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Description
Despite the fact that participation at the local level is an established practice, municipalities often face lack of interest or reluctance of the population, and they often do not have the necessary orientation in a wide selection of methods and tools of participation, nor the knowledge of how to use them.
Throughout the pilot creation of the strategic plan of the town of Český Brod, we will determine and apply the optimal combination of digital and traditional participation tools in order to bring the most benefits to residents and the municipality. We will train officials and city management in the use of (not only) digital tools, we will find a balance between city priorities and public input, balance between traditional and digital tools, including tools used in Iceland. We will create methodologies and training for the use of digital participation tools in strategic development planning on a local level. Based on the case study of Český Brod, we will raise awareness through an online conference, train other town representatives, create publicly available online training and start using the e-participation tools in at least 10 other towns.
The aim of the project is to improve the quality of participation in the selected municipality and in other municipalities of the Czech Republic, as well as to increase the level of citizen involvement in decision-making at the local level. The target group are the political representatives of towns and their officers, who will be able to use the tools competently and thus meaningfully integrate the outputs of participation into planning and decision-making.
Summary of project results
Despite the fact that participation at the local level is an established practice, municipalities often face lack of interest or reluctance of the population, and they often do not have the necessary orientation in a wide selection of methods and tools of participation, nor the knowledge of how to use them.
Throughout the pilot creation of the strategic plan of the town of Český Brod, they determine and apply the optimal combination of digital and traditional participation tools in order to bring the most benefits to residents and the municipality. They trained officials and city management in the use of (not only) digital tools, and tried to find a balance between city priorities and public input, balance between traditional and digital tools, including tools used in Iceland. They created methodologies and training for the use of digital participation tools in strategic development planning on a local level. Based on the case study of Český Brod, they raised awareness through an online conference, train other town representatives, create dpublicly available online training and started using the e-participation tools in at least 10 other towns.
The aim of the project was to improve the quality of participation in the selected municipality and in other municipalities of the Czech Republic, as well as to increase the level of citizen involvement in decision-making at the local level. The target group were the political representatives of towns and their officers, who will be able to use the tools competently and thus meaningfully integrated the outputs of participation into planning and decision-making.
The project main goal was to improve the use of digital tools to increase and improve public participation at the level of Czech cities.
Further in cooperation with local partners in Český Brod and a foreign partner they tried to adapt and use the optimal combination of digital and traditional participation tools for the strategic planning process. In the plan was to teach the management and staff of the city and its authority to be competent to use the participation tools optimally and involve a larger number of citizens in planning and solving relevant issues.
Spreading the knowledge about the possibilities, advantages and limits of using digital participation tools to other Czech cities.
They tried to solve the situation in the field of the use of electronic tools for the involvement of citizens in decision-making. There are many of them today. The problem is their grasp, which does not result in the satisfaction of citizens with the use of their outputs. Town halls acquire digital tools for which they often do not have sufficient capacity to manage and use or utilize their outputs. In the course of the project, it became clear to us that the problem has an even deeper cause and that is a relatively large deficit in a couple of areas. The first area is the lack of capacity for managing and processing the outputs of communication with the public, their further use in the executive structure. Information is often not passed on. This especially applies to longer-term processes. The second area is the inability of the municipal leadership to estimate which problems and topics with an estimate of the capacities of their own executive should actually be solved. The first mentioned area is not possible to solve. Association cannot ensure an increase in the capacity of municipalities to communicate with citizens. In fact, this would mean increasing the number of trained staff who can devote themselves to long-term communication with citizens. So they therefore focused on the latter area. In their methodology, the syllabus and the training sessions themselves, they have tried to ensure that the management of the authorities are able to define what they can meaningfully engage in, so that participation is not just a therapeutic tool for the moment.
Thanks to the project, the municipalities that pass this kind of "participation audit" and choose a certain topic to participate in will be able to use the web templates that they have prepared during the project. The templates can reduce the costliness of the process to some extent. Nevertheless, it should be stressed that the acquisition of software for municipalities is not a problem thanks to subsidies, their problem is the ability to manage and use these software tools. In this respect, it will probably be necessary to exert more influence on the municipal leadership.
Summary of bilateral results
1.The project partner (Citizen Foundation) brought us possibility to organize two events for our target group (local public administration to CZ) with added value of their experience and expertise. We got opportunity to speak with the creator of world known and highly appreciated on-line tool (civic tech) for citizen involvement YRPRI.org. On contrary his contribution to implementation of specific activities in case of town of Český Brod was very limited due to short of time capacities of partner was available to invest in the project.Main results from bilateral level.2. As mentioned above we hold two on-line events (seminar and conference) with presence of the representative of Citizen Foundation. Beside this we also used and tested the tool in the process of strategic planning. It helped us to understand how to use the tool and to create part of our own templates www.digitalagora.cz. It also helped us to understand the condition for successful use of such instrument.3. Plans to continue the bilateral cooperationThere are no plans for future cooperation yet.