Citizens’ Panel participation – various aspects

Abstract

The organization of citizens’ panels is based on the principle of random selection of their participants, which poses a risk of the panelists being unrepresentative. This in turn would have a negative impact on the effectiveness of the panel, which sets itself the main goal of familiarizing decision-makers with the opinions of representatives of numerous social groups in the local government community. In connection with this, the normative acts regulating the conduct of panels provide for specific subjective criteria of a nature similar to parity, in particular gender, age and place of residence, as the main factors influencing the views of each individual. The author analyzes these criteria and their specific presentation in contemporary regulations for holding citizens’ panels in the largest Polish cities. As a de lege ferenda proposal, he also proposes his own additional criterion, referring to the level of income of the panelists, because this is also a circumstance that has a large impact on views, and its application will also avoid situations where people with different financial status are omitted in the decision-making process. In the second part, he analyzes the ways in which new technologies, specifically remote electronic communication means and mobile applications, can positively influence the process of organizing and conducting a citizens’ panel. This may happen in particular by accelerating the entire process of informing the selected persons and facilitating participation in it for persons for whom the traditional method of participation would be inaccessible or significantly hindered, such as disabled people or people with social phobias.