Seoul City Announces 50 Billion KRW 'Citizen Participation Budget' Contest

Increase Citizen Participation in Budget Proposal Contests and the Entire Budget Process

The Seoul Metropolitan Government announced on the 7th that it will accept citizen proposal projects for the 2024 Citizen Participatory Budget until the 14th of next month.

This year, the city plans to operate the Citizen Participatory Budget system more effectively so that citizen project proposals become more active than before and many projects needed by a large number of citizens from the citizen's perspective can be discovered and organized. In addition, the city plans to further activate citizen participation throughout the entire budget process, including the formulation and execution of the Seoul city budget.

The budget scale planned for the 2024 Citizen Participatory Budget is 50 billion KRW, and any Seoul citizen (including workers, students, and organizations located in Seoul) can broadly propose projects aimed at solving social problems (e.g., strengthening social safety nets, caring for socially vulnerable groups, practicing carbon neutrality in daily life) or enhancing citizen welfare.

Proposed projects will undergo a first review by the relevant Seoul city departments (checking for legal violations, etc.), followed by deliberation on feasibility and effectiveness by sector-specific public-private budget councils, along with the concretization of project details. Then, in August, a citizen electronic vote (M-Voting) and a general meeting of the Citizen Participatory Budget Committee will be held to finalize the selection of the 2024 Citizen Participatory Budget projects.

Citizen project proposals can be submitted online through the Seoul Citizen Participatory Budget website or by mail or in person. The application period is until the 14th of next month, and detailed information about the proposal contest can be found on the Seoul Citizen Participatory Budget website or by phone inquiry.

Meanwhile, besides the proposal contest for the Citizen Participatory Budget, the city will also submit citizen opinions on the 2024 Seoul city budget to the City Council as a citizen participation system in the Seoul budget process and will conduct monitoring of the selected Citizen Participatory Budget projects.

The entire progress from citizen project proposals to final selection and budget execution can be checked on the Seoul Citizen Participatory Budget website. On the website, all information related to Seoul's Citizen Participatory Budget, including the history of the participatory budget system, annual operation status, the Citizen Participatory Budget Committee, and the Budget School, can be accessed.

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