The recently announced UK Government Spending Challenge, has this week, invited members of the public to send in their ideas on how to get value for public money.

The UK Spending Challenge was announced last month, but was initially only open to public servants. As Chancellor George Osbourne explained above, the response from public servants has been impressive. It has yielded over 60,000 ideas in just two weeks:

A couple of weeks ago, I asked people working in our public services for their ideas, and an amazing 56,000 people got in touch. It just shows how people respond when given a chance. We’re already putting into practice many of their ideas.

Now I’m asking the general public for their views. Tell us where’s the waste. What should we cut out. What can we improve. What’s working really well that we should be doing more of. You let us know. You can get in touch via the Spending Challenge website, or by going to the Democracy UK section of Facebook.

Your Government needs you. Please get in touch.

The 60,000 ideas will now be analysed by a central government team who will ensure the best ideas are taken forward as part of the Spending Review. The conclusions of the Spending Review will be published on 20 October 2010.

UK’s Spending Challenge versus US SAVE Award

The opening up of this Challenge to the public coincides with President Obama’s launch of the 2010 SAVE Award. The competition was announced on Thursday with the launch of a new Ideascale site where .gov workers can submit saving ideas and vote on other suggestions from Federal employees.

The site has already received 2,000 ideas, with the current most popular being an expansion of telecommuting, transportable security clearances and the donation of surplus government property to schools.

There’s quite an interesting contrast between the top ideas on the US SAVE Award site – which is currently restricted to Federal employees – and those available on the UK Spending Challenge website which is open to the public. There is however, noticeable similarities between the ideas submitted by UK Public servants and their US colleagues. For example, transferable security clearances are highlighted on the SAVE Award and were also suggested by public servants through the Spending Challenge site.

Some of the most commented upon public ideas, however, on the UK site relate to benefits, immigrants and membership of the European Union. These ideas relate to larger strategic policy areas, rather than the relatively nuanced ideas on improving government efficacy proposed on the SAVE Award site and by UK public servants.

One of the top public ideas on the Spending Challenge relates to the website itself and suggests it should itself be ‘shut down’ to save money. In this vein, it’s interesting to look at the government’s collaboration with Facebook and their involvement in the Spending Challenge.

Facebook: ‘public engagement for free’

On announcing the Facebook tie-up Prime Minster Cameron participated in a video chat with Facebook co-founder, Mark Zuckerberg. He said :

We are really excited about having Facebook involved in the Spending Challenge…

There’s enormous civic spirit in this country where people want to take control and do things in a different way. We are giving people an opportunity with Facebook and I am sure that they will take it.

He went on to echo some of the thoughts outlined by the idea that the Spending Challenge site itself should be ‘shut down’ to save money:

Normally if Government wants to engage with people we’d probably spend millions of pounds, even billions, on our own website, and with your help we’re basically getting this public engagement for free.

That’s quite a good start for saving money.

The Spending Challenge site is based on an Open Source theme and Delib’s Plone-based Dialogue App platform. While this emphasises the government’s reuse of Open source code, the site is not without its criticisms and failings.

Facebook spokesman Andrew Noyes has described the collaboration as “the largest public engagement project ever launched by the British Government”. As part of this the social networking site will ask its 23 million members in the UK to submit and vote on ideas for where cuts can be made.

The Downing Street press release is vague on Facebook’s specific involvement, however, except to say:

The social networking site will support the Treasury’s Spending Challenge by providing a dedicated space for Facebook users to come up with ideas on how to make savings in public spending.

Along with this the government says Facebook will be its “primary channel” for communicating with the public about spending cuts. Interestingly, the reference to WikiLeaks on the Spending Challenge site (highlighted in a previous blog) is no longer active. The entire paragraph where it says it will “monitor a range of blogs, social networks, forums”, has been removed from the site suggesting perhaps that Facebook will be the only platform upon which the debate over spending cuts will be monitored.

The primary question regarding the tie-up with Facebook is whether it provides an appropriate platform for informed debate on government spending and how to improve its efficacy.

Facebook comments

Many commentators have pointed out that the tie-up with Facebook is rather nebulous and currently very limited. In a blog post on techPresident, Nancy Scola notes how their current involvement appears simply to be a link to a government website: “Somewhat confusing matters: Facebook’s involvement in the Treasury Spending Challenge seems limited to, at this point, linking from its Democracy UK page to, yes, a custom-made official British government website.”

