A web information portal can be extremely effective in enhancing women’s access to public information, if equipped with advanced search functions, customisable views, and linkages to other government websites. The experience of Gov.UK offers some useful pointers in this regard. This online portal set up by the government of UK organises public information updates through a citizen-centric logic. It provides updates about services and citizen entitlements, performance matrices of government agencies, policy announcements, key statistics and publications in a single space, interlinked to websites of other key government departments and public agencies. Its advanced search function supports users in locating meaningful information that addresses their needs and priorities, and its geolocation and local storage Application Programming Interface (API) enables customisation of views for those users who consent to share location details. Currently, an open content API is being planned, to enable other government sites to republish up-to-date and accurate versions of government information.

The design of the Gov. UK portal does not have an explicit gender dimension. But the one-stop-shop principle that it adopts, its effective balancing of personalisation and privacy considerations for customised views, and its advanced search functions are useful design principles to take away for any gender-responsive design.

Some pointers to consider for gender mainstreaming in e-information models include:

• Developing a comprehensive information portal (similar to Gov.UK) that is interlinked to an one stop portal that gives information about women-directed services (similar to the ones described in Unit 2.1).
• Evolving an open data microsite, with gender-inclusive data taxonomies. For specific examples on how to build such microsites, refer to section 2.b on gender-inclusive open data in Unit 2.2.
• Setting up gender-inclusive public access centres, to cater to contexts with low levels of female literacy and high gender divides in access. This will help women easily access information portals meant for them. See Ingredient 2 Gender-responsive public access strategies in Unit 4.2.

Short Message Services (SMS) and voice-based informational networking over mobiles can strengthen targeted information outreach to women and girls. They cater to needs and priorities in specific domains such as welfare services, livelihoods-related information, health, rights education etc. Such services, when effectively deployed, can overcome time, cost and textual literacy barriers that marginalise women from information architectures. The specific design principles for developing effective mobile-based information outreach services for women are detailed in Section 2.1.2(2), Unit 2.1.

The UN E-government Survey 2016 highlights that many governments are opting for social media and social networking tools for citizen dialogue and consultation, rather than building their own platforms, due to their ease of access and low cost investment.

However, such use of third party platforms poses the following set of risks (European Commission 2016)3:

• Third party platforms use permanent cookies, log files, web beacons and other tracking tools to monitor and analyse user behaviour, which risk eroding citizen privacy and personal data protection.
• The terms of use of third party platforms are not stable, and there is a risk of sudden discontinuation and other changes in services.
• The code/technical architecture of such platforms is often a “blackbox”, and in-house teams within governments cannot do effective troubleshooting.
• Installing third party widgets on governmental platforms poses a major security risk. For example, on one occasion, the settings of a third-party service integrated on a European Commission website were changed to redirect users to a pornographic website. In another instance, Twitter worms affected citizen users.

For gender-responsive design of citizen dialogues and consultations, evaluation of these risks is particularly critical. For instance, Our Watch, a GBV prevention programme of the state government of Victoria and the Commonwealth Government of Australia, has created an online discussion space on Facebook, where survivors of domestic violence can share their stories with empathetic listeners. Currently, this space is open to all, although discussions are moderated. However, Our Watch is now exploring the possibility of switching over to a closed discussion format where participants feel more secure (UNESCAP 2016)4. But the design improvements that are possible are restricted by the limits of what is possible within the Facebook architecture for creating and maintaining groups. More importantly, in cases of trolling/doxing or inadvertent data breaches, the government cannot step in proactively, as Facebook is a private service. Though the use of Facebook has enhanced the reach of the initiative, it has also opened up these new challenges.

