In 2024, residents of Polish cities and municipalities decided how to allocate over 900 million PLN through participatory budgets. This amount — comparable to the annual investment budget of a medium-sized county city — did not end up going to playgrounds, cycling paths, and recreational areas as a result of top-down decisions by officials. The residents chose it themselves. By voting. By discussing. By submitting projects that address the needs of their neighborhoods, streets, and communities.
The participatory budget has become one of the most important tools of local democracy in Poland. Since the first edition in Sopot in 2011, this mechanism has spread to over 300 municipalities — from the largest metropolitan areas to small rural communes. The 2018 legislation made it mandatory in cities with county rights, which ultimately formalized its role in the Polish local government system.
But behind the impressive numbers lies a serious operational challenge. Most Polish municipalities still run the participatory budget process in a way that has not changed for a decade — paper forms, manual verification, voting at stationary polling stations, manual counting of results. In an era when a citizen can file a tax return in 5 minutes on a smartphone, expecting them to come to the municipal office to cast a paper vote on a civic project sounds like an anachronism. And increasingly, residents respond to this anachronism in the simplest possible way — by opting out of participation.
Read also
- Why do software projects fail? The real causes of failure that leaders often ignore
- Participatory budget automation — how does technology improve civic participation?
- Flexibility or stability in software development: how to find the golden mean with ARDURA Consulting?
In this article, we examine how technology — specifically the ARDVote platform created by ARDURA Consulting — is changing the way participatory budgets are conducted in Polish municipalities. From the challenges of the traditional process, through the features of a modern system, to the real benefits that digitization brings to both municipal offices and residents.
What is a participatory budget and why do municipalities implement it?
The participatory budget — also called a civic budget — is a democratic mechanism in which residents of a given local government unit directly decide how to allocate a portion of the municipal budget. This is not about public consultations where the office “collects opinions” and can ignore them. In a participatory budget, the voting result is binding — projects with the most votes must be implemented.
The idea of the participatory budget was born in 1989 in Porto Alegre, Brazil, where the authorities decided to give residents real control over part of the city’s spending. The experiment proved successful — participation in the decision-making process increased several times over, and projects funded through the participatory budget addressed needs that officials could not identify from behind their desks. Over the following two decades, the model spread to thousands of cities worldwide.
In Poland, the first participatory budget was organized by Sopot in 2011, allocating 3 million PLN for this purpose. The following year, Poznan, Elblag, and Zielona Gora joined in. By 2015, the participatory budget was already functioning in over 100 Polish cities. The breakthrough came with the 2018 amendment to the Municipal Self-Government Act, which introduced a mandatory participatory budget in cities with county rights. The legislation also defined the minimum pool of funds — at least 0.5% of the municipality’s expenditures from the last budget execution report.
Why do municipalities — especially those not subject to the statutory obligation — decide to implement this mechanism? There are several reasons, and they extend far beyond the legal requirement.
First, the participatory budget builds trust between local authorities and residents. In a system where the citizen has real influence over the allocation of public funds, the relationship with the municipal office ceases to be one-sided. The resident is not a petitioner — they are a co-decision-maker. Research by the Batory Foundation shows that in municipalities with an active participatory budget, the level of trust in local authorities is 15–20 percentage points higher than in municipalities without this mechanism.
Second, the participatory budget provides authorities with unique knowledge about the real needs of the community. Projects submitted by residents are a kind of “market research” — they reveal what is lacking in public spaces, which infrastructure deficits are most acutely felt, and which areas require revitalization. This knowledge is invaluable when planning long-term investments.
Third, the process itself — discussion, project promotion, voting — activates the local community. Residents who have once engaged in the participatory budget are more likely to participate in other forms of public life: they attend municipal council sessions, get involved in non-governmental organizations, and take part in public consultations. The participatory budget acts as a catalyst for civic activity.
What challenges does the traditional participatory budget process face?
The idea of the participatory budget is simple and elegant. Its implementation — far less so. The traditional, paper-based analog process of the participatory budget generates a range of problems that accumulate from edition to edition and undermine the very purpose of the entire mechanism.
