This paper analyzes the award-winning e-participation initiative of the city council of Madrid, Decide Madrid, to identify the critical success factors and the main barriers that are conditioning its performance. An exploratory case study is used as a research technique, including desk research and semi-structured interviews. The analysis distinguishes contextual, organizational and individual level factors; it considers whether the factors or barriers are more related to the information and communication technology (ICT) component, public sector context or democratic participation; it also differentiates among the different stages of the development of the initiative. Results show that individual and organizational factors related to the public sector context and democratic participation are the most relevant success factors. The high expectations of citizens explain the high levels of participation in the initial stages of Decide Madrid. However, the lack of transparency and poor functioning of some of its participatory activities (organizational factors related to the ICT and democratic dimensions) are negatively affecting its performance. The software created for this platform, Consul, has been adopted or it is in the process of being implemented in more than 100 institutions in 33 countries. Therefore, the findings of this research can potentially be useful to improve the performance and sustainability of e-participation platforms worldwide.

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The interaction of public audit institutions with users through social media is analyzed. In addition to determining explanatory factors for the adoption of these platforms by supreme and regional European public audit institutions, a comparative analysis of the most commonly used social media is carried out to answer the following research questions: How do European public audit institutions use social media? What is the level of follow-up and interaction of their users? This paper analyzes 92 European public audit institutions: 28 supreme audit institutions (SAIs), 63 regional audit institutions (RAIs), and the European Court of Auditors (ECA). The results of this study indicate that the level of social media use by these institutions is low, with higher levels of adoption by SAIs and in areas with larger populations and Anglo-Saxon, Nordic, and Eastern public administration styles. The results also show that social media are mainly used to disclose information on their activities and that publications seeking to improve the image of the institutions have the greatest impact on users. Publications aimed at starting a dialogue with users are the least frequent. Users interact more on Facebook than on Twitter, “likes” being the most common user reaction and comments the least frequent. Resumen Se analiza la interacción de las instituciones de auditoría pública con los usuarios a través de los medios de comunicación social. Además de determinar factores explicativos de la adopción de estos medios por parte de las instituciones de auditoría pública europeas centrales y regionales, se lleva a cabo un análisis comparativo de las redes sociales que más utilizan, para contestar las siguientes preguntas: ¿cómo utilizan las instituciones de auditoría pública europeas los medios de comunicación social? y ¿cuál es el nivel de seguimiento e interacción de sus usuarios? Este trabajo analiza 92 instituciones de auditoría pública europeas: 28 instituciones de auditoría centrales (supreme audit institutions, SAIs), 63 regionales (regional audit institutions, RAIs) y la European Court of Auditors (ECA). Los resultados indican que el nivel de uso de los medios de comunicación social por parte de estas instituciones es reducido, con mayores niveles de adopción en las SAIs, en los territorios con mayor número de habitantes y con estilos de administración pública anglosajón, nórdico y del Este de Europa. Los resultados también muestran que las redes sociales se utilizan principalmente para transmitir información sobre las actividades que realizan y que las publicaciones que buscan mejorar la imagen de las instituciones son las que generan una mayor repercusión en los usuarios. Las publicaciones dirigidas a comenzar un diálogo con los usuarios son las menos frecuentes. Los usuarios interaccionan más en Facebook que en Twitter, siendo los “me gusta” la reacción más común y los comentarios la menos frecuente.