Democratic Society and Scottish Community Development Centre hosted an exploratory and discovery research project to understand what community digital participatory budgeting could look like for communities in the future.

We discovered a clear set of challenges that could be transferred into opportunities for communities to be enabled and supported to run effective digital participatory budgeting processes. 

We found that:

• Community practitioners in Scotland have not been effectively involved in the digital development of the participatory budgeting pilot tool Consul, which is being rolled out across Scotland for local authorities.

• Communities often have time, capacity and funding restraints, working on their own or in small teams, sometimes voluntary and with very limited in-house technical expertise, IT support, or the funds to implement a digital tool and ensure it is an accessible, engaging process for those in their communities.

Download this research as a PDF

Tool specific

1. Bespoke digital PB tool for communities: Develop a bespoke software tool to support PB in Scotland's communities. The software should be co-designed and co-produced by community PB practitioners with expertise such as coder/s and should start by building on community strengths and responding to the preferences of communities. 

2. Consul Software: Community practitioners have not been involved in the development or use of Consul. There needs to be support for community PB practitioners to access, develop and use the software for localised community needs. 

3. Provide access to training support and resources for PB practitioners:  Providing access to resources which support PB practitioners to learn about different software options and materials to support the PB process. Access to resources should be supported by a team of knowledgeable experts that can develop bitesize, accessible materials.

4. Accessibility: Accessibility and inclusion should be fully considered when developing both support materials and any future digital software solution to overcome barriers to engagement.

5. Ongoing Funding: There needs to be long term financial investment in PB so that the process takes place on a regular basis within Scotland’s communities. PB should be resourced and delivered as part of regular budgetary planning. This means communities can build upon their learning and improve their processes continually. 

General

1. Bridging the digital divide: There should be an increased access to IT devices, Wi-Fi, data bundles and PB software to overcome the digital divide. PB should link with the Scottish Government's ‘Connecting Scotland’ programme (https://connecting.scot/) and other initiatives to bridge the digital divide.

2. Create a digital network: PB practitioners would like a space to share knowledge, ideas and experience and to support lone workers who may be tasked with leading their digital/face to face PB process. 

3. More marketing support for PB at a local and national level: Stories of PB and change in Scotland are currently not utilised in mainstream media. This should be done for the public to understand what PB is and how we are using it to address inequalities in our society. 

4. PB Charter: Should be used to support local partnership working between the statutory, private, and voluntary sector as they work together to deliver PB.

Supporting workers and building capacity

Community PB practitioners often work alone or in small teams which means that they do not always have the digital skills/capacity to develop existing tools and ensure that it is well marketed, understood by the community.

Funding

Community practitioners have highlighted the need for consistent year on year funding - this will support communities to plan and design their PB processes with more confidence and creativity as PB rolls on a regular basis within their community. 

Support for Digital PB

Community practitioners have highlighted access to free technical support,more training on security, GDPRanddifferent software options, practice and resources to support the process. Access to resources should be supported by a team of knowledgeable experts that can develop bitesize, accessible materials.

Digital Divide

Participation barriers to online PB were highlighted.Having access to Wi-Fi and broadband, printing, iPad or tablets for members of the community and addressing digital literacy and digital poverty is a requirement before you can digitally engage people.

Using Multiple Online Tools

The general consensus is that communities require adaptability within a digital tool; whether that tool is a centralised, shared tool across Scotland or a one-off tool/s- the tool needs to fit the needs of communities to be enabled to run a process that suits the PB process design within the local context and scale.

Digital Platform for Communities

Communities have highlighted a desire for their own digital platform that is not going to limit them and where they can be part of the development or design to ensure it is accessible and flexible and easy to use.

Joining-the-democratic-dots 

There are a lot of silos across different sectors in policy and there is a risk here that communities may run some meaningful deliberative activities and conversations, but they are not being fed into the wider learning, decision making and future decision making cycles. PB is creating meaningful citizen participation which need to be supported by partners at all levels so that everyone is working towards shared local and strategic goals.

Communication

A lack of joined up working approach means that there is lots of knowledge but a lack of a“knowledge ecology”-Improvement Servicewhich means not starting from scratch but sharing the learning and linking people to useful information.

Partnership working

The importance of partnerships and collaboration was highlighted not only for delivery but for learning and supporting each other through sometimes challenging processes.

• Digital PB blog: An article detailing how this work was carried out.

• Supporting community access to digital participatory budgeting tools in Scotland: Resources to support participatory practitioners to do digital participatory budgeting (PB) and engagement with people in their communities. 

• Templates and Guidance: This document contains a series of templates and guidance that community practitioners can use to help them set up and run a participatory budgeting process with digital elements.

• Digital Tools for Practitioners: Example digital PB processes & Digital tools feedback.