Citizen 2.0

Participatory budget: How to involve citizens?

Impact of the economic crisis on public finances forced governments to review their budgets. Local authorities are facing the same challenges and must be creative to reduce costs in order not to raise taxes. Why not involve citizens? In Iowa, a small U.S. state of three million people, politicians have launched a consultation via Internet to gather ideas.

Vote for your park, an exercise of direct democracy

eGovblog.com published an interesting article on an initiative launched in London City, in UK: people could vote to decide where to allocate ten grants of up to £ 400,000 each for the most needy parks of the City. Londoners had had three main ways for voting: through an online form on the web, by post, or by mobile phone. This type of issues certainly belong to the participatory budgeting domain. [Read more]