Abstract.

 Participatory budgeting has become a popular application of e-participation in Germany. About one hundred local governments haveexecuted participatory budgets in the last year. Citizen participation inpublic budget planning is not formally requested by law in Germany.Also, the legal procedures to settle the budget of a local governments arenot defined in detail. In consequence, different procedures exist, whichlead also to different implementations of procedures in participatory bud-geting. In this contribution, process models for (participatory) budget-ing are investigated and a reference process model for traditional budgetplanning and online participatory budgeting is developed. Reference pro-cess models support cities and municipalities to assess the added valueand to estimate the human and financial resources to execute partic-ipatory budgeting. Hence, comprehensive reference process models arehelpful instruments for local governments to decide whether to performparticipatory budgeting or not. They are also contributing to successfule-participation endeavors by providing conceptual models (blueprints)for scoping the activities to engage with citizens from the beginning of planning till the evaluation of impact and outcomes