Andrea Di Maio, a Gov 2.0 analyst at Gartner, suggests that adding a Facebook channel will not broaden the debate:

So at the end of the day Facebook will be no more than a channel to point to the Chancellor’s Spending Challenge site. Whoever believes that the sheer presence on Facebook will broaden and rebalance participation of UK citizens in this contest is wrong.

People who have an interest (and often a vested interest) in participating in the Spending Challenge will do so with or without the Facebook page.

The quality of the comments and debate on Facebook regarding the Spending Challenge launch does not instill confidence in its use as a debating platform. The Register notes the number of “bewildering” comments and “spam posts” the page has already received.

Reading through the 491 comments this has already received, highlights the difficultly the coalition will have in stimulating constructive debate on such sensitive issues as spending cuts.

Difference in Ideas

There is a clear and noticeable difference in the ideas on the SAVE Award site, in comparison to those on the Spending Challenge site.

The SAVE Award site is only open to Federal employees and consequently has a strong focus on operation efficiency within agencies. As Jeffrey Zients, OMB deputy director noted:

The basic premise here is that many of the best ideas exist on the front line. Those doing the work on the front lines have the best ideas on how to make changes.

George Osborne published a sample of ideas put forward by public sector workers in the first phase of consultation. These ideas represent many good suggestions for improving back-office services for public sector organisations. They include merging back-office services for public sector organisations, switching off office computers over the weekend and better mobile phone contracts (an idea President Obama highlights in his SAVE Award video and expected to save the Government $10m).

In opening up the idea platform to the public, however, the UK government has shifted the focus away from those ‘working on the front lines’ of government services. Thus, the ideas posted by the public have primarily focused on major public policy questions e.g. reform of the welfare state or immigration policy. These are not ideas for which governments will change course because of an online debate. Rather they represent principles upon which political parties are elected. There is a danger, therefore, that public involvement in the Spending Challenge will morph into a policy debate, rather than the operational efficiency debate for which I believe it was intended.

Generating great ideas in the Public Sector

As part of the doing what works program, the Center for American Progress (CAP) recently released a report called Capital Ideas: How to Generate Innovation in the Public Sector. It analysed 24 ways in which Governments and Organisations are generating great ideas in the Public Sector. These were arranged under five themes:

1. Unleash the creative talents of government employees
2. Setup dedicated teams responsible for promoting innovation
3. Divert a small proportion of your budget to harnessing innovation
4. Collaborate with outsiders to help solve problems
5. Look at an issue from different perspectives to notice things your wouldn’t otherwise

The Spending Challenge was initially focused on unleashing the creative talents of government employees to suggest ideas to cut spending. However, its current focus on collaborating with outsiders risks diluting the initiative from producing concrete frontline ideas that could reasonably be implemented, to a policy discussion the outcome of which may-be too nebulous to result in any government action. This has the potential to increase public cynicism in such endeavors if no specific ideas are acted upon.

The essential difference between the Spending Challenge and the outside collaboration examples CAP highlights, is the absence of any specific problem for the public to solve. The challenge of how to ‘re-think government to deliver more for less’ is far too broad and can result in a paradox of choice with the effect that ideas representing the lowest common denominator rise to the top.

The Capital Ideas report highlighted Innocentive, DC’s Apps for Democracy, and Social Innovation Camp as successful examples of collaboration with outsiders. All these focused on specific challenges, for which an experienced minority could focus on.

The real opportunity to collaborate with outsiders and transform the way that the public sector does things, requires posing concrete problems requiring specific outcomes. These can be affected through either product or service innovation, but where possible should be substantiated by evidence-based reasoning. The worry is that opening up the Spending Challenge initiative to the public without reference to clear problems, degenerates it into an idea free-for-all with all the associated online comments we’ve come to expect from such initiatives.

For more check:

• Spending Challenge
• From Small Innovations to Social Transformations (CAP event)
• The £105m website
• Another week, another major consultation
• Facebook and the deficit: Can crowdslicing work?

Earlier today, UK Prime Minister David Cameron kicked off a consultation exercise on ways to reduce government spending. Together with Nick Clegg he has written to public service workers asking them to share their ideas on where to make spending cuts.

