The right of citizens to initiate bills or organize referendums, to be consulted on various draft decisions represent key elements of a "participatory democracy", a form of government created to fill certain gaps of the "representative democracy". Governments around the world have invested in the development of projects and mechanisms in order to implement this type of governance, corresponding to the technological and social developments. The government in Chisinau joined an initiative that brought together different governments around the world. Thus, in 2011, the Government joined the Open Governments Partnership (http://www.opengovpartnership.org/) and on May 7th, 2012, approved the "Open Government Action Plan" (Plan link). One of the main lines contained in the plan concerns the active participation of citizens in decision making.
To answer this desideratum, the government launched the particip.gov.md platform. Through this platform citizens can be consulted on various draft laws.
Until now, in order to keep up with the projects of new regulations prepared by the Government, citizens had to check over 20 websites belonging to ministries and government institutions. Now all projects can be viewed on one page. The participation mode, hosted on the platform, is the technical solution for organizing simple and transparent public consultations online, for both government instutution leaders and for citizens.
In the module, citizens can subscribe using RSS technology and may even generate a code that can be placed on any site and automatically appears on the regulations projects from institutions of interest.
On the platform, citizens can follow the public consultations agenda. Thus, they can check the public consultation that are due, and even follow them. Moreover, in the case of past public consultations, people can contact the organizer or watch the video recording, if one is available.