Society and Citizenship Projects Public Participation Public Participation
The first condition for public participation is for information to be available in a public and transparent fashion. The Citizen's Portal offers more than 680 services (roughly ½ of which are informative, ¼ interactive and 1/6 transactional), which are provided by more than 120 public bodies. The Enterprise's Portal offers roughly 460 services for enterprises.
In 2006. 96% of Central government public bodies and 96% of municipal councils had an online presence, 97% and 78% of which, respectively, had email addresses to receive messages, requests for information or complaints. Of the municipal council sites on the Internet, 14% had discussion forums between council leaders and citizens and 2% broadcast videoconferences of council meetings and sessions. Public participation processes, for instance those regarding legislative projects, regularly accept contributions sent in electronically, and roughly 36% of municipal councils regularly hold public consultations on the Internet.
The viability of pilot projects regarding Internet access to video records of municipal assembly sessions and council sessions is currently being looked at, as well as pilot projects for citizens’ participation in decisions of a local nature pertaining to public resources access, management and availability issues.