Citizens' jury

Citizens' juries are commissions 20-25 members with a minimum age of 12 years, selected at random, and the sacrifice against payment a few days of their time to develop decision aids on specific technical issues. To this end, the participants of experts with the requisite information. The results of the consultation process are summarized by a neutral carrier in implementing citizens' report and presented to the public, as well as the clients.

Target

The main objective of citizen forums is the involvement of the general public in decision-making processes. The basic philosophy of such meetings is motivated by the desire for fair representation of all stakeholders in the decision preparation and decision making.

Technology

In the civil forums Pinwandmoderation is applied. It is a combination of planning and visualization techniques with group dynamics and interview technical elements. In one controlled by a moderator process problem solutions are developed and visualized using colored cards on bulletin boards in the group. The visualization is a key feature of the method and can be used for the collection of contributions, to structure, to the weighting of alternative solutions and presentation of results.

The method also offers the gesprächsungeübten participants an opportunity to participate; it can be differentiated points of view clearly expressed and is in contrast to usual discussions sure that important side thoughts are not lost.

The meta-plan method is a simple tools (large pack of paper on pin board, colored cards, felt, glue dots, ...). With this tools for all the utterances are made and sorted visible. This is how each idea to hold and prevents time-consuming iterations, and makes connections visible.

After the sociotechnical principle topics via an Internet platform (Forum) discussed and summarized the results by moderators. With a subsequent vote, the consent of the participants will be sought. A technique permits the cross-regional working and keeps costs low.

About the Internet a citizen program for the social market economy was created, which was supported by an opinion poll with a majority of over 80 %.

Stadtteilarbeit

The participation of large groups of citizens and of entire metropolitan areas requires special methods of organizational development and large group facilitation. Thus, groups can be done to more than 1000 participants to actively creative and collaborative cooperation.