Bristol City Council use ICT to promote greater public involvement in decision making

Bristol City Council are taking part in an innovative European project entitled “e-participate” which aims to utilize an open integrated standard web-based network to encourage the participation of citizens in the democratic process. It provides tools to support democratic renewal in three main areas (a) Transparent & accessible communication, (b) Getting representation online, and (c) Extending consultation. 10 very different Municipalities in 8 key EU Member States across Europe (Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Ireland, Italy, Slovakia, Spain and UK) are partaking in this project in which each Local Authority provides live and archived Internet webcasts of local Municipal meetings and other local community events. By increasing the transparency within the Municipality by the transmission of events via multimedia webcasting to its citizens the project encourages greater involvement in decision making. The webcasting is enchanced by the automatic display of critical contextual information such as speaker names, titles / affiliations, agenda items, meeting documentation, presentations and polls / surveys or consultations which negates the need for need for specialist staff or infrastructure. The tools available as part of the network are webcasting service, multimedia discussion forums, epetitioning facility and web/ video magazine facilities. The project will have an immediate impact on 1.9M citizens in 8 Member States across the EU,with long-term aim of establishing the critical importance of the eParticipation services in the success of all eGovernment initiatives whilst enabling any EU Local Authority to readily implement the proven solutions based on an established best practise methodology.