How and why to promote digital participation in organizations

Participation is an essential component of any entity that wants to be consistent with democracy and diversity in its way of doing things. In addition, participation also greatly improves the organization's work and management of its actions and teams, thanks precisely to this fact of guaranteeing the plurality of opinions and contexts that results from the active involvement of the structure, volunteering, social base and users.

Participation means taking part in something, having a voice and decision-making capacity , and it can be both physical and digital. This second model is a very valid way to promote participation in organizations, especially that of the voluntary, associated and structural base. This resource collects the main keys to digital participation in organizations , summarizing the advice and data presented in the document 'How to promote digital participation in your organization?' of La Confederació.

What it is and why to promote it

The public administration uses the concept of 'digital participation' to name the involvement of various agents in the formulation of policies and services through ICT. This is also the aim of promoting digital participation in the third sector, dedicating it to providing a space where all voices can contribute to management issues of the entity such as the design and development of projects or the execution of the action.

Digital participation has some advantages over physical participation: saving time and resources, a greater reach that can bring the entity closer to new audiences, the development of more flexible and decentralized forms of participation, the enhancement of conciliation and occupational well-being and a greater ability to obtain and provide information.

Who participates

Participation in entities must refer to all the voices involved: structure of the entity, social base, volunteering and users, if any. It is important to listen to them all, since, on the contrary, decision-making will fall into errors of one-sidedness.

However, for digital participation, there are some specifics to consider regarding the voices being heard. Precisely because the range of digital tools is greater than those of analogue ones, it will be necessary to do a little filtering that allows the voices to be classified for a better listening and transfer to the organization.

The first is to know the topics of interest of the different participation groups. For example, partners will certainly not have an interest in issues related to the labor field, which will otherwise be a primary issue for working people. At the same time, it will also be necessary to know the profile of the people who make up each group , which will make it possible to identify barriers to digital participation (accessibility difficulties, digital gap, language...).

Finally, it will also be advisable to define what influence capacity each voice can have in relation to the different topics. To do this the following question must be asked: to what extent what is being valued affects and is affected by this particular group of people? The logic that must be followed to answer the question is that the more impact a topic has on this group, the more weight its participation should have.

The three steps of digital participation

The first step in the definition of a digital participation strategy is the definition of the objectives of this participation. Why is participation requested? What do you want to know? The primary decision must be whether people are sought to provide input on a specific issue or contribute to the making of a decision.

From here the methodology for this participation can be decided. To make contributions, it will be necessary to establish methodologies for collecting opinions and assessments , or perhaps to make proposals and generate new ideas. On the other hand, in order for people to be able to make decisions on a specific topic, it will be necessary to orientate the participatory spaces to enhance debate and deliberation (offering information and properly evaluating all the options) or to channelize the making of a final decision.

The last step is to identify and implement the digital tools that can provide a more appropriate response to the results that are to be achieved. Some of the tools that can be used are mentioned in the following section.

Digital participation tools

Today there is a great diversity of tools that are either designed directly for participation, or have mechanisms that can be adapted to it. Based on the objectives of the participation, it will be necessary to define what type of tool is being sought . They can be digital whiteboards ( Jamboard , Draw.io, Discourse ), sociograms ( Gephi , Sometics ), surveys ( Mentimeter , Kahoot , Google Forms ), channeled voting tools ( Civiciti , Loomio ), online meetings ( Jitsi , Zoom , GoogleMeet ), collaborative editing tools ( Google Drive, Owncloud ) or project tracking platforms ( Trello , CommonsCloud , Taskboard ).

Once different options have been collected , it will be necessary to know, for each of the tools, which license is available, the cost, its degree of complexity, the devices from which it can be used and the degree of interoperability. From here it will be possible to define the tools that are of most interest to the organization for digital participation.

Limitations on digital participation

Digital participation is very useful to facilitate processes and make them more effective . However, it is true that they have some limitations. The clearest is the digital divide , which means that there are entities that will have to offer alternatives to analogue participation if they want their processes to be truly democratic, especially with regard to the users. In relation to this, it will also be necessary to respect the right of working people to digital disconnection .

In addition, it is important to note that digital tools are the platforms or media, but that organizing an engagement strategy is much more than choosing a tool. It will be necessary to complement it with a dynamism of people who know about the subject , and to make a good definition of the objectives . It will also be essential to make a combination of tools : a single platform will hardly cover all the needs of the participation.

Finally, it will be important that, despite taking advantage of the advantages of the digital world, the virtues of the face-to-face format should not be lost sight of .