Analysis of Citizens’ Challenges regarding Electronic Participation in Decision Makings of Bojnourd City Council

جغرافیا و توسعه فضای شهری

Volume 11, Issue 2 - Serial Number 25, August 2024, Pages 119-137   

Document Type: Scientific-Research

DOI: 10.22067/jgusd.2022.77910.1228

Authors

Zahra Haghjouyan^{* 1}; Gholamreza HaghighatNaeini²

¹Senior expert of Urban Management, Department of Urban Planning, Faculty of Architecture and Urban Planning, University of Art, Tehran, Iran

²Associate Professor, Department of Urban Planning, Faculty of Architecture and Urban Planning, University of Art, Tehran, Iran

Abstract

Extended Abstract

Introduction

A look at urban management approaches over the history shows that urban approaches have becoming more flexible. The current approach is urban governance and one of the principles of urban governance is participation. Many believe that more informed and legitimate decisions can be made by involving citizens. Due to the advancement of information technologies and the increase in the use of the Internet and participation tools in recent years, electronic participation has also started to increase the scope and transparency of the government and, as a result, increase the trust of citizens in the government. Citizen-initiated electronic-participation is often in the form of consultative communication in which participants communicate with government administrators, monitor, comment on others’ opinions, and respond to the opinions.
As an institution that is made up of people’s representatives, the city council is one of the important principles of the urban management system in Iran. For satisfying the needs of the people, this institution has an urgent need to get people’s votes and opinions, and one of the prerequisites for getting their opinions is involving them in urban management issues. Since the use of the Internet and virtual space is increasing every day, it is not possible to hold meetings with the presence of all citizens. And as the purpose of electronic participation is increasing the participation of citizens in digital governance, their participation can help officials, including city council members, to offer better services to people and solve their problems. Bojnord city council’s facilities for electronic participation are limited to the website of the organization, Telegram groups, and Instagram pages of members of the council. Taking these issues into consideration, this study tried to examine the challenges of citizens regarding their electronic participation in Bojnord city council’s decisions and to offer some solutions that make citizens’ electronic participation easier.

Method

A mixed method was used for this applied research. A semi-structured interview was used in three sections. First, public relations experts (website officials) of the city council were interviewed to see the website's status. In the second section, interactive interviews were conducted with members of city council and city managers and experts regarding citizens' participation through open questions. In the third part, the virtual literacy of citizens and the amount of current training were explored to see the access of citizens of Bojnord to electronic tools. For this purpose, an employee of Seraj in North Khorasan province was interviewed. Content analysis was applied to analyze the data from the interviews. Another questionnaire was designed, the target group of which was all the citizens of Bojnord older than 18, because these people can vote for selecting city council members. As it was not possible to access all the people of this city, aged 18 to 20, the statistical population was considered to be all citizens over 20 years of age, which according to the last census in 2016 were 153122 people. SPSS was run to analyze the data of this section. The one-sample t-test and descriptive tests were used. DPSER and SWAT methods were also applied to understand the status of electronic participation.

Results

The results showed that three important issues are needed for electronic participation of citizens: 1) conditions or prerequisites for electronic participation (economic/financial conditions, social/cultural conditions, legal/law conditions, and technical and infrastructure conditions); 2) the methods of electronic participation (electronic notification, electronic consultation and electronic decision-making); and 3) electronic participation tools (available platforms). Moreover, the investigations showed that full electronic informing has been done regarding the news and approvals of the city council of Bojnord and the news of daily meetings has been published for the citizens, but the citizens have not been informed about the presence of city council members on different platforms and the way of electronic communication with them. Therefore, many citizens did not know at all about the presence of city council members in social media and though they have wanted to communicate electronically, they did not know the communication methods.

Discussion and Conclusion

The results showed that resorting to electronic participation has many such advantages as creating a more comprehensive view of the problems and even a more specialized solution to them. Generally speaking, one can say that Bojnord city council is in electronic notification stage. Here are some strategies to overcome barriers and emphasize strengths. The goal is that all city councils with similar conditions that do not have a single platform for electronic participation can use these suggestions to solve the participation problems. These suggestions are as follows:

Appropriate and public informing about the activeness of city council members in electronic media;
Determining the duties for each member of city council for electronic presence. This will encourage citizens to communicate electronically with members of city councils;

Creating a technology department in the city councils and employing experts in this regard;
Improving the facilities of city councils’ websites and providing some possibilities, including sending emails to citizens, uploading photos and videos by citizens, and online broadcast of the meetings of city councils;
Using the power of city council representatives in the supreme council of provinces to make legislations for citizens’ electronic participation.



 
 
 

Keywords

Participation; Electronic Participation; Electronic Informing; City Council; Bojnord City

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