While it is important to tap into the opportunity that mainstream social media and social networking platforms offers, in terms of reaching a huge user base, it is equally important to set clear guidelines about their use in dialogues and consultations to minimise risk. Taking a leaf from EU guidelines (EU 2016)5, the following protocols seem useful to follow when adopting third party platforms/tools for citizen engagement:

• Social media and social networking are well-suited for one-directional informational outreach, opinion polls, and publicity efforts of government agencies such as Q&A about new women-directed services launched by the government. But in consultations and dialogues where sensitive personal information is exchanged, and where there is a high premium on guarding user confidentiality, governments should use their own platforms where they have full control over terms of use and the technical architecture.
• Social media widgets should not be embedded on governmental websites in order to minimise threats of hacker attacks. Instead, plain text links should be used to point citizen users to social media pages from official sites.

The following techno-design choices in the development of government’s own platforms for citizen dialogue and consultation can promote inclusive participation:

• Transparency in technical design. Consider the Decidim Barcelona citizen engagement platform used by the municipality of Barcelona in its consultations for the Gender Justice Plan for the City (2016-2020)6.
  
  The platform has been designed as an open discussion space where any interested individual can register, and submit her ideas/proposals pertaining to an ongoing consultation. Citizens can view each other’s proposals, and also vote on them. The platform has innovative tracking features – dashboards and visualisations that reveal the progress of proposals through the entire trajectory of the consultation process (from initial submission; voting; identifying ‘trending’ proposals; to the final decision of the municipality, and the rationale behind its decision on selection/rejection). The entire platform has been built on an open source platform that uses open data Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), which further enhances transparency (IT for Change, 2017)7.

• Customisability of platform to different types of consultative exercises. The e-discussion space designed by the Ministry of Culture, Brazil, Cultura Digital, provides some useful pointers in this direction. In 2009, for the e-consultations that the government of Brazil convened on the Marco Civil da Internet/ Internet Bill of Rights draft legislation, this portal supported an open discussion in blog format, involving a free-wheeling exchange of views. A couple of years later, in 2011, the same platform was able to support a consultation in a completely different format – on a draft Copyright Law Reform Bill – which required inputs to be collected from participants on each section of the Bill. To support this process and make it more accessible to the layperson, the text of the draft Bill was divided so that users would not have to scroll down to find a specific section. The platform also featured an advanced search function to allow users to locate with ease, a particular term, section, article or paragraph. Users could insert comments against specific sections, and they had to indicate whether their intervention was in support of, or against, a particular section, and write their justification (ibid).

  Consultation should not be seen as a one-way street. It needs to support the most marginalised and the voiceless to be able to express themselves freely, engage with others in a deliberative manner and find the online space a suitable avenue for easy participation free from fear. Consultative mechanisms should account for the complexity of cultural and local nuances in gender, and hence, design principles may need to encourage not only posting of comments but allow for ‘comments to comments’, ‘responses to posts’, and ‘report-back of decisions taken’.

• Appropriate moderation of citizen dialogues and policy consultations to curtail sexism and gender-based hate speech. The design of online dialogue and e-consultation portals often assumes that openness automatically guarantees inclusion. But this is not necessarily the case, especially with respect to enabling the participation of vulnerable groups. As studies of online free software and Wikipedia communities reveal, openness often results in the reproduction of mainstream cultures of participation that reproduce offline divides of class, race and gender (Reagle 2012)8. In particular, open online communities have proved susceptible to take-over by participants exhibiting sexist and misogynistic attitudes (ibid). This has been observed even in dialogues and consultations initiated by the government. For example, in India, in 2016, when the Ministry of Women and Child Development released an updated draft of the National Women’s Policy for comments, a self-styled ‘men’s rights army’ trolled the entire process, derailing any possibility for meaningful dialogue.

  An example of an effective online moderation policy that can enhance the quality of women’s online participation can be found in the Sree Sakthi portal set up by the state government of Kerala. The portal seeks to create a safe space for peer learning of women’s collectives from across the state, and facilitate debates on gender and governance issues between these collectives and male community members and elected representatives. Effective moderation has contributed to the success of this portal. All posts are subject to review, and posts that contain sexist/ libellous comments or border on hate-speech are not published. The author of a post that is rejected receives a detailed email notification explaining the reasons for the decision, thus checking the threat of arbitrary censorship (UNESCAP 2016)9.