A Spending Challenge website has been launched to solicit suggestions from Britain’s 6 million public sector workers. The challenge states that “Every single idea will be considered and the best ones taken forward by departments, the Treasury and the Cabinet Office”. Ideas will be analysed through a five step process:

1. All ideas considered by cross-government team
2. Serious ideas go to ‘champions’ team in Cabinet Office/Treasury
3. Most promising ideas sent to departments and Treasury spending teams to be worked up
4. Selected ideas reviewed by Ministers
5. Spending Review announced October 20th

The rational for the challenge is laid out in Cameron’s letter:

The biggest challenge our country faces is dealing with our huge debts – and that means we have to reduce public spending.

Reducing public spending will require innovative and challenging ideas, best developed by those working on the frontline of public services:

We want you to help us find those savings, so we can cut public spending in a way that is fair and responsible. You work on the frontbench of public services. You know where things are working well, where the waste is, and where we can re-think things so that we get better services for less money.

[...] Don’t hold back. Be innovative, be radical, challenge the way things are done. Every serious idea will be considered: by government departments, by the Treasury, by our teams in Number 10 and the Cabinet Office – and passed to Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee to make sure we don’t miss anything.

While the website states the government “will look at every single idea that comes in”, however, there is no guarantee any of the suggestions will make it through to the final Spending Review report in October. This will set detailed spending plans, with budget cuts of up to 25% over four years for many government departments.

The Spending Challenge will be opened to the general public from 9 July. A summary of all submissions will be published later this year.

Partner with Wikileaks

The Spending Challenge site will also monitor social media as a means of fulfilling its mandate to find innovative ideas for saving money. This represents a recognition that some of the most “out of the box” suggestions may be outlined by on blogs and forums, rather than a newly created government website:

Although this process allows you to submit ideas anonymously, we respect the fact that some people will not want to contribute directly to a government website.  As part of this exercise, we will monitor a range of blogs, social networks, forums and also http://wikileaks.org.

Save Award similarities

The UK Spending Challenge has many similarities to the Obama Administration’s SAVE (Securing Americans Value and Efficiency) Award. On launching last year’s competition President Obama called for “a process through which every government worker can submit their ideas for how their agency can save money and perform better.”

David Cameron’s recognition that public sector workers often have the best ideas was outlined by Jeffrey Zients, chief performance officer and deputy director for management in the Office of Management and Budget, when he said it was important to listen to the voices of those on the front lines:

In the government and in the private sector, it is often those in the front lines that have the best ideas and who know the most… We are looking for ideas that save money, improves the way the government operates by lowering costs, simplifying processes, streamlining processes, getting rid of unnecessary red tape and that has an impact on citizens’ lives. It could be a wide range of ideas.

The competition was seen as a success with over 38,000 ideas being submitted in the three weeks of the competition. Given this, the SAVE Award was turned into an annual event with President Obama issuing his own “spending challenge” to government workers:

I’ve issued a challenge to every man and woman who works for the federal government:  If you see a way that government could do its job better, or do the same job for less money, I want to know about it

Saving through Open Source

The twitter reaction to the launch of the new site has been generally positive. The initiative is one of the latest examples of the coalition seeking to harnessing the collective ideas and experience of those working outside of central government.

As a nod to this the website itself is based on a WordPress theme developed by Simon Dickson for the recent Programme For Government site. Seeing the government use Open Source tools for the website, and reusing previous themes, demonstrates the spirit of the spending challenge.

The extension and reuse of such open source technology throughout government could help to bring down the cost of government websites. The axing of many government websites has already been proposed by Cabinet Office Minister Francis Maude, but ideas from the public on reducing the costs of current sites e.g. through using free templates such as Govfresh’s Gov 2.0 theme, would be welcomed – especially when some current sites have a per visit cost of £11.78.

The winning idea from the US SAVE award is expected to save $2 million for 2011, and $14.5 million between 2010-2014. Any similar savings arising from the UK Spending Challenge should help establish the power of consultation with the public as a means of saving money and improving government efficiency.

Further reading

• Emergency Budget, Deficit and Cuts: Visualized
• Measuring Government Website costs
• Government to axe hundreds of ‘unnecessary’ websites
• Technology in a Cold Climate
• Govfresh Gov 2.0 theme
• SAVE Award

The RSA recently posted video of Matthew Taylor’s lecture on how brain and behaviour research is increasingly being incorporated into political and policy debate.

