How to do citizen participation

This is a step by step guide that helps you to organize your digital participation process!

If you want to conduct a digital participation process, there are a few things you need to be aware of and prepare before you start. We recommend that you sit down with your team and discuss the questions below.

1. Why

do you want to conduct a participation process? What is the objective of the participation process? What do you want to find out?

2. Who

is the target group? From whom do you want to get feedback? Which group in the community shall participate in the participation process?

3. Which

method fits best to your process? (e.g. polling, voting, feedback, collecting ideas, etc.?)

4. Who

within your group will manage the participation process? You need to identify at least one person who manages the process and is the contact person. This person also moderates the feedback given in the participation process

5. How

do you communicate with the target group so that they know and when to participate? And how to do you inform the target group about the results of the participation process?

6. What

are possible risks? Can the digital platform be misused for inappropriate statements?

7. Is

there a budget needed to conduct the online participation?

8. What

is the timeline? When does the participation process start and finish?

9. How

do you stay engaged with the participants after the participation process?

Most importantly the results of your participation process need to feed into an action plan or a change process so that participants see the impact of their participation!

In this video we share an example of a municipality in Kyrgyzstan who has conducted a digital participation process. They have shared their process. Check out this video:

By loading the video, you agree to Vimeo's privacy policy.
Learn more

Load video

Always unblock Vimeo