Cape Town: Public Participation

The City of Cape Town conducted its digital public participation process via an online comment form, which was published via the municipal website. While this form has proven to be an effective tool for providing users with access to information and a platform to submit their comments or make meaningful recommendations into the policy, legislative and infrastructural development within the City, it deterred future engagement as it operated on a submission based approach. 

This meant that interested and affected parties would submit their input through the interface typically using a singular directional communication, with little to no feedback from the municipality. Furthermore, users had no access to what others were recommending or commenting as the platform offered no archive or dashboard for comments made. The Collaboration Platform aimed to resolve a number of key issues such as creating an archive for all post processes to be stored online, engagements which are multi-directional meaning users can submit input to the City, this comment will be visually stored on the platform allowing others to see and engage other users on their comment/proposals, makes provision for the City to respond directly via the platform, and offers a number of social media elements to make the engagement more interesting. The platform aims to enhance the City's process when considering public input, taking into account the engagements between users which allows to form an opinion on community sentiment. 

• https://www.capetown.gov.za