Inhabitants of the municipality of Nowy Sącz for long have voiced the need to implement civic budget (BO) that would let them directly influence decisions on the development of the municipality. The local community is active (during local elections the turnout exceeds 50%), and local community meetings gather at least 100 persons in every locality. But public consultations often require participants to come personally to a specific place on a specific time, which hampers broader participation of inhabitants.
The aim of the project was to show during the 2nd edition of BO that the Internet is a perfect tool to activate citizens and to build social capital in view of the fact that it gives broad access to information and opportunities to present opinions and initiate activities, and that it can serve as a medium to conduct constructive dialogue between citizens and authorities.
The platform for BO implemented under the project enables its users to fully transactionally present drafts that are fully available online and discussed by inhabitants. During both editions, 77 proposals were presented, and the turnout was 49 and 31%. A platform served to present 77 drafts which were voted by 15 000 persons. 38 employees of municipal office were trained, meetings with inhabitants were organised and gathered approx. 1500 persons, 145 digitally excluded persons were trained, one publication was prepared. Under the project, a promotional campaign was conducted, as a result of which every household received information on civic budget; 24 advertisements were published, over 50 press articles were written, 5 radio programs were broadcast and 1 TV relation was presented. At the end of the project a system for electronic petitions was introduced.
Beneficiaries of the project were inhabitants of the municipality of Stary Sącz. The partner of the project was the municipality of Stary Sącz. We also cooperated with local volunteers who trained digitally excluded persons.