Citizen Engagement and Open Government Co-creation: The Cases of Brazil and the Dominican Republic

Abstract

Abstract This paper describes and evaluates practical digital government initiatives of online deliberation and internet voting of the Open Government Partnership co-creation processes. In this inquiry, the case studies of e-participation and i-voting for open government policies in the Dominican Republic in 2014 and 2016 as well as in Brazil in 2016 and 2018 are compared. The objective of the study is to assess the impact of the digitally powered co-creation processes on open government in the Dominican Republic and Brazil regarding transparency, accountability, and participation. This inquiry applied manual qualitative content analysis of e-deliberation and i-voting tools, analysis of applied reports, and policy analysis of official documents. It was found that in the Dominican Republic and Brazil the digital co-creation process co-evolved together with the government-civil society collaboration over several policy-making cycles. Citizen e-crowdsourcing and i-voting at earlier stages elaborated at later in-person discussion and drafting by civil society and authorities in Brazil proved to be more empowering and efficient than just online voting for government-defined policy priorities in the Dominican Republic. Government approaches and practices of citizen engagement and process reporting affected the co-creation.