ParticipateDB

From the about page : Backseat Budgeter® is a simulation tool that enables you to experience for yourself what it is like to manage a public budget. Elected officials ultimately are in charge, but with Backseat Budgeter you can see the effects of your decisions, gain a better understanding of the challenges officials face, and appreciate the complexities of the public budgeting process. Furthermore, the choices you make about the budget will be shared with public officials. You can let them know if you think they should step on the gas, put the brakes on spending or change direction altogether. Backseat Budgeter is a public service tool created by Engaged Public to help citizens understand the tradeoffs associated with spending our public dollars. It is offered as a community service by Engaged Public at cost to any public entity wishing to educate and engage its constituents. Backseat Budgeter is an earlier version of Balancing Act .

From the about page : Balancing Act is a fun and easy way for residents to learn about public budgets and the choices their elected officials face in the budgeting process. It allows participants to try allocating funds— expressing their priorities and preferences — but also requires them to balance spending and revenue. Balancing Act was designed for those individuals interested in taking an active role in making their community better by sharing their voice. Budgets are, arguably, the most direct way a community expresses what is important. Should the focus be parks and recreation? Public health? Police? Helping the homeless? If the answer is yes to all—how are we going to pay for it? Balancing Act brings people and government officials closer together in an informed conversation about what priorities are in everyone’s best interests. Because it is online it is accessible to anyone at anytime and is far more convenient than a traditional public meeting or budget hearing. Balancing Act is being developed by Denver, Colorado-based public policy strategy firm Engaged Public . Balancing Act builds on its predecessor, Backseat Budgeter .

Budget Allocator is designed to allow the community to participate in difficult budget decisions at a meaningful level. The tool is configured through an easy CMS and allows the user to choose from a range of budget options. Each of these options can be commented on and has an information box for more details. Once the user has set their desired budget they submit the results. If they are over budget they are told the consequences in terms of taxes, rates etc. Key features of Budget Allocator include: Personal Consequences: All changes in a user’s budgets are reflected in personal taxation amounts in order to demonstrate the personal consequences of each change to the user. Community Outcomes: Each budget selection will show the impact on the community in terms of the quality and quantity of public facilities and services. Real-Time Spend: As they are balancing the budget, users can track how much they have spent so far in order to manage their budget delegation. Mobile First: Any budget simulator created through Budget Allocator is mobile-friendly. Easy: Any budget simulator can be set up within ten minutes for users. A demonstration budget allocator site can be found here . The tool was developed by Bang the Table Pty Ltd in collaboration with clients in the Government sector. Early uptake has been from Local Government.

From the about page : What is Budget Ballot? Budget Ballot is a tool that Councils can use to run Community Budgets. A Community Budget is a pot of money allocated for use in a particular area or community. Members of the community can then submit ideas for how this money is spent, and then vote on which they want to make happen. About the project: Budget Ballot was created by thinkpublic as part of NESTA’s Your Local Budget programme. It was designed by Ivo Gormley and Joseph Smith and developed by Rob McKinnon and Matt Andrews with support and guidance from Izwe, DxW, and Ian Drysdale. As of November 2011, Budget Ballot is in beta. Update : Budget Ballot has been discontinued. In order to access the site, view an archived copy .

Budget Simulator supports local and provincial governments to engage communities in deliberative budget discussions. Providing both educational and consultative features and employing game-like elements to increase engagement, Budget Simulator has been used by over 60 councils and provincial governments. Governments can configure the tool using a simple-to-use content management system, providing budgetary and background information as well as consequences for changes in revenue and expenditure. Budget Simulator may be configured so that community members are required to meet a spending target, balance a budget or to address a what if scenario. Governments can add demographic and consultation questions within the system to ensure they collect the right information before community members submit their budgets for decision making purposes. Budget Simulator is developed by Delib, a company assisting governments with public consultations based in Bristol, UK and Brisbane, Australia.

Citizen Budget is a customizable web-based budget simulator. From the website’s “about” section: Citizen Budget online simulator is a powerful and innovative tool that helps you build better community relations, educate your residents and solicit their feedback on your budget consultation. Unlike a regular survey or a budget visualization software, Citizen Budget is an interactive platform that shows the financial impacts of participants’ choices in real time, educating them about the trade-offs and constraints faced by their municipality. Our user-friendly and fun budget exercise creates a two-way dialogue between you and your community, providing both parties with rich and detailed information. Your residents can conveniently access your online budget consultation anytime and at their own pace, making it a clear improvement over public meetings which involve travel, time, childminding and other accessibility constraints. Features include: Customizable themes to reflect governmental or organizational branding Fully hosted by Citizen Budget, including programming and maintenance Embed links, PDFs, charts, videos, diagrams, images, and graphs for additional information A toolbox of additional tools and widgets Translations into any language Print versions to reach offline residents Citizen Budget is being developed by Open North, a non-profit based in Montreal, GQ (Canada).

From the about page : Community PlanIt is an online engagement platform for local planning efforts. Bringing together the interactivity of social networks and the incentives of online games, Community PlanIt transforms participatory planning into a fun, engaging activity for all ages. Players participate online in six weeks of planning-themed missions to earn PlanIt Coins, which they spend on the values most important to them. The community joins together at the end of the process to discuss the results and plan for the future. Within a series of time-limited missions, players compete with each other to earn influence in their community to fund local projects. At the same time, they learn about key issues related to the topic of the engagement process, connect with each other, and suggest solutions to problems. Each game culminates in a face-to-face community event, where players meet with each other and discuss the results of the process and next steps with curators of the game and other decision makers. Community PlanIt is produced by The Engagement Lab at Emerson College with support from the Knight Foundation.

