Outsourcing of participation – could we and should we take advantage of every offer?
Moderators:
Piotr Choroś, the City of Lublin Office,
Anna Petroff-Skiba the Centre for Social Communication, the City of Warsaw
Time: 2. Day (Friday, May 29.), hrs 09:30-10:30
Location: II floor, zone J
Format: breakfast meeting
The story starts like this: an organization approaches a local government with a proposition to conduct a training/to prepare consultation/a new innovative participatory instrument. How does the story end? Unfortunately, you never know.
Do organizations always have enough expertise to undertake such actions? Can they claim they can do better only because they are from the outside? What criteria are to be met in order for local authorities to let an outside entity lead a participatory process? Can participation be outsourced?
Non-governmental organizations and enterprises provide web services for public consultation or collecting district-changing ideas from citizens. Sometimes they initiate and conduct public discussion processes called public consultation. Most likely such initiatives will occur more often due to EU funding and other grants.
We welcome all third sector representatives to discuss whether this is not a dead-end for the participation development in Polish local authorities. We encourage also individuals from local governments to discuss what participation elements could be outsourced and whether it is reasonable to do it every time it is possible.