Accompanying Transportation-Vulnerable, Practicing Carbon Neutrality... 'Citizen Participation Budget' Proposed by Seoul Citizens Voting Until the 20th

Online Citizen Voting for Next Year's Participatory Budget Selection
High Public Interest and 13 Projects in Transportation, Health, Environment for Socially Vulnerable, Totaling 8.1 Billion Won

[Asia Economy Reporter Lim Cheol-young] The Seoul Metropolitan Government announced on the 12th that it will conduct an online public vote to select projects for the ‘Citizen Participatory Budgeting’ program, where citizens directly discover and propose projects and participate in the budgeting and review process.

Until the 20th, any Seoul citizen can participate through the Seoul Citizen Participatory Budgeting website and the Seoul M-Voting website. A total of 13 projects have been nominated for the public vote, with a budget scale of 8.1 billion KRW. Preferences for each project will be derived through the online public vote to determine budget priorities, which will then be reflected in next year’s budget formulation process.

The ‘Citizen Participatory Budgeting’ system, started in 2012, allows citizens to directly discover and propose projects and participate in the budgeting and review process. This year, for the 2023 Citizen Participatory Budgeting, three themes with high public interest and aimed at socially vulnerable groups (transportation, health, environment) were set for citizen proposals, resulting in a total of 472 submissions.

The 472 citizen proposals were thoroughly reviewed by the responsible departments and deeply examined and deliberated by citizen members of the Citizen Participatory Budgeting Committee and external experts, narrowing them down to a total of 13 projects. In the online public vote, each citizen can vote for up to 5 preferred projects out of the 13, with multiple votes allowed. The proposers of the top 5 projects with the highest M-Voting scores will also receive a small prize.

Next year’s Citizen Participatory Budgeting projects will be finally selected at the general meeting of the Citizen Participatory Budgeting Committee held on the 21st. The selected projects will be reflected in Seoul’s 2023 budget proposal, and after review and approval by the Seoul Metropolitan Council, the final budget will be confirmed in December.

Jung Soo-yong, Director of Planning and Coordination at Seoul City, said, “This year, we focused on increasing citizens’ awareness and satisfaction by accompanying socially vulnerable groups such as transportation-disadvantaged and disabled people, and practicing carbon neutrality in daily life.” He added, “We hope citizens will show great interest and actively participate in the online public vote so that necessary projects that citizens empathize with and feel directly can be selected.”

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