During this term of municipal councils, two thirds of municipalities (38 out of 60) have implemented participatory budgeting at least once. A tenth of them do this every year, according to a survey conducted by the Transparency International Lithuania.
In total, since the beginning of the term, the residents of the municipalities have already decided on the use of 4.4 million euros. Municipalities usually allocate from 8 to 350 thousand euros to the participatory budgeting.
Over the past year, almost 70 thousand residents in half (32) of all municipalities voted for 94 projects worth 2.3 million euros. On average, one municipality receives about 11 ideas related to improving municipal infrastructure and living environment.
TI Lithuania’s assessment showed that the biggest challenges faced by municipalities in the implementation of participatory budgeting are the lack of high-quality involvement of residents, the increased risk of not implementing winning projects due to increased prices, and the lack of civic technology (CivicTech).
11 municipalities are also implementing or planning to implement participatory budgeting in schools this school year (Akmenė, Kaunas, Klaipėda, Kretinga, Lazdijai, Molėtai, Tauragė and Vilkaviškis districts, Klaipėda and Šiauliai cities, Rietavas municipality).
“I am glad that more and more municipalities involve residents in decision-making through participatory budgeting activities – I would really like to see this become a habit. It is also equally important that municipalities set concrete, measurable and achievable goals and could justify with available data whether they are improving involvement of the population in their activities every year,” – said Ingrida Kalinauskienė, interim CEO of Transparency International Lithuania.
Today, TI Lithuania organizes the fifth “Participatory Budgeting Forum”, where representatives of municipalities, schools and active citizens will share good examples and lessons learned from participatory budgeting.
Participatory budgeting – is a process of deciding together with the members of one’s community on how to spend public funds, with everyone invited to propose ideas to a municipality, school or organization and vote for the best ones.
For more information on participatory budgeting initiatives in Lithuanian: www.dalyvaujamasisbiudzetas.lt
The insights and recommendations presented in this study were obtained via information provided by all municipalities to the August 2022 Transparency International Lithuania’s request about participatory budgeting activities carried out by municipalities in July 2021 – August 2022.
A short overview of the results can be found here (in Lithuanian), a map of municipalities that implement participatory budgeting – here (in Lithuanian).
More information:
Ingrida Kalinauskienė, ingrida@transparency.lt, +370 5 212 69 51