Gwangju City Launches 6th Citizen Participation Budget Committee

On the afternoon of the 23rd, Lee Yong-seop, Mayor of Gwangju Metropolitan City, presented appointment certificates to the executives of the 6th Citizen Participation Budget Committee in the city hall business room and took a commemorative photo. Photo by Gwangju Metropolitan City

[Asia Economy Honam Reporting Headquarters Reporter Park Seon-gang] The 6th Citizen Participation Budget Committee, which will participate in the budget process including the selection of citizen participation public projects, has been launched.

Gwangju Metropolitan City announced on the afternoon of the 23rd that it awarded appointment letters to 9 executives of the 6th Citizen Participation Budget Committee (7 subcommittees and the steering committee) at the City Hall Business Room.

Gwangju City formed the 6th Citizen Participation Budget Committee, consisting of 92 appointed members and 8 ex officio members, through public recruitment and recommendations following the expiration of the 5th committee members' terms in December last year.

The term of office is two years from January 1, 2021, during which the committee will select citizen participation public projects and participate in the budget process by submitting opinions on budget formulation.

The committee members will review projects proposed and discovered by citizens within the allocated citizen participation budget limit of 12.5 billion KRW, reflect them as citizen participation budget proposals in next year's city budget, and also participate in the citizen monitoring and citizen oversight groups for 52 projects worth 6.8 billion KRW that were budgeted under last year's citizen participation budget, inspecting overall operations including reasons for underperformance and providing feedback.

Additionally, to overcome the limitation of low linkage rates to the budget due to citizens' proposals being vague, starting this year, Gwangju plans to operate a ‘Citizen Participation Budget Consulting Group’ composed of outstanding activists from previous citizen participation budget committees, former budget officials, and city and district council members to improve the budget formulation rate and execution efficiency.

Furthermore, to implement a more accessible and open system for citizens, the ‘Citizen Participation Budget Management System’ will be significantly enhanced to include ▲ notifications of the system through webtoons ▲ disclosure of the progress of proposed projects at each stage ▲ online review of project departments’ considerations ▲ online general meetings ▲ implementation of SMS functions.

Moreover, by expanding citizen participation through online voting and surveys, and by operating online budget schools and uploading/linking lecture materials such as videos, the plan is to enable any interested citizen to receive education.

Mayor Lee Yong-seop said, “The citizen participation budget system guarantees that citizens can discover necessary projects for the region and participate in everything from review and selection to budget formulation. I hope the committee members will actively participate in the budget formulation process with a sense of mission and responsibility, discovering projects optimized for daily life.”

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