The first and most visible challenge is low turnout. In many Polish cities, only 5–15% of eligible residents participate in participatory budget voting. For comparison — in Porto Alegre, the birthplace of participatory budgets, turnout regularly exceeded 30%. The reasons for low turnout in Poland are complex, but one of the most important is the accessibility barrier. When voting requires a physical visit to a designated point, during specific hours, with an identity document — most residents who are not active participants in public life simply give up. Working people, elderly individuals, people with disabilities, residents of distant neighborhoods — all of them are effectively excluded from the process.
The second challenge is the operational cost. Organizing a traditional participatory budget engages dozens of municipal employees over the course of several months. Application forms need to be prepared, ballot cards printed, polling stations organized, employees delegated to staff these stations, and then votes need to be manually counted and protocols prepared. In medium-sized cities (50,000–100,000 residents), the cost of organizing one edition of the participatory budget in the traditional mode is 80,000–150,000 PLN — not counting the cost of employee working hours.
The third challenge is transparency, or rather, the lack thereof. In a paper-based process, it is difficult to ensure full transparency at every stage. How can a resident verify that their vote was counted correctly? How can they confirm that forms were not falsified? How can they make sure that project verification was conducted according to uniform criteria? The traditional process relies on trust in the honesty of officials — which, in an era of declining trust in public institutions, is an increasingly thin foundation.
The fourth challenge concerns the quality of submitted projects. When the application form is a single A4 sheet with a few fields, it is hard to expect the resident to provide a detailed project description with an estimated budget, location, and justification. The result? Offices receive hundreds of poorly developed proposals, a significant portion of which are rejected at the formal verification stage — generating frustration on both sides.
The fifth challenge is the lack of continuity and institutional memory. When the process relies on spreadsheets and binders, knowledge of previous editions is scattered and difficult to access. Which projects were submitted multiple times? What types of projects enjoy the greatest support? How has turnout changed across individual districts? These questions — critical for improving the process — most often remain unanswered.
The sixth challenge, increasingly significant, is compliance with digital accessibility requirements. The directive on the accessibility of websites and mobile applications of public sector bodies (implemented in Poland by the 2019 act) requires all digital services of public offices to meet the WCAG 2.1 standard (and from 2025 — WCAG 2.2). The traditional process, even if supplemented with a simple website, rarely meets these requirements.
How is technology changing participatory budget management?
Digitizing the participatory budget is not simply about transferring a paper form to an online PDF. It is a fundamental change in the way a municipality communicates with residents, collects projects, conducts verification, and organizes voting. Technology transforms every stage of the process — and at every stage, it delivers measurable benefits.
At the project submission stage, a digital platform enables the resident to fill out an interactive form with real-time data validation. The system suggests what information is required, checks the accuracy of estimated budgets, and allows photos and location maps to be attached. The result? Digitally submitted projects are on average 40–60% more complete than those submitted on paper, which radically reduces the number of proposals rejected at the formal verification stage.
At the verification stage, the system automates routine tasks — checking compliance with regulations, verifying the project location (whether the plot belongs to the municipality), calculating costs against the available pool. The municipal employee can focus on the substantive assessment of the project rather than on the tedious checking of whether the form was filled out correctly. The verification time for a single project drops from several hours to several dozen minutes.
At the voting stage, technology eliminates the most serious barrier of the traditional process — the need for physical presence. A resident can cast their vote from a smartphone, tablet, or computer, at any time of day or night, from any location. Data from cities that have implemented online voting speaks for itself: turnout increases by an average of 60–120% compared to exclusively stationary voting.
At the reporting stage, the system automatically generates results in real time, provides geographic and demographic statistics, and creates reports for the municipal council and media. Instead of a week of manual vote counting — results are available immediately after voting closes.
Technology also changes the way residents learn about projects before voting. A digital platform enables browsing projects on an interactive map, filtering by category and location, and engaging in discussion through comments. A resident who, in the traditional process, receives a list of 200 projects on a poster at the municipal office, can in the digital system find projects related to their neighborhood and area of interest in a matter of seconds.
