My e-Participation Story | Page 21

I have been enhancing and maintaining this website for years. Since good communication between local authorities and citizens is of great importance, numerous tools have been created for citizens to actively participate in the work of local government. Unfortunately, in May 2014 catastrophic floods struck Serbia, including the town of Ljig, leaving many inhabitants without homes, electricity and water, and cutting them from the rest of the world. Crisis situation has been introduced, everything collapsed, households suffered from huge damages. Citizens could not reach relevant bodies to report the damage. Communal and construction inspectors worked hard every day to visit every single household that was damaged, but it was not possible to cover everything. within 48 hours and identify the problem. Having seen the difficulties that the local inspectors had been facing I went from house to a house, as a volunteer, in the most affected areas of the Ljig municipality, collected data on the damage and sent them online through the System 48 along with the photos from the field. In three days I sent 54 requests, while there were 80 requests in total submitted through this online system that were received and processed by the inspectors within the shortest possible time. I believe that this online tool proved extremely valuable in this crisis situation and I strive to further improve it so that citizens could adequately use it in resolving everyday problems. One of the fortunate circumstances in this misfortune was the System 48 hours which I have posted on the official portal of Ljig municipality (http://ljig. info/48sati/). On this portal citizens can report any problem they have and the local authorities are obliged to go out to the field � 21