A section of the debate is animated below:

His lecture explores what’s wrong with our democracy and what needs to be done. Extracts of the speech are outlined below:

Democracy can only be successful as we the people make it. But how well suited are we to being good democrats. We come, over recent years, to understand more about the idiosyncrasies of our mental processes. Some of these appear to compromise our ability to make wise and fair democratic judgments.

[...] The problem with our democracy is not, as we often think, about the performance of our politicians nor the workings of our constitution, but it’s about the content of the democratic conversation. Proper processes of democratic deliberation in which we either participate directly, or which we can acknowledge as legitimate, would help us to be less petulant, wiser and more responsible task masters for beleaguered representatives. These are some of the practical ways we might encourage people to be better citizens.

[…] I believe both the case for a new collective spirit and the principles that could underpin the development of modern civic and democratic spaces, are to be found in thinking about human nature.

Co-operation and engagement are not things we ought to do, they’re a necessity to help us steer a course through the modern world, using brains that evolved before the invention of the wheel.

[…] As a schoolboy socialist…the first explicitly political arguments I ever had were about human nature. My vision of a good society rested on the view of people as fundamentally collaborative and benign, something only hidden by the depredation of the system.

In this vein, the essence of Gov 2.0 and the Open government movement – as a means of facilitating collaboration and engagement – can, in time, lead to democratic renewal through empowering us all to become better democrats.

Earlier this week the UK Conservative party promised to offer a £1m cash prize to a person or team that creates an online platform that can be used to solve “common problems”.

The prize – which the party says will be the largest offered by a British government in modern times – will be awarded for a platform in which citizens can post ideas in relation to government policy. The exact specifics of the platform have not been outlined, but it’s envisioned as a mesh between Fixmystreet,  Facebook, Spigit, IdeaScale and MixedInk.

The platform will need to be able to sift through millions of online comments and highlight the most sensible suggestions from those with experience of the area in question. Most current idea generation platforms use digg-like voting mechanisms as a means of highlighting the most popular suggestions. The £1million prize is on offer to anyone who can devise a more sophisticated way of sifting through suggestions and weighting relevant ideas in an appropriate manner.

Shadow culture secretary Jeremy Hunt explained the plan on Wednesday’s BBC radio’s Today programme.

Conservatives believe that the collective wisdom of the British people is much greater than that of a bunch of politicians or so-called experts. And new technology now allows us to harness that wisdom like never before. So at this time of year, when families and friends are getting together, we’re announcing a new idea to help the British people get together to help solve the problems that matter to them.

There are currently no technological platforms that enable in-depth online collaboration on the scale required by government – this prize is a good and cost-effective way of getting one.

James Harkin, author of Cyburbia, was also interviewed and provided a useful critique of the crowdsourcing concept. He notes how many organisations have tried to use the wisdom of the crowds, not as a means of harnessing collective intelligence, but rather as a means of cosying up to the public:

They’re flattering the intelligence of people by telling them we’re listening to your opinions, we want you to be involved…but there is an incredible powerlessness for ordinary members of the public…having no idea where those ideas will go.

He also highlighted the difficulties in aggregating suggestions, which could lead to bureaucrats picking and choosing which ones get implemented. Voting mechanisms e.g. such as those involved in the recent SAVE Award could reduce this, but it also creates the opportunity for advocacy groups to game the system.

Innovative ideas should not always be subject to a popularity contest, and this is often where crowdsourcing contests fall short. Votes don’t always provide enough input on an idea’s value:

Thumbs Up or Down works but fails to explain why: Crowds do not drive and bring innovation to successful fruition in the form of a marketable product. Nor are they the best source for assessing quality – the one that shouts the loudest is heard the most.

Nevertheless, crowds can tell you if they like or dislike something.

Mr. Hunt agrees with the concerns around how to weight particular opinions, e.g. from experts in a field, so these are not downed out by mass volumes of bland or populist suggestions. The required platform will need to sift, aggregate and weight ideas appropriately e.g. based on sophisticated algorithms or other means.

He goes on to explain that often the issue with ideas in government is not in their vision or objectives, but in their execution. So rather than using the platform to gather ideas, the execution of these suggestions will also need to be solicited. The platform should also act as a lifecycle management application for the implementation of ideas e.g. potentially up to drafting Requests For Proposal.