It is worth emphasizing that digitization does not mean excluding people who do not use technology. Good participatory budget management systems account for a hybrid scenario — online voting is supplemented by stationary polling points where a municipal employee helps the resident cast their vote in the system. In this way, technology expands accessibility rather than restricting it.
What is ARDVote and how does it work?
ARDVote is a SaaS (Software as a Service) platform created by ARDURA Consulting, designed specifically for the comprehensive management of participatory budgets in Polish municipalities. The system covers the entire process lifecycle — from the moment project submissions are announced, through verification and the information campaign, to voting and publication of results.
ARDVote’s architecture is based on a cloud model, which means the municipality does not need to invest in server infrastructure or hire IT administrators to manage the system. The platform is accessible through a web browser — both for residents (the public page with projects and voting) and for municipal employees (the administrative panel for process management).
ARDVote’s operation can be described in five phases corresponding to the natural cycle of the participatory budget.
The first phase is edition configuration. The municipal administrator defines the parameters of a given participatory budget edition: the pool of funds (city-wide and district-level), the schedule (dates for project submission, verification, voting), the regulations, verification criteria, and voting rules. The system allows full customization — every municipality can adapt the process to its own needs and local conditions.
The second phase is project submission. Residents submit projects through an intuitive online form. The system guides the user step by step — from describing the idea, through locating it on a map, to preparing an estimated budget. Real-time validation notifies about missing data or cost limit overruns. The resident can save a draft and return to editing. After submitting the project, they receive confirmation and can track the verification status.
The third phase is verification. The administrative panel allows projects to be assigned to subject-matter employees, verification progress to be tracked, and comments to be exchanged between officials. The system automatically checks formal criteria (compliance with regulations, location within the municipality, cost limits) and flags potential issues. The employee can approve the project, reject it with justification, or send it back for correction — the resident receives a notification about every status change.
The fourth phase is voting. ARDVote handles online voting with voter identity verification. The system presents projects on an interactive map and organized by category. Residents can browse descriptions, photos, and budgets of projects, and then cast their vote according to the regulations (most commonly: selecting a specified number of city-wide and district projects). Anti-fraud mechanisms detect anomalies — multiple voting, unusual activity patterns, manipulation attempts.
The fifth phase is reporting. After voting closes, the system automatically generates results — project rankings, turnout statistics, geographic distribution of votes, and comparisons with previous editions. Reports are available in a format ready for publication on the municipality’s website and presentation to the council.
What features should a participatory budget management system have?
Choosing a technology platform for participatory budget management is a decision that affects the course of the process for many years. It is worth knowing which features are critical and which are merely a nice addition. The table below compares the most important functional areas and indicates what to look for when evaluating a system.
| Functional area | Key features | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Project submission | Interactive form with validation, location map, attachments, draft versions | Higher quality submissions, fewer formal rejections |
| Verification | Workflow with task assignment, automatic formal verification, communication with applicant | Faster verification, full process documentation |
| Voting | Online with identity verification, anti-fraud mechanisms, hybrid mode (online + stationary) | Higher turnout, credible results |
| Project presentation | Interactive map, filtering, search, photos and descriptions | Informed voting by residents |
| Reporting | Automatic results, statistics, data export, edition comparison | Transparency, accountability, process improvement |
| Accessibility | WCAG 2.2, responsiveness, high-contrast mode, screen reader support | Legal requirement, process inclusivity |
| Security | Encryption (TLS 1.3), GDPR, audit trail, backup, penetration testing | Personal data protection, public trust |
| Customization | Municipality branding, regulation configuration, flexible voting rules | Adaptation to local needs |
| Integration | API for municipal systems, BIP export, email/SMS notifications | Consistency with existing municipal infrastructure |
A system that covers all these areas enables the municipality to conduct the participatory budget in a professional, efficient, and legally compliant manner. ARDVote was designed with full coverage of each of these areas in mind — from an interactive submission form to automatic results reporting.
Special attention should be paid to WCAG 2.2 compliance. From 2025, public entities are required to ensure digital accessibility of their services at the WCAG 2.2 AA level. This means that the participatory budget management system must be fully operable by keyboard, compatible with screen readers, provide adequate color contrast, and offer alternative descriptions for visual content. An inaccessible system is not just a legal violation — it is an exclusion from the democratic process of people with disabilities, who constitute approximately 12% of Poland’s population.
