Gwangju City Establishes 'BaroSotong Gwangju' as a Democracy Platform

[Asia Economy Honam Reporting Headquarters Reporter Park Seon-gang] ‘BaroSotong Gwangju’ is establishing itself as South Korea’s representative online citizen participation democracy platform.

According to Gwangju Metropolitan City on the 9th, to facilitate two-way communication between citizens and administration and to listen to citizens’ voices, the BaroSotong Gwangju platform was established on the city’s homepage in March last year. Since then, it has recorded 876 citizen proposals and 210,000 visitors (about 420 per day).

In particular, through processes of empathy and discussion, 8 proposals have been turned into policies. Citizens directly participate in the policy-making process, and the administration reflects citizens’ voices in policies, opening the era of two-way communication and citizen participation democracy.

BaroSotong Gwangju proceeds through six stages: Proposal → Empathy → Discussion → Review → Execution Plan → Policy Formation.

Citizens can access the BaroSotong Gwangju platform via the city homepage or SNS to present various policy proposals and opinions for the development of Gwangju.

Proposed opinions are immediately registered on the platform as ‘Proposals in Progress,’ and if they receive 50 citizen empathies within 30 days, they move on to discussion.

Any citizen can leave comments on proposals under discussion and express their stance as support, opposition, or neutral.

Proposals with participation from more than 100 people during the discussion period undergo review by departments and committees, then proceed to the Citizen Rights Committee for deliberation. Finally, the committee decides on execution, and if adopted, recommends the policy to Gwangju City, which then establishes an execution plan and promotes it as policy.

Through this process, a total of 8 proposals have been turned into policies, and 14 proposals are currently under review by the Citizen Rights Committee.

To further activate the ‘BaroSotong Gwangju’ platform, Gwangju City relaxed participation criteria from April and newly established the ‘Asking Citizens’ corner to collect real-time citizen opinions in the city’s policy process.

Additionally, when citizen consensus is needed, a deliberative discussion method linked with offline activities will be introduced.

Moreover, besides ‘BaroSotong Gwangju,’ the city is diversifying citizen proposal platforms by accepting proposals through SNS and holding innovation idea contests to further expand citizen participation in policy-making.

Kim Yong-seung, the city’s Innovation Communication Planning Officer, said, “Through BaroSotong Gwangju, citizens’ free proposals and policy participation are steadily increasing. As the demand for online non-face-to-face communication grows in the With-Corona era, we will implement ‘BaroSotong Gwangju’ as a platform for empathetic administration together with citizens.”