Seoul City to Allocate 70 Billion Won for Next Year's 'Citizen Participation Budget'... 10 Billion Won for 'Democracy Seoul'

Online Citizen Participation Platform 'Minjujuui Seoul' Allocates First Dedicated Budget of 10 Billion KRW... Continuous Proposals
'Metropolitan Proposal Type' Participation Areas Expanded from 10 to 18... Proposals Accepted via Website, Mail, and Visits from Next Month 1 to 28

[Asia Economy Reporter Lim Cheol-young] The Seoul Metropolitan Government announced on the 31st that it will allocate a budget of 70 billion KRW for the ‘Citizen Participation Budget’ again next year. Accordingly, it plans to officially begin the process of collecting citizen proposals and other discovery procedures.

Citizens directly discover and propose projects, participate in the review and selection process, and ultimately have the projects reflected in the budget. The proposals should focus on projects related to improving inconveniences in daily life or solving urban issues such as transportation and the climate crisis. In particular, this year, for the first time, a dedicated budget of 10 billion KRW will be allocated to commercialize policies proposed by citizens through Seoul’s online citizen participation platform ‘Democracy Seoul’ (democracy.seoul.go.kr).

While Seoul has previously utilized leftover budgets from citizen participation budget projects, it now aims to actively reflect the budget so that policies matured through citizens’ deliberation and discussion processes can bear fruit as actual projects.

Additionally, for the ‘Metropolitan Proposal Type,’ which aims to enhance citizen benefits across two or more autonomous districts or solve metropolitan city problems, the participation fields will expand from the existing 10 to 18. To improve convenience and speed of review, different fields will be separated and subdivided by topic. The 18 revised fields are Democracy Seoul, Women, Welfare, Environment, Citizen Health, Labor and Livelihood, Safety, Transportation, Culture, Tourism and Sports, Housing, Urban Regeneration, Parks, Economy, Smart City, Education, Water Circulation Safety, and Han River.

The types of citizen participation budget operation projects to be included in next year’s budget are: Metropolitan Proposal Type (around 30 billion KRW), Democracy Seoul Proposal Type (around 10 billion KRW), and District/Neighborhood Level Plan Type (around 30 billion KRW). Citizens wishing to propose projects under the ‘Metropolitan Proposal Type’ can apply from the 1st to the 28th of next month via the Seoul Participation Budget website or by mail/visit.

Proposed Metropolitan Proposal Type projects will undergo a review by the relevant offices, headquarters, and bureaus to check for any violations of laws and regulations, then be evaluated by the Deliberative Budget Public-Private Council on the project’s purpose, scale, implementation details, and appropriateness of the budget. Subsequently, after citizen electronic voting (M-Voting) results and approval and resolution at the Hanmadang General Assembly, the projects will be finally selected as citizen participation budget projects. Proposals through ‘Democracy Seoul’ (democracy.seoul.go.kr) are accepted at any time. Based on citizen proposals and the results of open citizen discussions, the project plans established by the city are resolved by the Deliberative Budget Public-Private Council (Democracy Seoul field) and approved by the Hanmadang General Assembly to be selected as citizen participation budget projects.

Oh Gwan-young, Chairman of the Seoul Democracy Committee, said, “The citizen participation budget process is a participatory democracy process where citizens, as sovereigns, can actively propose projects to improve their own and their community’s living environment and participate together in the review and selection.” He added, “Through active participation, residents themselves can improve their quality of life and at the same time gain satisfaction and a sense of efficacy.” He continued, “Especially this year, since a dedicated budget was allocated for the first time through the online ‘Democracy Seoul,’ we ask for more interest and participation from citizens.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.