DEMOS -Budget is a budget simulation app that allows citizens to act as a virtual mayor and delegate municipal funds. The tool is designed to be used with realistic features in order to realistically emulate an actual budget. From the homepage: Using genuine figures as its basis, the application displays an actual budget. Members of the public can draw up their own budgets and adjust the initial one as they see fit. Each change to a budget item is added to or deducted from the total budget in real time. The system’s only immutable rule is that the total sum of money available may not and cannot be exceeded. Any increase in spending must be balanced by savings elsewhere. Alternatively, savings can either be reinvested in a different area or used for amortisation. From the info (archived copy, original page is now defunct) page: An initiative of mutual benefit: as members of the public develop a feel for local authority budgets, both intuitively and through learning by playing, they gain an understanding of the scope and limits of budgetary planning. And in return, municipalities acquire more information about the desires and needs of their citizens, since the DEMOS -Budget interactive budget planner enables cities to create opportunities for debate with the public about future avenues for development or new projects. The budget planner displays the actual budget in such a way that it is possible to gain a realistic insight into the scope and limits of municipal politics. The various levels of classification enable the adjustment of budget items to have a direct bearing on a local authority’s individual areas of responsibility. DEMOS -Budget is developed by TuTech Innovation based in Hamburg, Germany. Update : DEMOS -Budget has been discontinued. In order to access the site, please view an archived copy .

From the site: Welcome to the Maryland Budget Map Game. You are now the Governor of Maryland. Congratulations! According to the state constitution, you must prepare a balanced budget for the state. There’s a projected deficit of at least 1.7 billion dollars for fiscal year 2011, which begins July 1, 2010. Travel to different locations on the main map. Each location represents a policy area (like higher education, revenues, or general government) where you can choose different budget options. Click on an option to select it. Click on it again if you change your mind. In each location, there are advisors you can consult for more information and factors to consider. You need to pay attention to this year’s budget balance. Making the “current year balance” a positive number is what you are required to do under the constitution. You should also pay attention to the long-term balance. This adjusts for all sorts of one-time actions (like transferring funds from reserves or temporary employee furloughs) that affect this year’s budget, but not the underlying sources of ongoing income and ongoing expenditure needs. If you can get the long-term balance to be a positive number, you’ll put the state’s finances on a sustainable path for the future. Each choice you make will not only affect the budget totals, it will also affect your popularity with ten different interest groups. If you make too many of these groups too unhappy, it might affect your and your party’s political future badly. The interest groups will appear from time to time all by themselves. If you want to visit them, you can go to the click the icon on the main map. When you are done, check out the summary to see how your budget ended up. While it appears this is not a stand-alone tool it is being referenced in the Envision Prince George’s project. Below are two screenshots of the game’s start screen (first image) and world map (second image): The Maryland Budget Map Game is developed by Daniel Batson and Kitty Hughes of the Maryland Budget and Tax Policy Institute (organization appears to have been discontinued in 2012). Update : The Maryland Budget Map Game has been discontinued. In order to access the website, view an archived copy .

From the website: Next 10 created the nonpartisan California Budget Challenge in 2005 as a public service to educate and engage Californians on the trade-offs and tough choices involved in building the state’s General Fund budget of $105 billion. Over 50,000 Californians have taken the Challenge and groups are using it regularly across the state. The Challenge has been a great success for Next 10 and for all Californians, and we want to share it with others! Whether you are looking at the budget of a city, state, or school district, you can license the Budget Challenge and create your own version of this interactive tool. From their overview sheet : Survey administrators are able to enter unique and customizable spending and revenue questions, policy options, and more. Each time the survey is taken, there is an introductory page that collects demographic and response data for each entry that can be exported for further analysis, and can be integrated with Google Analytics. Surveys can be offered in multiple language options. A sample budget simulator challenge created for the city of San Francisco can be found here . The Next 10 Budget Challenge is developed by Next 10, an organization based in San Francisco, CA.

The Peoples’ Budget is a customizable web-based budget simulator game designed to give citizens a better idea of the process of delegating government funds. In order to design the game, municipal agencies or civic organizations first input a budget outline and set minimum and maximum thresholds for each office, department, or any other recurring expense in the game that participants must adhere to. Pictures and descriptions are added to each expense so that participants are informed about its purpose while delegating money and will learn more about the inner workings of government agencies. Quick polls can also be added to ask participants customized questions for more specific insight into an area of the budget. Once the game is designed, it should take a player, on average, 10-15 minutes to play. Each participant is logged in via Facebook, Google, or e-mail to keep results reliable. They first start with a certain amount of funds that they must delegate to each government office and expense. In order to complete the game, they must submit a balanced budget and fund all expenses in the specified threshold. After a number of participants have played the game, agencies and organizations can access the analytics tool that tracks engagement and participant results in order to find general trends in the budget distribution. This data can be downloaded into detailed reports as raw data or infographics. A video introduction to The Peoples’ Budget can be found here . The Peoples’ Budget was created by the Participatory Budgeting New Orleans campaign of the Committee for a Better New Orleans .