lessons and challenges from e-participation experiences in Colombia

Abstract

E-participation is a powerful tool for the collective construction of current society, as it enables the transformation of democratic processes. This document extracts the main lessons of these processes from the analysis of a few recent representative e-participation experiences in Colombia, contributing to increase the empirical evidence on this issue and showing some aspects to be taken into account by governing bodies and e-government implementers. We conclude that one of the main challenges is being able to collect information and knowledge generated by citizens -- not only from established calls or programs, but from their own initiative and under community generation processes --, and manage and utilize it for the advancement of society.