Dobong-gu Holds 'Hyupchido-bong 50+ Roundtable Meeting' to Select Priority Agendas for Solving Local Community Issues

1. Dobong RW (Recyclable Waste) Mileage for Improving Awareness of Resource Circulation 2. Youth Climate Crisis Response Practice Project 3. Clean Dobong: Public-Private Joint Monitoring and Facility Improvement to Prevent Secondhand Smoke 4. Revitalizing Local Commercial Areas with Neighborhood Shops 5. Dobong Urban Park Governance Establishment Project 6. Creating a Barrier-Free City Dobong 7. Establishing Citizen-Centered Transportation Governance 8. Installation of Village Management Offices in Low-Rise Residential Areas

Dobong-gu Mayor Lee Dong-jin is sharing opinions with participating residents at the 'Cooperative Dobong 50+ Roundtable Meeting' held on the 2nd at the Seon-inbong Hall of the Dobong-gu Office.

Lee Dong-jin, Mayor of Dobong-gu (left in the photo), is holding up the agenda items selected at the Dobong-gu 'Cooperative Dobong 50+ Roundtable Meeting' held on the 2nd at the Seoninbong Hall of the district office.

[Asia Economy Reporter Park Jong-il] Dobong-gu (Mayor Lee Dong-jin) held the 'Co-Governance Dobong 50+ Roundtable Meeting' at 2 p.m. on the 2nd in the Seon-inbong Hall of Dobong-gu Office to select topics for the '2022 District-level Plan-type Citizen Participatory Budget.'

The Co-Governance Dobong 50+ Roundtable Meeting is a distinctive deliberative public forum unique to Dobong-gu, where various co-governance stakeholders gather to establish priorities for co-governance agendas and collect opinions from district residents in order to formulate a community innovation plan.

This 50+ roundtable meeting proceeded by having judges vote on three agendas, selected from eight extracted through seven rounds of preliminary review from approximately 1,870 agendas discovered via resident proposals and citizen participatory budget contests, which are hoped to be promoted through public-private co-governance in 2022.

On the day, among the total eight agendas, the district prioritized through voting as follows: ▲ Dobong RW (Recyclable Waste) Mileage for improving awareness of resource circulation ▲ Youth Climate Crisis Response Practice Project ▲ Public-private joint monitoring and facility improvement to prevent secondhand smoke for a clean Dobong ▲ Revitalization of local commercial districts with neighborhood stores ▲ Dobong Urban Park Governance Establishment Project ▲ Creating a barrier-free city Dobong ▲ Establishing transportation governance centered on citizen convenience ▲ Installation of village management offices in low-rise residential areas.

The 120 judges, composed through open recruitment (50 offline + 70 online), exchanged various opinions on the agendas via SNS from May 14 to May 31, concretizing the agendas and discussing implementation plans.

This roundtable meeting was conducted in a hybrid format of online and offline, unlike previous years. In particular, 'visiting small public forums' such as agenda discovery small public forums and agenda deliberation small public forums were operated in advance, linked with neighborhood-level resident meetings and agenda-specific execution organizations.

Meanwhile, to compensate for the inability of many residents to participate in public deliberation due to COVID-19 this year, videos promoting the community innovation plan and eight explanatory videos for each agenda under review were produced and shared to help deepen understanding of the review agendas.

Additionally, the 'Co-Governance Dobong website' was newly revamped to improve accessibility, and the '2021 Co-Governance Academy,' an online education program on understanding co-governance and execution systems, was operated to enhance residents' co-governance capabilities to the next level.

The selected agendas will be concretized into execution plans through deliberation by the end of June and are expected to be finalized as the '2022 Community Innovation Plan' after approval by the Co-Governance Dobong Council in early July. By the end of August, securing a 1 billion KRW budget subsidy for 2022 will be decided through final approval by the Seoul Metropolitan Participatory Budget Committee.

Mayor Lee Dong-jin of Dobong-gu stated, “The district-level plan-type citizen participatory budget project expands residents' participation rights, which had been limited to the proposal stage, to the entire process including project discovery, selection, execution, and evaluation, allowing both public and private sectors to jointly perform all stages.” He added, “We will do our best to ensure that the selected agendas lead to policies that residents can tangibly experience through the process of co-governance.”

Dobong-gu was the first among nationwide basic local governments in 2016 to enact the 'Basic Ordinance for Activating Public-Private Co-Governance in Dobong-gu,' an institutional foundation for sustainable co-governance, and is the first autonomous district in Seoul to establish a community innovation plan, leading regional co-governance proactively.

To this end, the district launched the 'Co-Governance Dobong Council,' a deliberation and coordination body on regional co-governance, and has been at the forefront of implementing various co-governance programs involving both public and private sectors for successful co-governance.