Initiative for the social control of public housing policies in Andalusia

Beyond scientific knowledge about political participation and academic results (articles, book, repository of good practices), the novelty in this project consists in the creation of an Internet application (computers and mobile phones) that allows establishing a link between citizens affected and Counseling, with a special effort to mobilize younger citizens, usually large consumers of technology 2.0. In this way, it is intended to raise awareness of the importance of using public resources and make them participants in the management of their autonomous community.

For the first time, it is proposed to carry out a complete review of the tools traditionally used to bring public action closer to citizens and develop a new electronic application that allows monitoring and being a participant in the actions of the Ministry of Development and Housing. The great novelty with regard to other similar proposals is twofold. First, this project focuses not only on one phase of the public policy cycle, such as decision-making or evaluation, but on all of them at the same time. This project proposes to include the different "publics" of public policies - that is, target populations and affected populations in a secondary way - to the whole of public action: construction of problems, putting on the agenda, decision making, implementation and evaluation. Second, the integral development of a participatory platform through the internet.

This project focuses on the social control of public policies. Its objective is to strengthen the role of citizens throughout the entire cycle of public policies. In this way, it aims to improve the "collaboration" between political elites and citizens in matters of public action using the new information and communication technologies (ICT). The project arises from a growing demand for participation by citizens in decisions that directly affect them and the technical possibility of channeling such participation through ICT. As far as possible, the observation will focus on the policies of the Ministry of Development and Housing. The ultimate goal is to establish a bridge between citizenship and politics in its decision-making dimension through new communication technologies.

The data that will be worked on are of a primary nature and will be produced by the research team. The sources of information used for each of the phases of the study are the following:

• Relevant bibliography to learn about other successful international and national experiences.
• Analysis of different web.
• Discussion groups with affected citizens.
• In-depth interviews with citizen leaders and public policy managers.
• Structured interviews with policy makers.

The final conference of the ICOSOP project allowed for a reflection with the invited experts on how to extend the knowledge and use of the participatory platform of the Andalusian Housing Observatory based on the combination of the formal institutional offer and the culture of participation of our environment

From this reflection can be established a set of conclusions that refer to aspects that the platform should consider. These conclusions have served as a guide for the revision of the functionalities of the platform. Some of them have resulted in the improvement of some technical aspects and have provided suggestions for managing the platform as a tool for participation and relationship with citizens. They are presented below.

It is corroborated that the platform must offer, as an indispensable condition so that the participation can be fluid, accessible, transparent, easy and intuitive information. The platform already has these technical requirements from the moment of its conception and design, including its own modular design so that it can be adapted in a flexible way by the management team of the Andalusian Housing Observatory. Included in this demand is the need to clearly specify the functionalities of the platform in terms of participation (that everyone who participates knows previously what to expect with respect to the results that derive from their participation). In this regard, a specific tab with questions and answers on the operation, procedures, tools, results and uses that can be expected from both individual and collective participation in the platform has been incorporated into the platform.