What does the ARDVote implementation process look like step by step?
Implementing a platform for participatory budget management is a process that raises justified questions on the part of the municipal office. How long will it take? Does it require specialized IT knowledge? What about existing data? ARDVote was designed so that the implementation process is as simple as possible and can be carried out without engaging the municipality’s own IT department.
Step one is needs analysis and configuration. The ARDVote team meets with the participatory budget coordinator at the municipal office to understand the specifics of the local process — regulations, district divisions, voting rules, and schedule. Based on this information, the platform is configured. This stage typically takes 1–2 weeks.
Step two is visual customization. The platform is adapted to the municipality’s visual identity — logo, color scheme, naming conventions. The public participatory budget page looks like an integral part of the municipal website, not an external tool. The resident does not need to know that ARDVote is behind the system — they see their municipality’s tool.
Step three is staff training. The participatory budget coordinator and subject-matter employees responsible for project verification undergo training on the administrative panel. Training covers: edition configuration, project management, verification, voting management, and report generation. ARDVote’s interface is designed so that a person without technical experience can operate it independently after a one-day training session.
Step four is acceptance testing. Before production launch, the municipality conducts tests — simulating project submissions, verification, and voting. This allows any customization needs to be identified and ensures the process runs as expected. Tests are carried out in a test environment, with no risk to production data.
Step five is production launch and support. After test acceptance, the platform is launched in production mode. The ARDVote team provides technical support throughout the entire duration of the participatory budget edition — from project submission to results publication. Support includes technical assistance, system performance monitoring, and incident response.
The total implementation time — from the first meeting to production launch — is typically 4–8 weeks. The SaaS model means the municipality incurs no costs for purchasing infrastructure or maintaining servers. System updates, data backup, and security monitoring are the provider’s responsibility.
What benefits does participatory budget automation bring?
The benefits of participatory budget digitization can be measured at three levels: operational (the municipal office), participatory (the residents), and strategic (the municipality as an organization).
At the operational level, automation eliminates or drastically reduces the most time-consuming tasks. Manual transcription of data from paper forms into spreadsheets gives way to automatic data collection in a database. Manual vote counting — to automatic real-time tallying. Printing hundreds of pages of reports — to a single click exporting data to PDF. In practice, automation allows the workload of municipal employees to be reduced by 60–80% compared to the traditional process. In a city of 100,000 residents, this is the equivalent of 2–3 full-time employees who can be reassigned to other tasks.
Financial savings are equally measurable. Eliminating printing (forms, ballot cards, informational posters), logistics (transporting materials to polling stations, organizing venues), and reducing employee working hours translates into savings of 40–70% of the costs of organizing a traditional edition. For a medium-sized city, this is 30,000–60,000 PLN annually, which can be directed toward increasing the participatory budget pool itself.
At the participatory level, the most important benefit is increased turnout. The experiences of Polish cities that have implemented online voting show a 60–120% increase in turnout in the first year after digitization. This increase is particularly pronounced among traditionally underrepresented groups: people aged 25–40 (professionally active, with limited time for municipal office visits), people with mobility impairments, and seniors using the help of family members to operate a computer.
Increased turnout translates into better representativeness of results. When only 5% of residents participate in voting, the result reflects the preferences of a narrow group of activists. When turnout rises to 15–20%, results become more representative of the actual needs of the entire community. Winning projects address the needs of a broader group of residents — which increases their acceptance and satisfaction with the process.
At the strategic level, automation provides the municipality with data that is unattainable in the traditional process. A digital system records not just the votes themselves, but also engagement patterns — which districts are most active, what categories of projects generate the most interest, how turnout changes between editions. This data enables the municipality to refine the process, better plan the information campaign, and make strategic decisions about resource allocation.
How does ARDVote ensure security and regulatory compliance?
