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- Upper Kirby Citizen Participation Portal
Upper Kirby Citizen Participation Portal
Voting Summary (Elevator Pitch):
The Upper Kirby Citizen Participation Platform promotes transparency and accountability in local government by utilizing new technologies to allow constituents to directly participate in the decision making process.
Supporting organization:
Gov2u
URL:
www.upperkirby.org
City:
Houston
State/Region:
Texas
Country:
United States of America
Project Vision Statement & Potential Social Impact:
The Upper Kirby Citizen Participation Platform promotes transparency and accountability by providing online information on the district’s administrative issues including development plans and projects, public documents, budgets, agendas and minutes of monthly board meetings, a calendar of events and public notices. It offers a multi-channel medium for reaching out to and involving the community via interactive tools such as forums, polls and blogs that allow inhabitants to join debates on communal issues, cast their votes and communicate directly with their representatives. Ultimately, it provides the community’s stakeholders a chance to actively and directly influence the decisions that affect their community. The latest online registration and security systems protect the identity and personal information of users.
Sustainability (financial) model:
The Upper Kirby Citizen Participation Portal is financially sustained by the Upper Kirby Management District. Under our current charter, the Upper Kirby Management District has allocated funds in its operating budget for community outreach and marketing. These funds will sustain, and build the site further as necessary as the use of this platform grows and the content evolves concurrent with new challenges and needs as they may arise. The Upper Kirby District has assigned the responsibility of monitoring the site (to include administration and policing of content, forums, blogs, notices and formal documents) to a full-time member of the Upper Kirby District staff.
Potential obstacles:
The major obstacles we foresee moving forward revolve mainly around the publicity of the new platform. Not only do we need to raise awareness of the existence of the platform within the community, but we also need to resolve how to motivate people to use the site regularly and maintain active participation. Once we develop a strong user base within the community, our only foreseeable obstacle will be how to formally incorporate citizen input into decision making process so that people believe that their using this tool will actually have an impact.
Resource Needs:
We will need to engage media resources to publicize this effort within our community and publicize the benefits of participation. We will also need recourses in the form of man-hours and meeting space to hold public meetings and educational sessions detailing the features of this new technology and how to use it to its full effect. We anticipate some degree of grass-roots promotions and speaking engagements also that could necessitate printed materials and handouts.
Key Milestones:
The first major milestones will be met by degrees of citizen participation. Once we have registered users within the district that equals a majority percentage of the population, we can begin to examine how to formally utilize that input in the decision making process. The next key milestone will be the resolution of how to utilize citizen input in a fair and secure format that the average online skeptic can feel comfortable with.
Project Summary:
Upper Kirby is a district in the heart of inner-city Houston with a proud and successful tradition of coming together as a community to enhance the quality of life of its inhabitants. The district's collective action on issues such as beautification, community outreach, special events, identity and transportation have repeatedly borne fruit, turning a once no-name neighbourhood into a vibrant residential and commercial destination.
The Upper Kirby District's leaders are taking their vision one step further. Harnessing the power of new technologies to reach out to a wider audience, to involve people and bring them together, the district has launched the Upper Kirby Citizen Participation Portal. The project has been implemented in partnership with Insure Democracy and employs the innovative open source Gov2DemOSS citizen participation platform which was awarded with the European Union’s 2006 Good Practice Label.
By harnessing such innovative new technologies in communication and online participation, the Upper Kirby District hopes to bring community awareness, activism and engagement to a new level while simultaneously bridging the gap between the district’s constituents and its leaders. As we press on into the future, Upper Kirby will strive to build on this project in an effort to create a transparent and accessible district model that could be replicated at all levels of local, state and even national government.
Comments
One Economy's Beehive
RE: One Economy's Beehive
You are absolutely correct in that our main obstacle will be raising constituent's confidence in internet participation and engaging them on a regular basis. Worldwide, there have been enormous leaps in citizen participation via the internet, but here in America there is still much skepticism. Day by day, people are becoming more comfortable with sensitive online tools such as banking, bill pay and even taxes. In a society where voter turnouts are at an all time low and the general population is largely uneducated on local policy and legislation, why not use the best new technology to insure that citizens can participate in their respective local governments as securely and conveniently as they pay their monthly bills?
If I am correct, One Economy's Beehive is a tool for low income housing assistance. I have not done much research on the project, but will absolutely explore the option further. Under our organization's current charter, we are not involved in low income housing assistance programs; however, as our partnerships expand with the scope of this project, it may provide a great asset to neighboring communities. It may be a wonderful tool in driving traffic to the site, but under our current project plan it may be out of context. We must continue to work other promotional venues to drive initial traffic to the site.
Thank you for your suggestion.