Browsing by Subject "participatory budgeting"

This master’s thesis examines citizens’ opinions and experiences about the City of Helsinki’s participatory budgeting program OmaStadi. OmaStadi is based on a digital platform, where citizens get to propose, discuss and vote for ideas for the city to implement within the program’s budget. OmaStadi was created in 2017 as a part of the City of Helsinki’s new participation and interaction model. Until now, there have been two OmaStadi rounds, the first one in 2018-2019 and the second one in 2020-2021. Governments worldwide have started to implement new citizen participation programs in order to keep citizens engaged in decision-making processes, because the interest towards traditional representative democracy has decreased. Vulnerable groups of people have often been left in the margins in traditional politics, which also calls for new forms of citizen participation. However, previous studies have shown that issues with inclusivity can also occur in modern participation processes and therefore these processes must be planned carefully in order to achieve the desired outcomes. OmaStadi is a relatively new program, and it is important to examine how it could be developed for future rounds. The aim of this research is to identify what could be improved in the OmaStadi process from the citizens’ point of view. I examine how active citizens feel about OmaStadi and their opportunities to impact decision-making through it. I also consider the role of locality and communities in the process and question why some themes and groups of people are underrepresented in OmaStadi. This research was conducted using three qualitative methods, which were semi-structured interviews, participatory observations and social media observations. The interviewees were seven citizens who had actively participated in the OmaStadi process, either by making proposals, campaigning for them or both. The participatory observations and social media observations focused on OmaStadi related events and social media discussions. The findings of this study show that OmaStadi should be made more understandable and accessible for the citizens in order to get more people to participate in it. Vulnerable groups should be better engaged in the process. The lack of resources, such as social networks and digital skills and devices hinders the participation of some groups of people. Strong communities and local campaigning are important factors behind many OmaStadi proposals’ success. Themes addressed in OmaStadi proposals are not as diverse as they could be. Proposals concerning small infrastructural things are strongly represented, while social and cultural themes are downplayed. Involving a more diverse base of citizens in OmaStadi could result to more diversity in the proposals as well. Some active citizens feel that the limitations OmaStadi has for proposals are not clear and the whole process is too long and requires lots of work. For future rounds, OmaStadi could be improved by informing citizens better about the program, making the process clearer and paying more attention to the participation opportunities of different groups of people.