GUIDELINES FOR MORE EFFECTIVE PUBLIC CONSULTATIONS
At the end of 2022, the Citizen Participation Forum (CPF) network presented a document containing guidelines for more effective public consultations on the territory of Sofia Municipality, part of which is the so-called “Algorithm for organizing and conducting public consultations” – a standard format and sequence of steps to assist the administration in the preparation of public consultations regardless of their topic. The guidelines are designed as a kind of handbook that contains a special chart that assists people in organizing public consultations while adhering to the timeframes established by law.
The development of the algorithm was carried out as part of the project “Sofia Municipality in Dialogue with Citizens”, supported by the Sofia Municipality – Europe 2022 Programme in partnership with the Pancharevo District – Sofia Municipality and the National Cultural Learning Complex with the Lyceum for Italian Language and Culture and with the active cooperation of the central administration and the Architecture and Urban Planning Department of the Sofia Municipality. The member organizations of the Bulgarian Centre for Not-for-Profit Law and Platform AGORA also participated in some of the analyses on which the recommendations are based. The guidelines are available for free download here.
The Secretary of Sofia Municipality Ms. Venera Milova and the Chief Architect of Sofia Municipality (SM) Arch. Zdravko Zdravkov attended the event. The Mayor of Oborishte district Mr. Nikolay Alexandrov, the Deputy Mayor of Sredets district Mr. Aleksandar Petkov, the public mediator of the Sofia Municipality Ms. Lilia Hristova, experts, civic organizations, and media also joined the discussion. What everyone agreed on was the need for improvement of the public consultation processes on the territory of the Municipality and to do it according to a unified model, guaranteeing structure, and efficiency and thus facilitating and encouraging constructive civic participation.
You can find more on the topic of citizen participation in local policy-making and public consultations in particular on CPF‘s Instagram account, and a video summarising the main messages of civic engagement is available on our YouTube channel.