The security of a participatory budget management system is a fundamental issue. The system processes personal data of residents (names, surnames, addresses, PESEL numbers), and voting results are binding for the municipality’s financial decisions. Any security gap poses a risk of privacy violation for thousands of people and undermining the credibility of the entire democratic process.
ARDVote employs a multi-layered security model covering protection at the infrastructure, application, and process levels.
At the infrastructure level, the platform is hosted in certified data centers within the European Union, ensuring compliance with GDPR requirements regarding data processing location. Communication between the user’s browser and the server is encrypted using TLS 1.3 protocol. Data at rest is encrypted with the AES-256 algorithm. Regular backups ensure data recoverability in case of failure.
At the application level, ARDVote implements voter identity verification mechanisms. The municipality can choose from several verification methods — from basic (PESEL number + residential address) to advanced (SMS code verification, integration with a trusted profile). The system detects anomalies suggesting manipulation attempts — multiple voting from a single device, mass voting in a short timeframe, unusual geographic patterns. Every operation in the system (project submission, verification status change, vote cast) is recorded in a full audit trail with date, time, and user identifier.
At the process level, ARDVote ensures separation of roles and permissions. The system administrator does not have access to voting data. The employee verifying projects does not see voting results during the voting period. Results are generated automatically — without the possibility of manual interference. This separation of functions minimizes the risk of internal manipulation.
GDPR compliance is built into the system’s architecture. Personal data is processed only to the extent necessary for conducting the participatory budget process. After the edition ends, voter data can be anonymized in accordance with the retention policy agreed upon with the municipality. Residents have the right to access their data, rectify it, and request its deletion — the system enables the exercise of these rights in compliance with GDPR requirements.
WCAG 2.2 compliance at the AA level means the platform is accessible to people with various types of disabilities. The interface is fully operable by keyboard, compatible with screen readers (JAWS, NVDA), and ensures adequate color contrast and font sizes. Forms have labels and instructions that are understandable to assistive technologies. Meeting WCAG 2.2 is not merely a checklist — it is an ongoing process, within which ARDVote is regularly tested for accessibility.
Which municipalities can benefit from the ARDVote system?
The question of “which municipalities” can benefit from a participatory budget management platform is a question about the system’s scale and flexibility. In the case of ARDVote, the answer is clear — the platform is designed to serve municipalities of any size, from small rural communes with a few thousand residents to metropolitan areas.
Cities with county rights have a statutory obligation to organize a participatory budget. There are 66 of them in Poland — from Warsaw (1.8 million residents) to Sopot (36,000). For these cities, ARDVote is a tool that allows them to professionally fulfill their statutory obligation while increasing turnout and reducing operational costs. Larger cities value the system’s scalability — the ability to handle hundreds of projects and tens of thousands of voters simultaneously without performance degradation.
Urban and urban-rural municipalities that organize the participatory budget voluntarily constitute a growing segment. For them, ARDVote is a way to professionalize the process without building their own IT infrastructure. The SaaS model means that a municipality with a budget of 20–50 million PLN can use the same platform as a large city — without investing in servers, administrators, and programmers.
Rural municipalities are a segment that is just discovering the participatory budget. Although the scale is smaller (pools of 50,000–200,000 PLN), the need for resident engagement is equally real. For rural municipalities, ARDVote offers a simplified configuration — without district divisions, with fewer project categories, but with full online voting and reporting functionality.
It is worth mentioning one more segment — auxiliary units (neighborhoods, village councils, districts) that run their own participatory budgets within funds allocated from the municipal budget. ARDVote can handle this process independently or as a module integrated with the participatory budget at the municipality-wide level.
Configuration flexibility also means that ARDVote can support different process variants — voting on projects from a single city-wide pool, voting divided by districts with separate pools, mixed voting (some projects city-wide, some district-level), and even priority voting (project ranking instead of binary yes/no selection).
How much does it cost to implement a participatory budget system?
The cost of implementing a participatory budget management system is one of the first questions decision-makers in municipal offices ask. And rightly so — in local government, every zloty spent on tools is a zloty that could go directly to residents. That is why it is important to view costs in the context of the savings that process digitization generates.
