
ON THE AGENDA | JANUARY 31ST, 2017 | Megan Rose Donovan
There is a spirit of innovation inherent to PB.
New York City is home to some of the longest-running participatory budgeting (PB) sites. It’s expanded to 31 council districts in 2015-16 from four in 2011-12. Experimentation with digital tools like online project idea submission, project mapping and a remote voting platform have coincided with this proliferation.
“PB implementers have sought technological solutions to the challenges that arise as local government, community groups and other stakeholders are faced with managing this unique form of civic engagement on a larger scale,” writes Erin Markman of the Community Development Project at the Urban Justice Center, a group that has led the evaluation of PBNYC since its inception.
Erin described the spirit of innovation inherent to PB in a short case study that Public Agenda included in a new analysis of all 46 communities who did PB last year.
From the outset, PBNYC knew it wanted to develop and use tech to address a defined set of goals. This included streamlining registration, efficiently maintaining contact lists, maximizing outreach resources, alleviating administrative burdens of manual data entry and providing more ways to submit project ideas.
“Technological tools, like all aspects of PB, must be evaluated to ensure they are in the service of the PB process goals, particularly goals such as inclusion and equity,“ she says. PBNYC had to overcome challenges like language access and lack of internet in the home. Based on their experiences, Erin has the following recommendations for communities that wish to ensure engagement practices which utilize technology are accessible and equitable:
You can read about how San Francisco's online voting system established a new collaboration with the city’s Department of Technology and other case studies in “A Process of Growth: The Expansion of Participatory Budgeting in the United States and Canada in 2015 – 16.”