Description
Civic participation has been formally accepted by the Czech governmental bodies; however it is usually not implemented in practice and has not been generally acknowledged among the citizens. The aim of the PAKT project is to make civic participation one of the basic principles of good governance on all of its levels. For this purpose we will create a broad coalition of organizations, dealing with civic participation in its various forms, as well as search for inspiration from abroad. In the project, we aim to form the Statement of Cooperation that is supposed to help the public administration in creating a solid environment for the progress of civic involvement. Members of the coalition will support the Statement amongst representatives of public administration. The standards of participation will be produced in order to define good practice. Also the method for representatives of public administration will be drafted to support meaningful implementation of the standards.
Summary of project results
Our main project objective was to implement a systemic approach to participation in different spheres of decision making to ensure that both the citizens and the public sector can effectively engage in the process. We managed to agree on basic principles in the broader coalition of stakeholders that allow all actor to get involved and that define what can be considered effective and quality participation. We have developed the PAKT Declaration that represents a clear and brief public commitment for institutions and bodies of public administration. The principles are then described in detail in the Standards for Participation that create a “safe” environment ensuring that all partners know what they can expect from the participation process, what their role and the role of others include and what should be accomplished. Particular tools, techniques and procedures of the participation process are specified in Methodology. This document is intended for officials and politicians but it can also provide a guideline for other partners. These documents were created as a result of a participative process to which we had called in representatives of public administration, public sector and other stakeholders. We also organized two conferences in order to both present these documents and to promote the idea of participation while showing different examples of best practice. At the same time, we addressed individual representatives of municipalities and tried to explain and promote the ideas of PAKT. . Last but not least, we have established the PAKT Platform with the objective to further support citizen participation in decision-making processes as an integral part of quality and sustainable decisions when resolving issues at the municipal, regional and the national level.
Summary of bilateral results
The biggest asset of the bilateral cooperation was a speech of Norwegian expert, Kirsten Paaby, during the final conference organized in the Senate of the Czech Parliament in September 2014. Her speech on Building of long-term partnerships and supportive structures was positively reflected. Especially for representatives of public authorities examples from Nordic countries are very important source of inspiration. The Norwegian partner Stiftelsen Idébanken has contributed to the project with know-how in experiences of implementing similar project in Sweden. Thanks to collaboration in the past – both through being in the same network and through other partnership projects we know each other and this has made the communication and cooperation easier.