Participatory Budgets and Responsive Spending (US0086)

Participatory budgeting promotes the public’s participation in spending taxpayer dollars by engaging citizens in a community to help decide how to allocate public funds. To advance participatory budgeting in the United States, the White House will work with communities, non-profits, civic technologists, and foundation partners to develop new commitments that will expand the use of participatory budgeting in the United States. As a first step, the White House will convene an action-oriented Participatory Budgeting Workshop in 2015 to garner commitments that support community decision-making for certain projects using public funds.

For details of these commitments, see the report: https://www.opengovpartnership.org/documents/united-states-mid-term-report-2015-2017/

Commitment 34. Participatory Budgets and Responsive Spending

Commitment Text:

Empower Americans through Participatory Budgets and Responsive Spending

Participatory budgeting promotes the public’s participation in spending taxpayer dollars by engaging citizens in a community to help decide how to allocate public funds. To advance participatory budgeting in the United States, the White House will work with communities, non-profits, civic technologists, and foundation partners to develop new commitments that will expand the use of participatory budgeting in the United States. As a first step, the White House will convene an action-oriented Participatory Budgeting Workshop in 2015 to garner commitments that support community decision-making for certain projects using public funds.

Responsible Institutions: Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP)

Supporting Institution: NA

Start Date: Not Specified ....... End Date: Not Specified

Commitment Aim

This commitment aimed to hold a participatory budgeting (PB) workshop in 2015 to develop commitments to employ PB in the context of certain publicly-funded projects.

Status

Midterm: Complete

At the midterm, progress on this commitment was complete. The US Office of Science and Technology Policy and Harvard University’s Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation co-hosted a two-day workshop in February 2016 that was attended by 75 participants from government and civil society, with an emphasis on expanding and strengthening PB in the UNITED STATES. [511]

Did It Open Government?

Civic Participation: Marginal

This commitment marginally opened government with respect to civic participation by providing an opportunity for members of the public and civil society to engage with government on potential opportunities to incorporate PB into publicly-funded projects. While the workshop can be seen as laying the groundwork for future discussions, the IRM researcher did not find evidence suggesting that the workshop itself contributed to the incorporation of PB into such projects in practice. Moreover, as a one-off event with no evident follow-up activities organized by the government, the commitment cannot be said to have opened government more substantially.

Carried Forward?

This commitment is complete and should not be carried forward in its current form. The government should nevertheless strive to incorporate PB into publicly-funded projects and expand such opportunities within the United States, drawing upon discussion from the February 2016 PB workshop. At the time of writing, the US government had not published its fourth national action plan, so it is unclear if this theme will be carried forward to the next action plan.

[511] Ash Center for Democratic Innovation and Governance. “Ash Brings Focus on Participatory Budgeting to Policymakers in Washington.” 8 March 2016. https://ash.harvard.edu/news/ash-bring-focus-participatory-budgeting-policymakers-washington. Consulted 25 June 2017.