iCan is a new media and broadcast project to encourage participation in the civic community in the UK. It is focused on a website designed to help people take part in democracy and in their communities.

iCan is a new way of delivering this core purpose of the BBC. In the past, we reflected democratic life through our broadcast programs. In a two-way digital age, we are providing a milieu in which people can change things for themselves—a place where people can network with each other and with the BBC. This is a tangential benefit for our broadcast programs which, by tapping into iCan, can reflect more closely the concerns of their audiences. Users appreciate iCan for reflecting not just more diverse issues but more diverse forms of political activity than they are used to seeing in the mainstream media.

iCan aims to reach people who are dissatisfied with mainstream politics and the coverage of it. The site is geared towards providing answers, taking action, getting results and sharing those successes and failures with the community at large. We found, in all the research we did for this project, that it was outcomes that matter most to people and the lack of them that fuels their disenchantment. We have built the components with these issues in mind.

The technical infrastructure supporting the iCan project was built and is managed by the BBC's own internal development and operations teams. The development phase of the project took approximately six months and involved a process of extending, enhancing and customizing the functionality of the BBC's existing online community management platform called DNA.