Due to social distancing and lockdown measures, most public participation activities have terminated temporarily. However, connecting citizens in society is crucially and urgently needed under the current situation. The social contacts with others reduce negative emotions. Also, participating in community issues and public matters is beneficial to create a sense of belonging in the community and build self-esteem for individuals during the pandemic. Thus, public participation is still necessary in a time of social distancing.
Why Bring Your Citizens Online?
In the time of crisis, local government have more duties to respond to the Covid-19 situation and meet the safety guidelines. Conducting town hall meetings or public hearing becomes impossible. If you can’t organise town hall meetings due to restrictions on social distance, or simply your citizens don’t want to come to your town hall, bring your citizens online. Digitalization is a future trend and online participation will become a new norm under the global pandemic period.
The normal town hall meetings are always participated by the same group of people. Also, processing from citizen’s input to report and actions takes time but the final results are usually not satisfying. Thinking time- and cost- wisely, engaging citizens online is a better choice. The use of online engagement platforms, such as WeSolve, can make online participation much easier and more meaningful. Now it is the transition time to adapt to online engagement and a good engagement tool can help you to transform toward e-democracy.
Read more here: Why Engaging Citizens Online Helps Public Participation?
How Can WeSolve Help You?
With WeSolve, you can easily engage with your citizens and keep your community connected if you can’t meet in person. During the pandemic, we help you switch and adapt to a new form of participation activities. With WeSolve, you can reach broader and younger citizens. Young people are more willing to participate online instead of attending traditional face-to-face engagement activities. With WeSolve, your residents can access the platform 24/7 no matter wherever they are. Any ideas pop up from their minds or any issues they see have the availability to be reported to you. With WeSolve, you save time to process the data and information. Our technology also provides you with better management and analysis toolkits to optimize the output which you can rely on to make better decisions.
Yunyue Peng
Master in Nature Management at the University of Copenhagen, focusing on public participation and citizen action in nature conservation and sustainable development.