A short explanation of the terms clickable budget and participatory budget, and how they work in practice, including acquisition costs.
Clickable budget in practice
A clickable budget lets citizens check how much a town spends and on what – in a simple, accessible form, without having to ask the town hall. To be meaningful, it must let you click all the way through to invoices and contracts and compare the figures with previous years. A basic clickable budget is available on the Ministry of Finance regional monitor, but it does not let you click through to individual items.
Requirements
Some of the requirements:
- a modular solution;
- an open licence is an advantage;
- the option to host the application yourself;
- changes without unnecessary fees;
- fast and user-friendly;
- connected to the register of contracts (no duplicate uploading of contracts);
- the option to upload your own invoices (e.g. up to CZK 50,000);
- remote access to the data, including machine use;
- showing the progress of investment projects;
- no unnecessary burden on officials.
Cityvizor
It pays to look for solutions that work well, are efficient, have potential for the future and are not overpriced. Cityvizor, developed by the Otevřená města (Open Cities) association together with the Ministry of Finance, shows that things can be done well and at a reasonable price.
Costs of a clickable budget
- acquisition free of charge if the town provides data in a supported format (optional conversion CZK 10,000\*);
- monthly cost of automated export free of charge (or manual data upload by an official, a few hours a month at most);
- when the application is hosted by the Otevřená města association, monthly costs are in the hundreds of crowns.
\* Conversion is free for members of the Otevřená města association; the annual membership fee is CZK 1.50 per inhabitant.
Participatory budget in practice
A participatory budget lets citizens take part in decisions about how their municipality develops – not only by voting, but above all by actively submitting their own project (repairing a bench, planting flowers, casting a statue and so on). Examples include the Participativní rozpočet project and Brno, where 133 projects worth CZK 182 million were submitted in 2018 (the city had CZK 30 million to share out) and the city also introduced a citizen identity for communicating with the authorities.
Reasons for participation
Some reasons why it is good to involve residents:
- it lets citizens easily help improve their surroundings and their town;
- it takes load off the town hall;
- it brings new ideas;
- it deepens cooperation between the town and its citizens;
- it improves residents’ relationship with the place they live.
Costs of a participatory budget
- the source code of the online submission system (the Brno model) is freely available\*;
- deployment and operation by the town cost in the order of thousands of crowns;
- staff costs depend on the number of submitted projects (administration and feasibility assessment).
\* Help with deployment is free for members of the Otevřená města association.
_Originally published in Czech in October 2018._