Reaction

The comments to the competition on the Guardian, Daily Mail and Register highlight some cynicism towards the competition. Commercial and Open source platforms already exist for idea formulation and discussion, and therefore it’s questioned whether such new platforms are really required. Also, the sum of money involved also seems excessive.

For the Government, Cabinet Office minister Tessa Jowell said the Conservatives were “opting for a PR gimmick over policy substance” and predicted the idea would be “quietly dropped”.

For the Liberal Democrats, Work and Pensions spokesperson Jenny Willott MP said:

This prize is clearly a publicity stunt and a total waste of taxpayers’ money. There are already a multitude of ways to communicate with large numbers of people online, from Facebook to discussion groups.

Maybe the Tories are so out of touch they don’t know what’s out there, but they shouldn’t waste £1m of public money reinventing the wheel.

Matt Leifer’s comment, however, sums up my view on the initiative:

The reality of the situation is that you could easily put together a site of this type of crowdsourcing/social networking site using existing open source web-tools, e.g. Drupal, Elgg, etc. If you paid a developer to work on it for a month or two and made use of the open source community then you could have a working site for a fraction of a million. Also, the idea of a “competition” for this sort of thing is just silly political grandstanding. This would be a routine job for most web developers, i.e. it is not comparable to the Netflix prize for which radically innovative ideas were needed.

Others, however, have been more supportive of the initiative acknowledging that other areas of government are already running competitions for solutions to specific problems. Matthew Taylor outlines these:

The Labour Government in the UK has also been keen to use prize competitions, with the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts offering a £1,000,000 prize for community-led responses to climate change, and the MoD’s “Grand Challenge” competition, focused on the development of battlefield technologies.

He goes on to say that the criticism seems to be leveled at the means to execute the objective, rather than the proposal itself (i.e. that of asking the public to contribute towards engaging and critiquing government policy):

If the use of prize competitions to encourage innovation has a long and successful history..it is difficult to give any credance to any criticism leveled at Hunt for his method… this may well be why none of the politicians have bothered to properly discriminate between the objective Hunt sets out, and the method he proposes.

The innovation of crowds

The competition proposed is unique in that it’s not seeking ideas, but rather a working platform. Crowdsourcing as a means of innovating (as this competition will require) has been criticized recently. Dan Woods notes:

In the popular press, and in the minds of millions of people, the word crowdsourcing has created an illusion that there is a crowd that solves problems better than individuals…

The notion of crowds creating solutions appeals to our desire to believe that working together we can do anything, but in terms of innovation it is just ridiculous.There is no crowd in crowdsourcing. There are only virtuosos, usually uniquely talented, highly trained people who have worked for decades in a field… From their fervent brains spring new ideas. The crowd has nothing to do with it. The crowd solves nothing, creates nothing.

He goes on to say that misplaced faith in the crowd is a blow to the image of the heroic inventor and the need to nurture and fund these inventors. A false idea of the crowd as an innovating entity can reduce the motivation for this investment, ‘with the supposition that companies can tap the minds of inventors on the cheap’.

Hutch Carpenter does, however, note a common misconception in relation to communities and the innovation process:

This may be one of my favorite misconceptions about the role of communities in innovation. That crowdsourcing is some sort of mind meld where innovations spring from a collective brain wave.

He acknowledges the problems and opportunities of communities working in the innovation process, but explains role of crowdsourcing and how it can help in the process. It’s potential lies in three areas:

1. Crowdsourcing involves collecting ideas in aggregate
2. Community feedback brings a diversity of viewpoints to the ideas
3. Crowdsourcing does mean 100% of the world’s population – it attracts only those interested in a particular domain

In a similar vein Karim R. Lakhani, an assistant professor at Harvard Business School, refers to crowdsourcing as ‘broadcast search’ and cautions to ‘pretend that 10,000 average Joes invent better products than Steve Jobs.’ As such, it’s unlikely that such a platform will be created by an individual or team without any guarantee of success. Instead, a collaborative staged process may need to be incorporated into the competition, with a requirement that the best ideas from different solutions are potentially incorporated into the end platform.

