Setting up a new PB process is challenging – and many decisions need to be made. No PB is like another and each process is highly adapted to local laws, political goals, or demography of their citizens. However, that does not mean that it is not possible to learn from other initiatives.
Almost all of today’s processes, be it in a business or public sector, depend on information technology (IT) for their execution. Participatory budgeting (PB) is no an exemption. IT can help to create a more participative and interactive experience for citizens and strengthen their engagement. The “Empowering PB in the Baltic Sea Region” (EmPaci) project supported by Rostock University have done a research on IT solutions best suited for the support of PB’s. The PB feature matrix tool and their corresponding documents have been released and presented to the PB stakeholders at the EmPaci project webpage.
The feature-matrix is an online tool that analyses 50 different cities for in total 47 process and usability criteria. The idea is to compare and learn from other PB-initiatives all around the world. It is meant for cities that currently plan to implement or improve a PB to answers the questions:
- What kind of cities implement similar features? For example, which cities also implement an upload functionality for files?
- What we can learn from each particular example?
- Which capabilities are implemented by a majority of initiatives and can be considered “state of the art”?
- Where can we find the homepage of these cities and their PB’s online?
Complementary, three documents have been released to describe the underlying data.
Document 1 contains a manual of the feature-matrix and describes in detail the filter and download capabilities. It helps to understand how to access the information and how it is structured.
Document 2 performs an usability analysis based on the feature-matrix as the database. It derives the state of the art of usability features of participatory budgeting websites with an additional focus on e-inclusion criteria, to assess webpages’ accessibility for visually impaired or motor-impaired citizens.
Document 3 provides a feature-catalogue of process-related IT-capabilities for PB’s. It shall allow cities interested in PB to inform themselfs on possible PB-process items and their importance and enable them to build an individual process that fits their needs.
Follow the EmPaci project website www.empaci.eu to find out more about the project which aims to get more municipalities and citizens involved into participatory budgeting via building municipal capacities, transnational clusters and municipality/citizen cooperations all over the Baltic Sea Region.Participatory budgeting is a process of democratic decision-making we do believe in, where citizens take part in preparing and adopting a municipal or public budget. In the BSR, only a few municipalities have applied a PB process on a regular basis. If you are interested in getting the support to develop your PB, please contact your national or the nearest EmPaci partner. More about the project can be found on www.empaci.eu.
Together we can gain more power in decision-making within local, regional or national public institutions!