Event report: Growing PB through Digital Tools – 22 June 2023
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On 22 June PB practitioners joined the online Growing PB through Digital Tools workshop to hear from 3 PB approaches which used digital tools to reach out to a wider audience and involve them in budget decisions.
The workshop included inputs from contributors who have experience of using digital PB tools to progress small grants and Mainstream PB. The workshop was designed to focus on the 3 elements of digital software, these are:
Developing ideas,
deliberation and
voting.
As well as the elements above the workshop was looking to develop some answers to developing digital PB questions e.g. how are PB practitioners using digital tools to reach a wider audience across Scotland? How do we combine digital and PB face to face events? What tools are available and suitable for PB? What are the issues, opportunities and challenges for digital PB?
The participants heard from 3 presentations. The first was from Gavin Crosby – Local Partnership Development Manager - Young Scot.
Daniel Greig – Senior Policy and Insight Officer - Edinburgh Council, talked about Edinburgh councils environmental PB approach and their use of PB software
Kellie Howard – Senior Policy Development Officer - Renfrewshire Council, talked about their approach to PB using digital and face to face events.
Group Discussion
The discussions highlighted a number of insights, opportunities and challenges for the use of digital tools, participants said:
The deliberation phase can be challenging.
We need to consider what space people are already in before selecting a digital tool – eg people may be using facebook or Instagram and how do we work with those rather than e.g. Citizen’s Space, CONSUL. How do we have a safe discussion on other platforms e.g. Instagram.
We can’t do everything all of the time, but we can put some of the building blocks in place like Renfrewshire to build on year on year e.g. branding, blending digital and face to face, involving people at the beginning to identify and deliberate possible ideas for funding.
We need to establish a culture that trusts our communities and develop a transparent PB process which is open to critique.
PB provides an opportunity to bring in a different method of engagement. People will have different preferences. Young people might not always prefer face to face and we have to think about what their needs are.
There’s an opportunity for tech to move beyond the traditional people we normally engage with – use of QR codes etc to promote PB to different communities.
It’s Important to have a robust process so that when people not happy with the result and who might then challenge the process, can see it was actually robust.
Monitor the impact of deliberation and look at what value it adds to the process.
It is a challenge to moderate the deliberation process, who that sits with and who manages it.
It is important to have strong branding – not necessarily branding it as the council itself but creating a brand for PB which can be used by multiple services over multiple years.
Discussed issues around equalities. The aim was that PB would create more opportunities for people to get involved – participants talked about engaging with the third sector and reaching out and targeting less heard voices – ballot boxes in the community, working with carers to help them support clients to engage, being at community events and targeting the third sector, groups with protected characteristics.
There are lots of ways that PB can benefit the community. It’s not just about budget – it’s about building people’s skills and networking, among other things.
Digital PB Resource Guide
The group discussed PB Scotland new resource which highlights some useful digital tools which can support a Participatory Budgeting process. Some of the software tools identified in the new resource are ‘All in One Platform’ which means that they support the PB elements of ideas generation, deliberation, and voting. Other tools support each of the separate elements and can be combined to support the whole PB process.
