Evaluation of digital participation at the national level: the Brasil Participativo platform

Abstract After a government marked by setbacks in social participation, this process returned to the forefront in 2023 with the revitalization and creation of different Participatory Institutions. The Participatory Multi-Year Plan 2024-2027 became the largest digital participation experience in the country, with over 4 million accesses and nearly 1.5 million participants. However, beyond numerical success, the limitations imposed by digital participation make it necessary to evaluate the participatory nature and quality of this participation. This article aims to present a reconstruction of the design and implementation process of the Participatory PPA and based on this, evaluate the digital participation platform. To this end, different models of participation evaluation and the literature on social participation in national planning are considered to construct an evaluation model suitable for the context: a digital participation experience in Brazil of unprecedented proportions. The evaluation is based on data provided by the government, semi-structured interviews with public managers responsible for implementing the mechanism, and participant observation of the face-to-face instances of the Participatory PPA. The results reveal how the process influenced the profile of participants and how platform design choices influenced the interaction between participants and the decision-making process. The research provides a theoretical contribution by advancing digital participation evaluation models and a practical contribution by pointing out the limitations of digital participation on a national scale.