Watch Live! http://bit.ly/HhDYwE

Chair
Robert Hunja
Manager, WBI Open Governance Practice

Presenter
Giovanni Allegretti
Evaluator and Researcher, Center of Social Studies, University of Coimbra

Discussants

Andre Herzog
Senior Urban Specialist, WBI Urban Practice

Thomas Jeffrey Ramin
Senior Operations Officer, AFT Development Effectiveness

This event will focus on results emerging from an ongoing evaluation of the World Bank Institute’s ICT4Gov project that introduces Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) to support Participatory Budgeting (PB) in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Giovanni Allegretti, an experienced evaluator, will look at the role of ICT in Participatory Budgeting in the conflict-affected province of South Kivu in eastern DRC. He will also discuss the impact of Participatory Budgeting per se in this fragile environment and how it impacts how practitioners are looking at the typology of participatory processes.

After over 25 years from the first experiences of Participatory Budgeting in southern Brazil, the expansion of Participatory Budgeting to other continents is bringing about new challenges, as its definition is being widened and is overlapping with other participatory experiences.

Themes covered:

1) PB as a tool or as an enabling environment?
2) Innovation and hybridization of PB
3) Effective management of expectations
4) The added value of ICT
5) Going beyond the usual suspects
6) Challenges and opportunities
7) The Bank’s role in supporting PB

Presenter:

Giovanni Allegretti is a leading expert in Participatory Budgeting with 15 years of experience as consultant, trainer, and evaluator of more than 100 Participatory Budgeting processes in different continents. He is one of the authors of “Learning from the South: Participatory Budgeting worldwide”, which gives a global overview of around 1500 experiences of PB funded by German Cooperation Agencies,). Since 2007, he has worked as a consultant for Participatory Budgeting to the Swedish Associations of Municipality and Regions. He is also the founder and co-organiser of the cinema festival “DEMOCRACINE” (Porto Alegre, Brazil).

ICT4Gov is a World Bank Institute program that focuses on empowering citizens to demand better governance around the world through the application of ICT.