The International Conference on Administration and Business

The Faculty of Business and Administration from the University of Bucharest is organizing the International Conference on Administration and Business during June 4-5, 2010. I am attending the Education, Administration and Law Section, with the paper “Online vs. Offline vs. Mixed Participation for Better Governmental Policy-Making.” This paper is focusing on the area of participative democracy from my thesis. Here are some conclusions:

SolveNet (term referring to a hypothetical better citizen engagement model) is a combination of online and offline citizen engagement. It benefits from advantages specific to the online dialogue like little to no cost of use, flexibility of participants to give solutions to problems of public concern, educational approach, and interactivity among the participants. At the same time, SolveNet is coping with the disadvantages of offline engagement, like the lack of accountability of the end result of a participation endeavor, limited time and money of participants to offer input in pressing community problems, polarization of discussions, and lack of knowledge about issues.

As the majority of the work is done online, the policy-making process is pushed further using the authority of a legally established

nonprofit organization. This way, the most feasible, valuable and sustainable solution proposals from citizens, are sent to the desks of elected and appointed officials.

The participation model lacks the advantages of face-to-face discussions between the participants, but the online citizen engagement platform offers an interactive participation experience that allows people from different regions to work together creatively in solving community problems. The people who participate are not representative for any given community. That is why the main focus is on the quality of the solutions that are exchanged on the platform and not on the background of the citizens.

SolveNet faces however the problem that every participation model has: effectiveness in generating a change of policy. It is ultimately up to the decision-makers to consider the results of any participative democracy exercise or not. The main advantage of SolveNet is in this case the little effort that every-day people make, in order to make their voices heard in the community.

A mixed participation model to support governmental decision-making seems to work the best, in order to benefit the most from citizen engagement. This model has to provide for authority, accountability, creativity, exchange of constructive ideas, educational approach, and perseverance. Future research could identify such a model and showcase it.

PoliticiPublice.ro at NGOfest 2010

NGOfest has been a real success for “SMART Method of Public Policy” and for the citizens who used the citizen engagement platform www.PoliticiPublice.ro (www.Public-Policies.eu for Europe). They published problems regarding public health, education, environment, research/innovation, social relations and unemployment, but also offered solutions to the problems that were already posted on the website. The participation is interactive, stimulating and within a couple of seconds you can see your solutions and problems online. We also awarded “Good Citizen” certificates to everybody who stopped at the PoliticiPublice.ro tent and participated to generate better policy making.

Simona and Daniel were the volunteers who made sure that citizens will make their voices better heard in the community.

CONGRATULATIONS CITIZENS!

Here are some photos:

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"Lower Danube" University of Galati, Romania

I haven’t been writing lately, but I have a pretty good excuse: I am working and developing four papers for my PhD, to be published in various conferences’ proceedings and journals in Romania and abroad. Their titles are:

1. Online vs. Offline vs. Mixed Participation for Better Governmental Policy Making
2. e-Democracy Platforms for Governmental Decision Making. Case Study on “SMART Method of Public Policy”
3. Entrepreneurship in Times of Economic and Financial Crises. Methods of Adaptation and Survival
4. Better Policy Making for Businesses, Through Online Citizen Engagement

The papers are mostly related to participative democracy, which is a fascinating and creative field of study. My PhD thesis will have a chapter on this issue, that I hope to be very very interesting. I will publish abstracts of the papers, as well as photos and hopefully videos from the conferences that I plan to attend this Spring.

Public Policies Made by Citizens (Europe)

This post is indeed an invitation to anybody interested in the field of “participative democracy.” I am developing the citizen engagement platform “public policies made by citizens” together with partners from Romania, Italy, France and Greece. We managed to win a grant from the European Commission’s Youth in Action Programme. My first important deadline for this year is to have it ready by February 1. So, here’s what I invite you to do:

1. First, choose any problem of European concern and make sure you know how to explain it.
2. Then, go to www.public-policies.eu and click on the “Raise a problem” link (let me know if it is easy to find).
3. In the next step, fill out the form, click “Add” and let me know if it is reasonably easy to publish the problem.
4. Once the problem is approved by me, you will receive an email. Please, let me know if you receive that email and if you like it.
5. Visit the page of the problem and let me know if it has a coherent layout, which is easy to understand and use.

Now, start doing some outreach using the “SHARE” widget, to have friends or just other people post solutions to your problem, filling in the online form from the problem’s page.

This would be all for the moment. The entire method of participation is explained in the menu, under “SMART Method of Public Policy” at www.public-policies.eu.