The project ‘A Minha Região – O teu Portal Autárquico’ (My Region – Your Local Government Portal), developed by Rúben Almeida, currently Invited Assistant at DEI, and alumnus of the Master’s in Informatics and Computing Engineering, won the 1st place in the Arquivo.pt 2025 Award, winning a cash prize of €10,000 in the 8th edition of the initiative, which featured 36 entries.
Under the guidance of Ricardo Campos (Professor at UBI and affiliated with INESC TEC and Ci2@IPT) and Sérgio Nunes (Professor at DEI/FEUP and affiliated with INESC TEC), the project consists of a digital platform that centralises information on local government, promoting transparency and encouraging civic participation.
Motivated by the proximity of the 2025 election cycle and concerned about high levels of abstention in local elections, the authors have created a portal where citizens can access electoral data from 1976 to 2021, information on elected local authorities and news published during campaigns (highlighting electoral promises, coverage of the process and reports on those elected). The platform also includes interactive graphs and maps illustrating the evolution of the local political landscape.
‘MinhaRegião.pt aims, above all, to foster civic engagement among citizens, democratising access to credible and up-to-date information and promoting informed decision-making at the time of voting’, emphasise the authors, who aim to contribute to reducing abstention and empowering voters by making them better informed about issues that directly affect their communities.
Rúben Almeida also makes a point of stressing the importance of Arquivo.pt in bringing the project to fruition:
“The development of MinhaRegião.pt would not have been possible without the information compiled by Arquivo.pt. The indexing of the presidents of each local authority, the extrapolation of local authority data beyond the date provided by the CNE (2001), as well as the survey of local media outlets, enabling the creation of a collection of news items on local elections in each region of Portugal, would not have been possible without Arquivo.pt.”
The award ceremony for this edition took place on 11 July, during the closing session of Encontro Ciência 2025, and was presided over by the Minister of Education, Science and Innovation, Fernando Alexandre, and the Chair of the Board of Directors of the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT), Madalena Alves.