Marea Digital is the first project of its kind in Buenaventura. Before Marea, citizens lacked a space that allowed them to collectively, visually, and in real time map the problems they face, from lack of paved streets to clean water. With Marea, citizens not only have a space where they can share their community’s problems, but they also have an offline strategy of dialogue with local authorities to solve the problems. Marea thus contributes to the generation of information from citizens for evidence-based decisions. In addition, it strengthens local capacities to promote citizen participation and involvement, enabling the collective analysis of problems and the prioritization of solutions. The people of Buenaventura have found in Marea Digital a bridge that helps them establish solid relationships between grassroots organizations and leaders of their neighborhoods, allowing for the generation of propositional dialogues with decision-makers.

The project has been tested, iterated, and is being implemented. Some of the requirements made by the citizenry were taken into account with an effective institutional response and we are developing a knowledge management strategy to identify lessons learned, best practices, and possible ways of establishing a sustainable path for the platform.

The platform was created within the framework of Activa Buenaventura, an alliance between USAID, Extituto, Fundación Corona, Ford Foundation, Gases de Occidente, the International Republican Institute, Movilizatorio, ProPacífico, Regional Port Society of Buenaventura and Carvajal Foundation. Each one contributed from their expertise in collectively designing and implementing the platform, hand in hand with citizens and government officials. This contributed to the improvement of the intervention.

Marea Digital was built with and for the community. Social leaders, community-based organizations and presidents of community action boards participated in the process. Among the interested groups, the public sector, the private sector, civil society, academia and the general public stand out. This favored the project’s legitimacy and guaranteed that Marea Digital effectively responded to the community’s problems and helped governments to accomplish an effective and better local management.

Marea Digital has favored and increased citizen participation and democracy in Buenaventura. Citizens have reported more than 1,000 problems, which has supported a total of 27 requirements prepared by civic leaders and delivered to decision makers. Additionally, according to the follow-up and monitoring instrument developed to measure the impact, in the late months of 2022, 66 community-based organizations, 22 public agencies, and 104 citizens actively participate in the process. Furthermore, 9 self-managed activities, 27 institutional responses, and 17 positive actions by decision makers have resulted from the requirements and the advocacy actions developed. It is expected that, in the future, citizens and policymakers perceive the platform as a strategic ally to solve the problems presented in their communities.

During implementation, it became evident that in Buenaventura there are structural limitations related to corruption dynamics in the exercise of public management, which generated significant gaps between decision makers and citizens. This hinders the exercise of participation and enforceability that contributes to a fairer and more egalitarian territory. On the other hand, the constant disturbance of public order and the proliferation of violent acts by illegal armed actors have been a barrier for the project's implementation team when intervening in some areas or localities, i.e., to date, Marea Digital has intervened in person in eight of the twelve communes of the District of Buenaventura. To face this challenge, a transversal digital communications strategy was created to guarantee the use and appropriation of the platform without putting the implementation team at risk.

The necessary conditions for this type of innovation are:

• Appropriation of the tool by the community through socialization spaces, constant accompaniment, and the achievement of early victories that maintain and promote motivation for citizen participation.
• Achievement of early victories that maintain and promote the motivation for citizen participation, for which the conditions are political will and openness to listen to local institutions.
• Human and financial resources to maintain the advocacy cycle and platform support.

Marea Digital is inspired by the experience of Caminos de la Villa in Buenos Aires, Argentina, a civic technology platform that empowers the population in the struggle for the fulfillment of their rights. This project provided an important frame of reference to achieve, not a similar or identical solution, but a framework of citizen participation components supported by technology. The replication potential of Marea is based on the possibility that it offers not to be limited only to the areas of accountability. The strategy of appropriation of civic technology led by Marea Digital generates disruptive citizen participation and can be replicated in cases where the following objectives are to be met: effectively identifying viable problems to be presented to the competent authorities using different mechanisms of participation, to be inclusive in the logic of community-led development, or to have strategies for monitoring citizen complaints.

1. It is important to design spaces for active participation, where communities can develop facilitator roles that allow the consolidation and collection of data in a more effective way attending to the particularities of the territory, whether at the rural or urban level.
2. The information established within the community driven data model must be recognized, first, by the community and second, by governmental entities. To achieve this, the cycle identified in previous experiences is recommended: empowerment, mobilization (through campaigns), convincing (presenting the data as an input that highlights the relevance of an identified common issue), and review (accountability).
3. The value of local knowledge: The main measure for the design of new products to be incorporated within a population group is based on the levels of end-user acceptance of the product. Prefabricated ideas that are brought may not coincide with the needs and expectations at local level.