How Helsinki Streamlined Its Participatory Budgeting Process with Microsoft Power Platform

Description Lightning talks
Helsinki, the capital and largest city of Finland, has been implementing participatory budgeting since 2018, using Decidim to collect and display proposals from residents. One of the challenges that Helsinki faced was how to handle the large number of proposals. The city received over 1600 proposals from residents through the Decidim platform in October 2023, covering topics such as culture, sports, environment, and social services. These proposals had to be checked for feasibility, legality, and budget compliance, as well as aligned with the city's strategic goals and policies. Moreover, the proposals had to be distributed and coordinated among four municipal divisions. This created a complex and cumbersome workflow that needed to be simplified and standardized.

To address this problem, Helsinki decided to create a new back office solution that would streamline the proposal and project handling process. The city partnered with its IT service provider to create a new back-office solution, using the Microsoft Power Platform. The solution is integrated with Decidim, ensuring a seamless user experience for both the citizens and the staff.  The new solution streamlined the tasks of validating, categorizing, and publishing the proposals, as well as generating reports. The solution reduced the time of the process by months and improved the productivity and quality of the process. 

Language of the session: English

Logistical needs: a screen, projector