www.ichange.ge 

On August 30, 2011 Georgia joined the international initiative “Open Government Partnership”. In frames of OGP Georgian government has taken major commitment in the field of transparency and implementing the best practice of open governance. In particular, Georgian government has considered the recommendations proposed by IDFI and civil society and has added significant commitment to the OGP action plan – to implement national citizen platform ichange.ge in 2013. This platform will create following opportunities:

• It will enable raising issue or problem which needs to be resolved.
• Proposing idea which will solve the specific problem or will be profitable for society/country.
• Other citizens will get involved in discussion and will be able to express their ideas and offer solution.
• It is also possible to implement e-petition application. If the petition, concerning minor or important issues, is signed by the enough amount of the citizens (required amount varies depending on the importance and the scale of topic), government will be obliged to discuss it.[1]

Given the fact that Georgian government has taken the commitment to implement national portal in 2013, we believe that platform concept must be developed, approved and technically implemented urgently. Institute for Development of Freedom of Information (IDFI), based on the analysis of international practice[2] (carried out in the frames of the project “Development of e-Participation in Georgia”, which is financially supported by EWMI program G-PAC) presents its vision of citizen platform, in particular – what kinds of functions and mechanisms must be available on this platform. We believe that using our concept in the process of implementing online platforms will significantly contribute to establishing modern standards of e-democracy in Georgia. Existence of such platform will considerably simplify the communication between the citizens and government as well as encourage public discussion on social problems.