Fryslan (province)
Project name: Stim fan Fryslan
Last updated
Project name: Stim fan Fryslan
Last updated
Fryslân (in Dutch: Friesland) is one of twelve Dutch provinces, situated in North Netherlands. Culturally, there are some things that make Fryslân distinct from the rest of the Netherlands. The most prominent example of its distinctness is the language Frisian, spoken by 69% of the 600.000 inhabitants living in the province.
2019 was a key moment for citizen empowerment in Fryslan in that a motion was passed in the provincial council that spoke about a few key routes to increasing empowerment. One of those routes was digital participation and the development of platform for that purpose. In March 2022 the platform stimfanfryslan.fr was launched.
Currently, a new provincial council and college of aldermen (elections were one year ago in 2023) but the participatory mission is still very much present.
According to Rigt Kalsbeek, citizen participation project leader at the Fryslân administration, 'the current college coalition accord still clearly expresses the will and urgency to involve citizens in policy-making and policy evaluation.' A specific 'participation policy brief' address the matter even more specifically and stipulates concrete paths towards increasing citizen empowerment.
Three out of four citizen participation project so far have focused on asking for citizen input through Consul Democracy's Citizen Proposals feature. In the past three years the platform has had roughly 60.000 visits and around 200 proposal submissions in different processes, about 50 proposals per process.
In terms of the thematic focus of participation through the platform, Kalsbeek says that it currently has focused on politically less sensitive issues, like Frisian language and culture. 'Many people, and most political parties, tend to agree that our language needs to be preserved. Also we did a participation process on Frisian cultural heritage sites, where we got many proposals about buildings, houses, churches, bridges and other physical spaces that should be considered part of our cultural heritage.'
One big challenge that Kalsbeek identifies is that various potential candidate policies and policy domains that could be made more democratic through inclusion on the Stim Fan Fryslân are withheld for political motives, or they are included but without real political commitment. 'Sometimes political subjects are quite sensitive', says Kalsbeek, 'like the 2022 Lelylijn plan [a plan for a direct high-speed railway connection from Amsterdam to Fryslan and neighbouring Groningen]. Eventually the province administration asked for citizen input but without any promise of including it in decision-making.'
What is more, participatory processes are not limited to what happens on stimfanfryslan.frl. An example of this is the formulation of a Public Transport plan. Also there is the Iepen Mienskipsfûns which is a special province led fund for citizen initiative; and there have been co-creation processes for developing new and widely-supported plans for polders (artificial land, formerly river or sea bed), like the Hegewaren polder. Most of these are linked to from the platform but would be potential candidates to enrich in a more robust and hybrid digital-physical participation process.
According to Kalsbeek, the province currently has no clear overview of all current and past participatietrajecten (participation processes) 'Our Consul-platform would be the obvious place for bringing all these processes together. Not only for the benefit of citizens but also internally at the government administration.'
She gives an example. 'Think about the Public Transport participatory plan. We organize physical meetings, but you can very well add a digital component to the process. Some people can't come to a meeting or think of something afterwards that they wish to contribute. Instead of stopping at 'huh, who should I email for this again?', we could add it to a single participation platform, stimfanfryslan.fr in this case and create a necessary overview.'
Then there is the challenge of where to put feedback. Currently, under the menu item 'finished projects' a short list of links to the past projects is offered. 'Here we have a lot of room for improvement', says Kalsbeek. 'We could provide a lot of more feedback in a richer format, such as the status of winning projects, the responsible stakeholders and contacts within and without the municipality, a clear and quick overview of the dates, participants and proposals of a given participation process, etc.'
Room for improvement is also present in terms of getting more Frisian people on board and active in the (digital) participation processes. Kalsbeek says that what the province needs is a 'concrete ambition and quantitative targets'. However, she adds, it is not just about the numbers. 'We value the quality of participation and of proposals, for example, more than sheer numbers at this stage. We believe that the quality of participation can in turn increase its quantity.'
Finally, she observes a positive social impact on participants, both when it comes to increased interaction among themselves, as in a changing mentality towards government 'that, in their view, is becoming more accessible and responsive. This is something we are happy with of course and want to continue to improve.'
