On May 29, at 13:00 IDFI conducted public discussion and introduced its own concept of citizen engagement platform www.ichange.ge.

Georgian government has taken an obligation to create citizen platform www.ichange.ge by 2013 in the frames of Open Government Partnership initiative action plan. IDFI studied the experience of some of the countries (the USA, Great Britain, Bahrain, Kazakhstan, Germany, Estonia), analyzed their e-platforms and elaborated its own concept.

Discussion was attended by the representatives of non-governmental organizations, public sector and others, interested in this issue. The discussion was transmitted via internet TV “Nakadi”live stream channel. Levan Avalishvili, chairman of IDFI opened the meeting with presentation, talked about the international practice and the functions and mechanisms citizen platform must provide. Participants asked various questions regarding the concept and expressed their opinions. Among various issues discussed on the meeting, attendees directed attention to the question of number of petition voters, name of the platform and other important details.   

Participants suggested integrating telephone involvement service on the platform in order to provide the engagement of certain age groups.

It was emphasized that platform will contribute to the transparency of political processes, citizen right protection and citizens will be given opportunity to propose their ideas.

Conducting discussions and participation of the citizens in preliminary debates is important for creating highly sophisticated and public interest-oriented resource.

Discussion was held in the frames of project “Development of e-Participation in Georgia”funded by the East-West Management Institute (EWMI) program G-PAC.