How to do citizen participation

This is a step-by-step guide that helps you start your digital participation journey!

If you want to go on a digital participation journey, 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 journey? What is the objective of the participation journey? 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 should participate in the participation journey?

3. Which

method best fits your intention? (polling, voting, feedback, collecting ideas, etc.?)

4. Who

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

5. How

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

6. What

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

7. How much

budget is needed to conduct the online participation?

8. What

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

9. How

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

Most importantly the results of your participation journey 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 journey. They have shared their process. Check out this video:

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