“Citizen bus around citizens” in rural Brieselang

Learning points

CitizenBus Brieselang benefitted a lot from early contacts with similar associations in NorthRhine-Westphalia and by learning from lessons learnt elsewhere. Nevertheless, it still found that there were considerable challenges in overcoming legal, financial and cultural barriers.

In the developing phase of the initiative we had to find answers to issues such as:

•  How to be taken seriously by public agencies?
•  How to convince funders?
• How to convince licensing agencies?
• How to get other volunteers and users on board?
•  How to deal with criticism?
• Most importantly, how not to get discouraged when we didn’t appear to be making  progress.

After more than two years of the project, we can say that co-delivery of public services by citizens does work but it takes a long time to become accepted by professional service providers. It is also important to be realistic as to what volunteers are willing to do and are able to achieve. In particular, professional support with project management is vital at all stages (design, planning, delivery and sustainability). Although the public position is always that ideas from citizens about becoming more  engaged are always welcome, there is a long journey from being a perceived as a “trouble maker” to being accepted as a genuine partner of public agencies. 

Günter Lüder

Klaus Werth

Günter Lüder and Klaus Werth provided Governance International with this case study on 3 September 2010.