The SaaS model on which ARDVote is based changes the cost structure compared to the traditional approach. Instead of a large, one-time investment in purchasing licenses and infrastructure (servers, databases, security certificates), the municipality pays a predictable subscription that includes access to the platform, hosting, updates, backup, and technical support. There are no hidden costs associated with maintaining servers, hiring IT administrators, or purchasing SSL certificates.
The subscription cost varies depending on the size of the municipality — measured by the number of residents eligible to participate in the participatory budget. A rural municipality with 5,000 residents pays proportionally less than a city of 200,000. This scalable pricing structure makes ARDVote accessible even to smaller local governments with limited budgets.
To fairly assess the implementation cost, it is worth comparing it with the cost of the traditional process. In a city of 80,000–100,000 residents, the typical budget for organizing one edition of the participatory budget in the paper-based mode includes: printing materials (forms, posters, cards) — 15,000–25,000 PLN, organizing polling stations (venue rental, delegating employees) — 20,000–40,000 PLN, manual data processing (data entry, verification, counting) — 15,000–30,000 PLN, information campaign (printed materials) — 10,000–20,000 PLN. In total: 60,000–115,000 PLN annually. In the digital model, most of these costs disappear or are radically reduced.
An additional financial argument is the possibility of obtaining co-financing. Digitization of public services is one of the priorities of European funds in the 2021–2027 perspective (European Funds for Digital Development programs, regional operational programs). Implementing a participatory budget management system may qualify for co-financing under priority axes related to e-government and digital transformation of public administration.
The investment in a participatory budget management system typically pays for itself in the very first full edition — thanks to operational savings, higher turnout (which strengthens the legitimacy of the process), and better quality data for planning future editions. Over a 3–5 year perspective, cumulative savings far exceed the subscription cost.
How does ARDVote impact citizen engagement?
Citizen engagement is not a matter of goodwill — it is the result of designing a system that minimizes barriers and maximizes the value of participation. ARDVote impacts engagement on three levels: accessibility, transparency, and a sense of agency.
Accessibility in the technical dimension means the system works on every device — smartphone, tablet, laptop, desktop computer. The responsive interface adapts to screen size. The resident does not need to install a dedicated application or have a specific operating system. A web browser and internet connection are sufficient. WCAG 2.2 compliance extends this accessibility to people with disabilities — visual, auditory, motor, and cognitive.
Accessibility in the temporal dimension means that voting is available around the clock for the entire voting period — typically 7–14 days. The resident does not need to adjust their schedule to the opening hours of a polling station. They can cast their vote on the bus on the way to work, in the evening after putting the children to sleep, on a Sunday afternoon. This flexibility is crucial for professionally active individuals, parents of young children, and people with limited mobility.
Process transparency builds trust. In ARDVote, the resident sees the status of their project at every stage — submitted, under verification, accepted, rejected (with justification). They see the list of all projects admitted to voting with full descriptions and budgets. After voting, they see results in real time — project rankings, vote counts, the percentage of the pool used by winning projects. This transparency eliminates suspicions of manipulation and builds the credibility of the entire process.
A sense of agency is perhaps the most important factor. A resident who submitted a project and sees it gaining votes experiences real influence on their surroundings. A resident who voted for a winning project and sees it being implemented — a playground is being built, a cycling path is being constructed, a park is being revitalized — receives confirmation that their vote mattered. This experience creates a positive feedback loop: participation leads to results, results motivate renewed participation.
ARDVote also supports this loop at the communication level. The system automatically sends notifications about important events — opening of project submissions, approval of a submission, start of voting, announcement of results. The resident does not need to independently monitor the process — the system informs them at the right moments, gently encouraging engagement.
Data from cities using digital platforms for participatory budget management confirms this effect. In the first year after implementing an online system, turnout increases by an average of 60–120%. In subsequent editions, growth stabilizes but remains at a level 40–80% higher than the last paper-based edition. Moreover, the number of submitted projects grows — residents who see that their ideas are taken seriously are more willing to engage in subsequent editions.
How does ARDVote support municipalities in managing the participatory budget?
