Date Published:
June 19, 2017, 10:38 a.m.
Kit Urbano is an enterprise of civic and social innovation created in Argentina with the goal of filling the existing breach between the e-government and the citizen, via the promotion of citizen participation and attentive hearing. We are convinced that we should acknowledge the potential of the collective intelligence in order to, in a collaborative way, improve the processes and services that the governments have to manage.
According to the study El Gobernauta Latinoamericano made by the BID we are in the collaboration era and the “challenge for governauts is to be able to develop intuitive tools that link data analytics and a better dialogue with the citizen, and the following concrete actions”.
Taking into account these facts and our mission, we created Barrios Activos, a plate-form of collaborative intelligence where the citizen can register problems in the city, allowing for a direct communication with the authorities, and for other citizen to collabore, by addind suggestions that allow to improve the quality of life in the city”.
The registered problems are visualised in an interactive map that allows to add pictures, videos, comments, and to support de reports of other citizens.
Nowadays Barrios Activos connected more than 8500 municipalities in Latin America, allowing the citizen to report problems from their smartphone and to be directly linked with authorities.
Barrios Activos has been elected by the “Smart City World Congress” in its 2014 edition as one of the 6 more innovative projects alongside other projects from China, Denmark, Japan, Singapour and Turkey, and in 2015 has been elected in the XPCAT, a network of science and technology parcs in Catalonia to participate to the Open Innovation Market, organized by the same congress.
The new technologies underline the crisis that the gouvernment management is going through, particularly in emerging countries. A lot of administrations are inefficient.
We understand that these technologies, which are usually used to expose them, are the same that need to be used to place the citizen at the center of the organisation, and impulse an active participation in the local management, as they require.
We have observed that the social networks had become a place of reclamation where the citizen express themselves freely, the only thing being left to do is to establish a dialogue.
The management is used to a one-way communication and thinks that it can pursue with the same dynamic; if we add to this the maintenance problems of the cities that affect the every day life of the citizens, all of this leads to a negative perception of the governemental management.
This negative perception, constant threat for the managers, has to be seen as an opportunity to develop ways of participation that allow to moderate the citizens expectative and to establish priorities for the managers, by getting the citizen to co-participate. For this we have created Barrios Activos.
A change in the management is a lot more than a marketing campaign and implies substantial changes that require to put the citizen at the center of the action and to give him tools via the new technologies.
We are convinced that technology is a way for people to participate in the government, and we are commited to work in order to attain this goal.
