Question

Citizen engagement in public administration is important. During the budget process what techniques/questions would you use to gain citizen engagement?

Answer 1

Public administration as the name itself suggests means the administration for public. Public administration i.e. the authority that governs the citizens of a country to maintain law, order, peace and prosperity of the nation. Public administration consists of governmental authorities, bureaucracy to administer the citizens and to work for their welfare and prosperity because, when citizens of a nation will prosper then only it is possible for a nation to prosper.

It is very essential for the public administration to ensure the participation of public in their dealings to better understand the problems of public and to make the necessary arrangements to solve these problems.

For solving and taking necessary remedial measures to solve these problems funds are required. To allocate funds, as per different areas of problems like finance, social security, food and essentials every year a budget is prepared by the government. Budget is an estimation of the receipts and expenditures of the government for a year. Through the budget government allocates funds to various departments to look upon the areas of concern.

While peparing the budget it is very important to ensure citizen participation to know the problems of the public clearly and to allocate funds accordingly. Public participation in budget allocation process can be ensured in the following ways:

1. Preparing the groundwork

• Deciding the type of participatory budget whether idea based, region based, advisory based etc.

• Fousing on main type of information whether ideas, facts what to be included.

• Deciding the ways to engage with the citizens whether online or offline mode.

2. Informing citizens

• Communicate the timeframe and rules to the citizens using online media or offline ways like newspapers for providing suggestions.

• Sharing the eligibility criteria for ideas i.e. the base on which ideas are to be collected may be regional, data based etc.

• Educate the citizens about important documents to be carried for participation like Driving license, e-mail id if using online platform etc.

3. Collecting the Citizen Input

• When citizens provide their ideas, facts and other information through online and offline modes, then to collect such information.

4. Processing the Input

• Means processing the inputs from the citizens which are useful in relation to preparation of budget. Like idea of promoting banking structure in the backward areas of nation by fund allocation for such backward areas.

5. Communicate the results

• After processing the input, the results are to be communicated i.e. the ideas and facts which are taken into consideration by the government is to be conveyed to the citizens.

6. Implementation Phase

• It involves preparing the budget, with taking into account the suggestions from the citizens and implementing them.

Thus, this is the complete process by which a budget is prepared by taking the citizen participation into consideration.

Active citizen participation can be invited through social media platforms, newspapers, televisions, surveys, questionnnaires, voting etc. Theses are the ways through which citizens are involved in budget making process and the budget is based upon such suggestions. Thus, it is the complete process for budget making with citizen participation.