Foster to Create new possibilities for better E-participation in Georgia

Enjoying the variety of e-participation tools in Georgia, the project aimed to research the popularity of those instruments among the general public. To achieve the above objective, Tea studied citizen’s experience during their e-participation interactions. The research covered almost all electronic websites, including ichange.gov.ge (Governmental portal on e-petitions), myparliament.ge (“Give an Idea to the Parliament” project allowing the citizens to suggest proposals), declaration.gov.ge (Online system of the Civil Service Bureau of Georgia), manifest.ge (National e-petition portal funded by the Open Society Georgia Foundation), idea.tbilisi.gov.ge (Website of the Tbilisi City Hall enabling the residents to submit their ideas to the local authorities), mkhileba.gov.ge (national platform to disclose the violation of the Georgian Legislation or the Code of Ethics) and budgetmonitoring.ge (Budget monitoring website developed by Georgia’s State Audit Office. The research was followed by interactive discussions, in-debt interviews and awareness-raising campaigns in Tbilisi, Kutaisi and Batumi. 

The action delivered a research document analyzing the barriers and challenges faced by the citizens during the e-participation process. Also, the project developed and disseminated a list of recommendations/digital solutions to the governmental and non-governmental stakeholders; the guidelines serve as a framework to develop the technical and contextual sides of the web-portals, improve the multimedia interface and make them more user-friendly. Besides, the interactive workshops, in-depth interviews and campaigns in the biggest Georgian cities of Tbilisi, Kutaisi and Batumi raised awareness of the young people in digital tools that can be applied to enhance the e-democracy level in Georgia.