If the competition was to be structured in a similar multi-stage procurement model as that of the NetFlix prize it maybe more successful. However, it’s likely that progress prizes would need to be awarded over many years to the best-performing teams, until one team met the specified performance level e.g. similar to Netflix’s 10 percent accuracy improvement.

Given the development required for such a platform it’s likely it’ll involve individuals working with private companies or advocacy groups to produce such a platform. Nevertheless, the idea of procuring in such a way could lead to significant cost savings in comparison to the tradition means of awarding IT projects to large consultancies. Perhaps, this could be the legacy of any competition i.e. moving towards a more multi-stage open procurement model.

One of the interesting examples cited in the recent paper “Promising Practices in Online Engagement” surrounded the concept of Participatory budgeting. It can be broadly defined as the participation of citizens in the decision-making process of budget allocation and monitoring public spending. This participation can take various forms, from effective decision-making power in the allocation of resources, to more modest initiatives that confer voice during the development of the budget.

The use of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) in the execution of Participatory budgeting initiatives varies widely. The central tenet of PB is to engage local citizens – through whatever means practicable – in the budgeting process. Through this it can confer greater legitimacy and acceptance of the budgeting outcomes. It also increases trust in the process through ensuring a transparent and democratic process towards any decision making. Engaging citizens and ensuring diverse participation  is one of the primary challenges of any PB initiative.

The core values of Public Participation are essential to the Participatory budgeting process. These, however, do not mandate any form of e-Participation. Rather the use of ICT is optional as a means of  public involvement. What is fundamental to Participatory budgeting, however, is that the core tenets of Public participation are embraced:

1. Public participation is based on the belief that those who are affected by a decision have a right to be involved in the decision-making process.
2. Public participation includes the promise that the public’s contribution will influence the decision.
3. Public participation promotes sustainable decisions by recognising and communicating the needs and interests of all participants, including decision makers.
4. Public participation seeks out and facilitates the involvement of those potentially affected by or interested in a decision.
5. Public participation seeks input from participants in designing how they participate.
6. Public participation provides participants with the information they need to participate in a meaningful way.
7. Public participation communicates to participants how their input affected the decision.

The use of online mediums to faciliate these tenets and increase engagement varies considerably, and is exemplified in the three different approaches to participation described below.

Toronto Community Housing (Face-to-face participation)

Toronto Community Housing is Canada’s largest social housing provider. For the past eight years it has engaged in Participatory budgeting as a means of allocating funding to ideas on how to improve tenants’ quality of life. The process involves bringing citizens together to discuss and vote on proposals for the distribution of $9 million.

The budgeting process – as explained in the video above – involves:

1. Bringing ideas together – Tenants in every Toronto Community Housing building come forward with ideas for improving their community. They then sort through the ideas and democratically decide which are the top priorities for their buildings. Only capital projects are eligible for funding.
2. A voting event – Ideas are brought forward to big voting events, where tenants from different buildings come together to hear all the proposals and vote on the winners. Tenants present their ideas at these events and solicit support from other neighborhoods. Questions can be asked and ideas are examined for their public good and contribution to improving tenants quality of life.
3. Voting – One delegate for each building gets stickers which they then use to vote for the best ideas.

These votes are counted and the winners announced. This democratic and transparency process helped over 150 ideas received more than $9 million in funding in 2009.

The process of participation is primarily based on face-to-face meetings and events, rather than any online model. The concept of e-Participation is not utilised in Toronto, in contrast to the next example in Germany.

Berlin – Lichtenberg (e-Participation and Face-to-face)

The Participatory budgeting process in Berlin-Lichtenberg includes online deliberation along with face-to-face meetings as part of its civic engagement process. The Promising Practices in Online Engagement paper highlights this as an example of the merging of online and face-to-face engagement models:

The process combines face-to-face dialogues based on the Open Space technique with online dialogue to provide citizens with multiple channels to participate and contribute their budget ideas.

