Speak Your Mind: Citizen Participation

Have you ever watched local access channels and saw a glimpse of a budget participatory meeting? Let's be honest: you probably didn't watch too long (unless you're watching Parks and Rec). Yet meetings like those determine where millions of dollars are spent and where taxpayer money goes. The 21st century has presented us with interesting alternatives to the old gavels and chairs formats. For today's Monday Round-Up, we'll be looking at other examples of citizen participation using ICT: 

• In case you missed it,  Tiago Peixoto from the World Bank gave a presentation about the ways ICT can improve citizen participation, using participatory budgeting in Brazil as his example.
• In Mozambique, a recent conference discussed how to gather opinions from "untold voices" as well as how to value those opinions through action
• Balancing citizen participation with safety, Mexican officials have partnered with Google to provide encrypted pathways for citizens to report crimes.
• Gathering input from numerous sources can lead to great strides in innovation, hence why participation could also improve scientific invention.
• Government response is also important to citizen participation, so it's encouraging to see one Member's positive response in Namibia.
• Chile has a one-stop-shop website for citizen participation, complete with tranparency reports, forums for conversation, and information to inform voting.
• As an example similar to Tiago's presentation about Brazil, the Democratic Republic of Congo has found success in using technology for participatory budgeting.
• Experimenting with new ways to integrate public opinion, iHub in Kenya is unrolling a new plan, the "Kenya Open Data Pre-Incubator."
• India features a website featuring the voices of citizens to improve the quality of life.
• In Ukraine, 50 civil society organizations worked together to create a forum on government transparency and accountability
• Mideast Youth, a project that crosses borders, features a platform for information and discussions on topics in the region
• In a local example here in the US, SeeClickFix makes it easy for individuals to report a non-emergency issue, have a city municipality respond, and get the issue resolved.