Establishing a Year-Round Resident Participation System Throughout the Entire Process from Policy Proposal to Budget Allocation
Realizing Fiscal Democracy through Budget Work with Residents
Geumcheon-gu (Mayor Yu Seong-hoon) announced that it will establish and operate a system that expands resident participation throughout the entire budget process, from budget policy proposals to budget formulation.
Until now, except for the resident participatory budget, budget formulation was mainly led by the district in accordance with the budget formulation schedule. The district operates a resident deliberative budget system that continuously receives suggestions and proposals from residents throughout the year, and after review by the relevant departments, reflects them in the budget formulation.
Currently, Geumcheon-gu has introduced the resident participatory budget system in 2013 and operates it only for new and one-year projects with an annual scale of 1.5 billion KRW.
The resident participatory budget is a system where residents propose ideas and directly review and select projects to formulate the budget; however, many similar and repetitive projects have been formulated every year, limiting the reflection of residents' opinions.
As the demand from residents who want to participate in the budget in various ways has increased, the district will operate a continuous opinion collection system covering all fields and all projects starting this year.
The resident participation system consists of six stages: ▲ Proposal and suggestion ▲ Deliberation ▲ Database creation ▲ Budget formulation request ▲ Formulation and adjustment ▲ Disclosure.
Opinions such as budget and project proposals are collected throughout the year at all places where various resident participation occurs, including various committees, functional group meetings, resident meetings, and events.
The collected opinions are forwarded to the responsible project departments, where they undergo a review and deliberation process analyzing the feasibility, timeliness, effectiveness, and duplication of the projects.
Proposals that have completed deliberation are databased by the project departments, shared with the budget formulation general department, and a budget formulation request is made.
Budgets formulated through resident proposals and participation will be included in the public announcement of the entire budget plan and disclosed.
Yu Seong-hoon, Mayor of Geumcheon-gu, said, “By operating a system where residents participate throughout the entire budget formulation process year-round, we have enhanced the transparency of finances and the trustworthiness of administration,” adding, “We expect that true fiscal democracy that residents can feel will be realized.”
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