“Game My Village is improving the quality of participatory planning and budgeting by making the process interesting, more interactive, and inspiring.” — Game My Village

116

participants mapped 4 villages for the Game My Village Forum pilot

Start date
August 2014
End date
March 2016
Period: 20 months

Issue

Despite reforms supporting more village level accountability for government services in Indonesia, ordinary people remain excluded from decisions on how public funds allocated to their village are being spent.

Policy-makers don’t have the knowledge or tools to make information on local budgets and planning easy to understand - and because of this, communities, and youth in particular, are becoming disengaged from local governance.

Project

Indonesian NGO Sinergantara has developed a game that lets citizens act as a village planner, so they can develop a village using real budgets and data and better understand how local governments prioritise where money is spent.

The Game My Village project doesn’t just channel information one way; the game is also a tool through which local governments can identify community priorities and needs and government is a key partner in the project. Game My Village is helping to prompt a conversation between government administrators who are spending money on public services, and people who are actually using those services

By involving citizens in local planning and budgeting - and making them part of the process – the project aims to give citizens greater influence over how public funds are spent in their area, helping to bridge the disconnect between local government and the people they represent.

Partner

Sinergantara is a non-government organization that works in analysis and providing knowledge on development policies and practices. It concentrates on governance, social development, and information technology issues.