Seven recommendations for participatory budgeting
In this blog post, researchers Mikko Rask, Titiana Ertiö, Pekka Tuominen, and Veronica Ahonen make seven recommendations for the participatory budgeting process in the City of Helsinki. The recommendations are based on mid-term evaluation of OmaStadi, the City of Helsinki’s participatory budgeting process.
OmaStadi in short
Helsinki’s participatory budgeting pilot, OmaStadi, enables residents to submit project ideas and vote on how to allocate a budget of 4.4 million euros on urban developments. The participatory budgeting (PB) process stages include ideation, validation against participatory budgeting rules, co-creation with public sector experts, proposal planning, budget estimation, voting, and implementation, as detailed in our case study description of the PB process in Helsinki.
University of Helsinki’s research team (Mikko Rask, Titiana Ertiö, Pekka Tuominen, and Veronica Ahonen) conducted a mid-term evaluation of the OmaStadi pilot as a part of the Academy of Finland Strategic Research Council financed project called Tackling Biases and Bubbles in Participation (BIBU). The mid-term report evaluates the first phases of the PB process, specifically the ideation and proposal stages and their implementation, and the content analysis of the submitted ideas. In November 2019, Helsinki residents voted for nearly 400 project proposals. See the funded proposals here. The final evaluation report to be published in 2020 will evaluate the latter phases, including proposal development, cost estimates, and voting.
According to our evaluation, the beginning of the program has been rather successful. Below we summarize seven recommendations presented in the mid-term report.
Recommendations
1. Transparency and dialogue in implementation can be developed through annual planning and improving the OmaStadi platform.
The annual PB planning needs to explicitly include open development stages. The OmaStadi platform could be improved by means of user testing as well as co-creation with users. The data gathered could be openly available. Best practices, such as the co-creation workshops (OmaStadi Raksat) with citizens and public experts developing ideas into plans, could be developed into participatory innovations. The positive feedback received by the OmaStadi Raksat offers a good starting point to further the development of co-creation activities.
2. Measures for supporting the participation of marginalized groups need to be investigated to a larger extent.
The investigation could map out Finnish and international best practices of engaging marginalized groups in participatory budgeting and participatory democracy programs.
3. The OmaStadi process should be streamlined so that as many ideas as possible advance to the voting stage.
Instead of the screening process carried out by public managers, alternative solutions can be implemented. These could include, for example, open resident forums, in which residents and public managers work together to evaluate the proposals or postponing the screening process to a later stage.
4. The participation ecosystem should be developed dynamically and interactively both inside the municipal organization as well as with other stakeholders.
Inside the municipality, the cooperation and communication between central administration and service divisions can be improved. Additionally, the role of OmaStadi needs to be clarified in relation to other municipal civic engagement activities such as participation in the context of regional plans (aluesuunnitelma). Businesses could be better integrated into the process, and the roles of community-based organizations and associations clarified.
5. The rules for idea submission should be communicated more clearly and targeting the budget for annually changing themes should be considered.
A map-based visualization together with examples can provide a clear overview of the types of ideas and proposals that are feasible and projects currently implemented by the city administration. In the future, earmarking the budget or part of it for specific themes like the environmental issues or the needs of marginalized groups can lead to new solutions to strategically important issues.
6. Evaluation needs to become a permanent component of the OmaStadi implementation and development.
In addition to the internal evaluation, a budget of 1–5 % can be considered for external evaluation each year. The evaluation can be carried out distributedly, keeping in mind the possibility of studying different aspects of the process in student theses.
7. The ideas and proposals submitted by residents should be used in diverse and innovative ways.
The ideas and proposals could be archived and made publicly available. Ideas that cannot be implemented should also be regarded as valuable knowledge – an idea bank, from which new solutions can be sought and indicators for sustainable urban development created.