(Image courtesy of Governance International Case Study)

The budgeting process for Berlin-Lichtenberg consists of five-stages:

1. Kick-off meeting - An initial meeting is held with residents of the district to welcome participants and introduce the process.
2. Offline and Online idea generation -  Meetings are then arranged where residents in each of the neighborhoods creates suggestions for budget items. Participation in the idea generation stage was also available online, and through household surveys. A second phase then allows for participants with similar ideas to collaboratively create a final version of their suggested budget item. The online platform is used to collect and track the progress of all suggestions no matter where they originated.
3. Proposals meeting – A one-day meeting is held where citizen panels edit and aggregate all ideas down to a list of the most noteworthy proposals.
4. Prioritization of ideas – All ideas then go back to the participants to be prioritized. A written vote, an internet vote and a final citizen assembly are used to select the 20 most important proposals. These results are then submitted to decision markers who ensure the suggestions are feasible for inclusion given the framework of the budget laws.
5. Feedback survey – A citizen survey is then conducted to see how the people who did not participate react to the prioritized proposals.

Berlin-Lichtenberg’s use of an online engagement medium throughout the budgeting process led to an increase in participant numbers and diversity. Online participants outnumbered those physically present at the various events. An evaluation of the internet platform revealed some interesting findings including:

• The biggest increase in participation stemmed from the online participation
• It was a good decision to use a mix of media to inform and engage citizens, since each of the communication channels – citizen assemblies, the internet and the postal vote – showed distortions in terms of gender, age, education and nationality.
• The aggregation of proposals from various sources and sequencing of votes helped neutralise the influence of organised interest groups.

Germany, however, is not unique in its use of the Internet as an engagement medium for PB. It has been enthusiastically embraced in Brazil (the birthplace of the initiative) as a means of increasing participation throughout the budgeting process.

Belo Horizonte, Brazil  (e-Participation only)

In 2006, the city of Belo Horizonte launched a Digital Participatory Budgeting (e-PB) initiative independent of their traditional Participatory budgeting process. It was allocated a fund of US $11 million which was to be distributed based on an exclusively online e-PB process.

The process involved a scheme where citizens registered as electors in Belo Horizonte, independent of their place of residency in the city, and voted exclusively online for 1 out of 4 public works for each of the nine districts of the city.

The initiative had three primary goals:

• to modernise the participatory budgeting process through the use of ICTs
• to increase citizens’ participation in the process
• and to broaden the scope of public works that are submitted to voting

Tiago Peixoto outlines how traditionally the level of public participation in Belo Horizonte’s Participatory budgeting initiatives had been low. Indeed, in the previous 4 years only 1.46% of the population participated in the second round of the process. Along with this the demographic participating was older and of lower socio-economic background, making the process unrepresentative of the city’s population. Thus, the use of the internet and e-PB was seen as a way of engaging a greater cross section of the community through reducing the time and cost of participation.

Four public works per city district were subject to online voting with the aim of selecting one work per district. The initiative was heavily promoted and the website provided detailed information on the proposed works to be selected. The online forums facilitated deliberative action and discussion on the proposed projects.

At the end of the initiative (lasting 42 days) the total number of votes was 503,266 from 172,938 voters. Voters were allowed to vote nine times as long as they voted for only one work per district. Tiago Peixoto’s analysis of participation levels highlights its engagement success:

These numbers therefore correspond to a participation level of around 10 per cent of electors, nearly seven times more participants than the traditional participatory budgeting.

This is, without a doubt, the highest level of participation ever seen in a Participatory Budgeting programme anywhere in the world; and indeed is surely one of the most significant e-democracy exercises ever conducted.

Is e-Participation the answer?

The different engagement mediums used for Participatory budgeting have significant affects on the level of participation. While research shows that the Web is not replacing traditional methods of civic engagement, it’s use for increasing participation and expanding the diversity of those contributing cannot be understated.

Tiago Peixoto in his analysis of the success of e-Participatory budgeting in Belo Horizonte concludes:

However, one can safely hypothesize that the ease with which participants could vote – with the Internet as an enabler – and the salience of the initiative along with the citizens’ view of their own participation as decisive in the process, were definitive factors in the attainment of such a high level of participation. Despite its novelty and relative flaws, the e-PB is a unique experience and an initiative that cannot be ignored by anyone interested in the use of ICTs as a means to enhance participation, and its future developments should be followed closely.

This, along with Berlin-Lichtenberg’s use of the internet, highlight how online engagement strategies can be utilised to further public participation in Participatory budgeting. Relying exclusively on face-to-face meetings as the engagement model can serve to limit participation, community reach and the diversity of ideas. Consequently, the merging of online and face-to-face engagement looks to be the solution to greater civic involvement in this form of democratic and transparent budgeting.