Participation and Citizen Empowerment platform for e-governance: Communal Integration System (SINCO)

The Governance concept reaches an important place in the theoretical debates and political practices because it introduces new forms on policy formulation and managing, making it possible to redefine the way we participate as citizens and propose ways to overcome bureaucratic barriers of the representative democracy. The main challenge is to generate more cooperative relations between government and society. Through the implementation of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), we can generate new ways to establish e-governance, which can draw new possibilities to achieve substantive forms of participation. This is the purpose of the Communal Integration System (SINCO by its acronym in Spanish) which started operating in 2014 and works as a communication bridge between the institution and citizens organized in communities. It was initially developed as a tool for information and project management, but the platform subsequently evolved as a direct communication system due to the dynamics and demands of the users, which also complies with the principles of transparency, co-responsibility and accountability. In this transformation, the development of the system adopted a Citizen-Centered Design, to generate an appropriation and empowerment of the tool by the final users. Through a literary review and the presentation of the methodology and results of the usability research[15], this paper analyses the limits and possibilities of SINCO as a platform for participation and citizen empowerment that can generate the conditions for establishing e-governance in accordance to the community's needs.