The participatory budget is more than an administrative procedure — it is a promise the municipality makes to its residents. A promise that their voice matters, that their ideas will be taken seriously, that public money will be spent according to their will. To keep this promise, a tool is needed that meets both the technical requirements and the expectations of citizens.
ARDVote, a solution created by ARDURA Consulting, is a SaaS platform that handles the entire participatory budget process — from project submissions to voting and reporting. The system ensures full WCAG 2.2 compliance, the highest security standards, and scalability adapted to municipalities of any size. ARDURA Consulting’s experience in building IT systems — confirmed by 211+ completed projects and a network of over 500 senior technologists — translates into the reliability and professionalism of the ARDVote platform.
Want to implement a modern participatory budget? Contact us or visit ardvote.pl — we will prepare a system demo tailored to the needs of your municipality.
Frequently asked questions about the participatory budget and ARDVote
Is the participatory budget mandatory for all municipalities?
Not for all. The obligation to organize a participatory budget applies only to cities with county rights (66 cities in Poland) — this follows from Art. 5a, Section 5 of the Municipal Self-Government Act, introduced by the 2018 amendment. The minimum pool of funds is 0.5% of the municipality’s expenditures from the last financial report. Other municipalities — urban, urban-rural, and rural — may organize the participatory budget voluntarily, on the basis of a municipal council resolution. In practice, more and more local governments are doing so, seeing the benefits in terms of resident engagement and better alignment of investments with real needs.
How does the ARDVote system verify voter identity?
ARDVote offers several levels of identity verification that the municipality can select according to its needs. Basic verification relies on identification data (PESEL number, residential address, apartment number). Advanced verification may include an SMS code sent to the phone number associated with the resident or integration with a trusted profile (ePUAP). The system also checks whether the person is eligible to vote — based on registration or the voter registry. Anti-fraud mechanisms detect attempts at multiple voting, voting from suspicious IP addresses, and other anomalies.
Does ARDVote support hybrid voting (online and stationary)?
Yes. ARDVote is designed with a hybrid scenario in mind, where online voting is supplemented by stationary polling points. At stationary points, a municipal employee can help the resident cast their vote in the system — using a dedicated terminal or tablet. A vote cast at a stationary point enters the same system as a vote cast online, ensuring uniform processing and reporting. The hybrid mode is particularly important for elderly individuals and those who do not feel comfortable with technology.
How long does a typical participatory budget process take?
The entire participatory budget cycle — from announcing the call for projects to publishing results — typically takes 3–5 months. Project submission is 4–6 weeks, verification 4–8 weeks (depending on the number of submissions), the information campaign 2–3 weeks, and voting 7–14 days. ARDVote shortens the verification phase (thanks to automated formal checks) and eliminates the time spent counting votes (results are generated automatically immediately after voting closes). In practice, this means shortening the entire process by 3–4 weeks compared to the paper-based mode.
Is residents’ personal data safe in the ARDVote system?
Yes — personal data security is a design priority for ARDVote. Data is encrypted both in transit (TLS 1.3) and at rest (AES-256). The platform is hosted in certified data centers within the EU. Data access is restricted according to the principle of least privilege — each user sees only the data necessary to perform their task. After the edition ends, voter data can be anonymized in accordance with the retention policy agreed upon with the municipality. The system meets GDPR requirements and is regularly subjected to security audits.
Can ARDVote be integrated with existing municipal systems?
ARDVote offers an API enabling integration with municipal systems — including geographic information systems (GIS), the Public Information Bulletin (BIP), email and SMS notification systems, and project management platforms. Integration with GIS allows precise assignment of projects to locations on the municipality’s map. Integration with BIP enables automatic publication of participatory budget information. The scope of integration is determined individually with each municipality at the implementation stage.
What pricing model does ARDVote operate under?
ARDVote operates under a SaaS (Software as a Service) model with an annual subscription dependent on the size of the municipality. The subscription covers the full range of services: access to the platform, hosting, updates, data backup, technical support, and training. There are no additional fees for the number of voters, number of projects, or number of administrative users. The SaaS model eliminates the need for IT infrastructure investment and guarantees predictable costs. Detailed pricing is prepared individually — contact us to receive an offer tailored to your municipality.