Radu Oprea » public policies

We are attending NGOfest in Bucharest!

Radu Oprea — Wed, 05 May 2010 06:45:24 +0000

Be a "good citizen"

Friday, Saturday and Sunday (May 7-9) we are attending NGOfest with the project “Public Policies Made by Citizens.” We’ll be awarding certificates of “GOOD CITIZEN” to the good citizens who will be publishing solutions to the problems of public concern posted on www.PoliticiPublice.ro or www.Public-Policies.eu. The methodology is simple: you walk around, visit our stand, sit on the “good citizen chair,” publish your solution or raise a problem on the website, we take you a picture, and give you the certificate.

NGOfest is the most important event of the civil society in Romania and a promoter of voluntary behavior and public participation. Nonetheless, it brings the non-governmental organizations closer to the citizens. FDSC, the organizer of the event, wishes to increase the number of people who are more active in the community, to develop the organizational behavior and to increase the involvement of the NGOs in the Romanian society. Source: www.ongfest.ro.

We thank ANPCDEFP through Youth in Action Program for making the participation of SMART Development Centre possible. This is a wonderful opportunity to promote the project “Public Policies Made by Citizens” and thus use SMART Method of Public Policy to make our voices better heard in the community.

Test the citizen engagement platform at www.public-policies.eu: STEP 3

Radu Oprea — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 14:45:24 +0000

Once a problem’s page is generated, any person interested in the problem in question can offer a solution, filling in the “solution form” at the bottom of the page. The scoop is for the problem to receive as many solutions as possible. These are filtered according to the three criteria (valuable, feasible and sustainable) by the partner organizations. Once a solution is chosen, one of the organizations issues an official policy paper that asks the target public institution to solve the problem and consider the solution. This policy is uploaded on the problem’s page. Once the public institution issues a response, this one is also published on the same problem’s page. At this moment, the problem poster has two options:

Either approve the response and thus close the problem’s page.
Or disapprove the response. In this case he/she will state the reasons and the participation process is started again.

The page of a closed problem on www.public-policies.eu

Test the citizen engagement platform at www.public-policies.eu: STEP 2

Radu Oprea — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 15:14:39 +0000

Once the “Problem identification form” is submitted and an administrator aproves it, a script generates the “Problem’s page” as seen in the picture below. At the top, there is the name of the category of the problem, the title of the problem and a “share” widget that allows for easier dissemination over the Internet. The body of the page contains the photo of the problem, a photo of the problem-poster with hyperlink towards his/her website, the name of the problem poster, his/her profession, organization, the date when the problem was posted, the target institution to solve the problem, and a status bar. This tells the visitor how far away in the participation process is the problem, according to the following legend:

Red: the problem has been approved by an administrator.
Orange: the problem has received at least one solution.
Yellow: the project partners have published a policy paper.
Light green: the target institution has issued a response.
Dark green: the problem poster is satisfied with the answer or the action of the target institution.

The lower part of the problem’s page contains the form that allows citizens to publish their solutions to the problem of public concern in question.

Tip: Once you publish a problem, use the “share” widget to promote your problem in order to get as many solutions as possible.

The page of a problem of public concern, on www.public-policies.eu

Test the citizen engagement platform at www.public-policies.eu: STEP 1

Radu Oprea — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 20:50:00 +0000

The online citizen engagement platform available at www.public-policies.eu allows you to publish a problem of European public concern and offer your solutions to the problems already published. We are currently testing the work that the programmers have done so far and invite you to check it out. We are interested in the overall feeling of the participation experience. The platform serves “SMART Method of Public Policy” described here.

The first step is to raise a problem of European public concern, click-ing on the “Raise a problem” link:

Raise a problem of European public concern

Then, fill out the “Raise a problem of public concern” link. Instructions are on the right-hand side of the online form:

Raise a problem of European public concern