MUDAMOS: a civil society initiative on collaborative lawmaking in Brazil

Brazil's Constitution instituted a few means of direct democracy including the possibility of any citizen to propose a draft bill at a legislative house at the municipal, state or federal level, given the support of a minimum of citizens explicit through their signature. Until today, popular initiative bills' signatures are paper-based, which is not only costly, but also presents problems connected to transparency and safety principles. The Institute for Technology and Society of Rio believed that technology could transform this process and, hence, developed a mobile app called "Mudamos" ("we change" in Portuguese) to prove that it is possible to sign bills of popular initiative electronically. Since the launch of the app Mudamos in March 2017, we have observed that the population has a lot of will to participate and good ideas to propose. However, despite this potential for engagement, citizens experience difficulty when transforming those ideas into draft bills to be presented to legislative houses. Therefore, we have developed "Virada Legislativa" (legal hackathon): a methodology comprising an activity to develop draft bills collectively addressing a single issue and within a timeframe. In this article, we aim to showcase this toolbox for democratic participation, connecting cutting-edge digital innovations on electronic signatures (online) with social innovative methodologies (offline), highlighting the impact we have had throughout this period as well as the challenges faced, and lessons learned.