Extending Participatory Budgeting with open source engagement tools

Participatory Budgeting enables meaningful community involvement in local spending decisions. Digital tools can extend the reach of PB processes, increasing awareness, supporting sustained involvement, and generating more in-person engagement. Digital tools can also facilitate the management of Participatory Budgeting from start to finish, reducing the admin burden on staff and delegates.

Following a successful trial of Shareabouts maps for PB in NYC, we see potential for a suite of tools to support many aspects of the Participatory Budgeting process, including crowdsourced maps; text message tools for gathering ideas; a database of past projects; tools to manage workshop results; generating ballots; and other facilitation tools for moderators. Multiple partners should develop these tools.

OpenPlans is interested in extending its open source Shareabouts tool to support more online participation, and to create a database of past projects. Building PB tools as open source will enable widespread participation from the software community in extending and improving the tools with each successive project.

For more information, contact Frank Hebbert, OpenPlans. 617 417-8396. frank@openplans.org.

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OpenPlans’ vision for Participatory Budgeting tools

Tools that enable more people to get involved. We see tech tools as enabling participatory budgeting process that are inclusive and effective. Technology can facilitate greater engagement by community members in person or online, and support easier and more rewarding efforts by delegates. The management of participation and ideas can be easier, freeing up staff for other tasks.

Tools that support ongoing community engagement. Unlike many tech-enabled ideation and place-based crowdsourcing efforts, Participatory Budgeting is different because the process doesn’t stop once the first ideas are collected. We’d like to see PB tools going in that direction too -- moving from one-time data collection tools, to a suite of tools that support community engagement around capital expenditure and service projects on a multi-year, ongoing basis.

Available tools without any tech configuration. To minimize the technical overhead involved with setting up maps for each participatory budgeting project, we want to see a hosted service that’s available for any PB process to use, with a simple user interface for setting up a new map. This service can be centrally managed, making the suite of tools freely available for users with no technical costs or overhead. Well-designed templates for maps, reports and other tools will be available for each project.

Open source, community-driven tools. Tech tools for Participatory Budgeting should be easily available to projects as an on-demand service. At the same time, the underlying software code should be freely available and open for re-use. Work on the PB toolkit should be driven by community needs with a public roadmap, and different parts of the PB “stack” should work together. Over time, a variety of funders, tech partners, and on-the-ground implementations can participate in moving the tools forward. Keeping the tools open creates the greatest opportunities for re-use and extension, which maximizes the upfront investment required to get the tools built.

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Shareabouts successfully supported PB in NYC

For Participatory Budgeting in NYC in the 2013-14 cycle, pilot Shareabouts maps were used to gather community input. Each participating council district had its own map. Across nine districts, 393 ideas were submitted, with 461 comments, 1,060 clicks of support. The maps were visited by 2,900 visitors, with a total of 6,600 views of the submitted ideas.

As the PB process developed, the maps kept up: initially showing ideas submitted online, then updated to show ideas proposed offline at workshops. After delegates created a shortlist of projects, the map was updated again to highlight these. After voting was complete, the maps showed the winning projects.

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Developing Shareabouts for PB

OpenPlans has identified features to support greater use of Shareabouts for Participatory Budgeting in future years:

PB “maps on tap”

Hosted service version of Shareabouts that enables a PB team to make a new map without any technical assistance. Simple admin interface to configure welcome text, categories, etc.

Building on previous years

As PB returns to neighborhoods in subsequent years, the maps can help participants review previous ideas suggested locally or elsewhere. Opening up the database behind the maps will enable more informed decisions through the process, for example being able to explore the cost of comparable projects in other cities or districts. The database will show funded ideas, in-progress and implemented, and ideas that were not selected. This requires improved filtering and data management tools, and a new data explorer interface.

Better integration with workshops

No matter where you share an idea, it should end up on the map. The database powering the map needs easier tools for staff to load in ideas that are suggested in person, either in bulk (including a geocoding/mapping tool to place locations), or one by one.

Text messages for submissions

Not everyone is able or interested in using a mapping tool. SMS integration for “text to map” will use a Q&A via SMS to identify an idea, and a location. These ideas then go onto the map for others to engage with them. Boston’s PB process is using text messaging, so we can guide development of this feature with lessons from there.

Better support for multiple languages

Shareabouts already supports a translated interface, but participation still happens in one language. No matter what language you read, you should be able to participate and respond to comments left by others.

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Easier tools for managing submissions

Manage ideas along the pipeline from initial suggestions, to shortlist, to voting. A delegate-specific admin view, showing projects on the map and list view, with tools to: classify ideas, make edits, group ideas into a bundle, move projects onto shortlists, add ideas that emerge during the delegate process.

Reporting tools

New browsing and reporting tools for staff to understand what is being proposed, who is engaged and what they are saying. Reports can be interactive, dashboard-style for monitoring, showing clusters, top topics, participation, and sentiment of comments. Ready-to-print maps and reports can support meetings and workshop sessions.

Showcasing ideas

Making it easy and fun to explore ideas in a “gallery view” before voting, with additional images, links, etc embedded in submissions.

Social explorer

See what people you know are supporting and sharing: social subscription features will help participants see ideas from people they follow on social networks.

Notifications

Get an email, text, or social network notification when your ideas are commented on, liked or taken onto the next stage in the process as a proposal.

Games/visualization

Connecting ideas on the map to spending priorities, budget allocation games and other interactive tools to help in developing ideas.

About OpenPlans

OpenPlans is a leading developer of “civic tech”: software tools to support greater community involvement in decision-making and governance. We work on open source tools, in close consultation with intended users. We guide feature development and improvements with user feedback to ensure that we’re building tools that are useful and effective.

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We are a non-profit organization, pairing software development with advocacy and convening around open tools, data standards, and new approaches to participation. Our activities are funded by foundation support and fee-for-service with cities. Find out more at openplans.org.

About Shareabouts

Shareabouts is a mapping platform developed by OpenPlans for public input around urban planning and neighborhood projects. Originally created in partnership with NYC DOT for bike share, Shareabouts has been used for a variety of projects since in NYC, Chicago, LA, Miami, Philadelphia, and many community-led projects nationally.

Shareabouts is open source, built from widely-used open components. The source code and installation instructions are available on Github at github.com/openplans/shareabouts. Current features of Shareabouts include:

• Map view, accessible on desktop and mobile browsers. This design continues to be improved with user testing.

• List view of submitted ideas.

• Easily submit suggestions to the map.

• Review, vote, and comment on suggestions from others.

• Show past projects on the map.

• Social network integration and email acknowledgements

• Translations

• User roles to support voting (allows delegates to rate/assess submissions separately to public voting)

• For map managers, email updates and reports, and a management interface

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