Brazil former president Dilma Rousseff wanted to improve the participation of society in the decisions of the federal government and ordered the creation of a Social Participation Secretary at the beginning of 2015. By that time I just returned to Brazil after my four years as a PhD student in the Netherlands. Ms. Rousseff officers asked my help to develop a laboratory for social participation in public policy.
I helped them to organize a 10-day workshop to co-create the lab as well as an app for interacting with federal programs. We transformed a regular bureaucratic office into an inspiring design room, full of bright people from the government, university, social movements, and professionals.
We tried and adapted for the first time, a range of innovative software development practices of the time, such as agile development, design thinking, prototyping, and design sprint.
The Dialoga app created during the workshop became the social participation means with the largest reach of the government, receiving more than 20.000 proposals and 270.000 votes in 3 months. Unfortunately, the app (and the whole Social Participation Secretary) was shut down by the new president Michel Temer in 2016.