• Maintaining confidentiality of participants in online dialogue/consultation on sensitive issues. Women are often inhibited in expressing their views even if they are present in public forums. Design considerations in online spaces can lead to a public domain that is less threatening and more inclusive, one where women can come forward without the risk of censure, bullying or intimidation. Privacy and confidentiality are important for all, but their gendered dimensions are important not to overlook. Some good practices in this regard are listed below:

  • Guaranteeing anonymity through de-identification of participants: To facilitate honest sharing of views in online dialogues and consultations, it becomes critical to provide participants the option of maintaining their anonymity, if they so desire. This becomes especially important for members of marginalised groups who fear reprisal from those in power if their inputs criticise the status-quo or run contrary to the majority opinion; and for those issues/concerns around which the discussion may require sharing of personally sensitive information (such as consultations on improving access to abortion services). The online consultation convened by the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Domestic Violence, UK, in 2000 successfully incorporated this design requirement. To ensure that the views of survivors of domestic violence were adequately represented, the Group set an exclusive e-discussion forum in partnership with the not-for-profit organisation Hansard Society: “WomenSpeak”. Five months before the launch of the e-discussion forum, the process of locating and registering participants was carried out through women’s groups and refugee centres. Upon registration, participants received a user name and a password. Care was taken to ensure that the user name de-identified the participant, so that confidentiality was not compromised when engaging in the e-discussion space (OECD 2003)10.

  • Registration requirements for identity authentication of participants, to prevent powerful actors from gaming e-consultations. Even as governments seek to ensure confidentiality of participants, they have an equally strong need to prevent the gaming of e-consultations by a few powerful actors or malicious interests – the risks of which are very high due to the low costs of participation in digital spaces. Registration requirements to streamline entry to these spaces is one useful strategy for circumventing this risk. For example, in the Copyright Law Reform consultation convened by the government of Brazil (referred to above), a key concern for the designers of this initiative was to prevent the ‘gaming’ of the process through flooding of inputs from a few powerful corporate bodies and lobbies. Therefore, a simple registration requirement was put in place where any individual/ organisation seeking to participate in the consultation had to create an account on the consultation platform, and enter their unique taxpayer account number for authentication. In addition, an application programming interface (API) was set up to track IP addresses of comments, to monitor if a powerful organisation/ institution was trying to ‘fix’ the consultation by registering multiple user accounts from the same location. The latter decision did open up some questions with respect to privacy rights of citizens participating in the consultation (IT for Change 2017)11.

    Instituting differential registration requirements for different levels of participation may be a more robust way of balancing citizen privacy with the need for identity authentication of participants, as Decidim Barcelona demonstrates. The platform design seeks to enable both residents and non-residents to submit proposals and contribute ideas in municipal consultations, while ensuring at the same time that voting rights are restricted to denizens of Barcelona who have a greater stake in the future of the city. Therefore, a mandatory registration requirement has been introduced, as part of which any individual who wishes to participate in a dialogue/ consultation process has to register herself, entering her residency details on the portal. These details are checked against the municipality registry, on the basis of which user permissions are enabled. To put it differently, all those who register can contribute ideas to ongoing e-discussions on the portal, but voting is possible only for those who reside in the city. Most strikingly, except for this one-time check at the time of registration, no personal data is retained by the platform. Further, individuals have the choice to use a pseudonym in their public interactions with others on the platform, if they seek to maintain their anonymity (IT for Change, 2017)12.

Institutional protocols for targeted engagement with women and women’s rights organisations should be part of all e-consultation processes, to ensure the effective integration of gender perspectives. For example, the European Union combines online open consultations and targeted stakeholder consultations with gender experts, women’s organisations, and other civil society organisations, in all its policy development efforts. Further, legal-institutional frameworks which guarantee that voice will translate into the right to be heard for marginalised women are equally important to the success of online citizen dialogues and policy consultations. This is discussed in Unit 3.2.