Development and follow-up process
The 5th National Open Government Action Plan of Uruguay was co-created through a process that involved the participation of civil society organizations, academia, the private sector, international organizations, and public organizations from different areas, state branches, and levels of government.
Design and Leadership
The process was designed, agreed and led by the Open Government Working Group, which for the first time since 2016 - the year in which it was expanded in its integration by Decree N°357/2016 of the Executive Branch-, had the participation of representatives of public organizations from the three state branches, in addition to maintaining the participation of the representation of departmental governments and civil society. Agesic, in its role as an articulator, carried out the different activities of the co-creation process.
As in previous cycles and as part of a continuous improvement process, the lessons learned and recommendations made by the Independent Review Mechanism (IRM or MRI for its acronym in Spanish) were integrated into the design. In addition, and due to the change of scenario brought about by the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic in the country in March 2020, the design of the co-creation process had to be adapted to this new context in order to develop it in a virtual modality.
The redesign of the process sought to transform the challenges brought about by the context of the Pandemic into an opportunity to a) diversify and broaden the participation of citizens and public institutions; b) strengthen the plan and the co-creation process as instruments to promote the integration of the principles of transparency, accountability and citizen participation in the different public policies and areas of the Government. The development of this fifth cycle made it possible to substantially increase the number of people, institutions, and organizations involved, as well as the number of proposals and ideas received in its participatory instances.
Below are some of the established guidelines and criteria.
General characteristics of the process
- An entirely virtual process.
- It combined the use of synchronous participation tools (dialogue tables and workshops via Zoom) with asynchronous digital citizen participation tools such as the proposal management and public consultation platform.
- It integrated induction workshops and support guides to facilitate the informed participation and the propositional capacity of the multiple stakeholders in each of the participation instances.
- It incorporated Uruguayan Sign Language (LSU for its acronym in Spanish) interpreters to the dialogue sessions and virtual co-creation workshops to guarantee the possibility of equal participation of deaf people who participated in the different stages of the process.
Each of the roundtables was designed with the objective of achieving a decentralized, broad, and diverse participation process, placing special emphasis on the integration of the roundtables, as well as on their contents.
Plan implementation term
- The plan's implementation term was increased by consensus to 3 years (2021 - 2024) in order to promote the adoption of ambitious commitments and facilitate the consolidation of the initiatives undertaken by public institutions.
Prioritization criteria for commitments, among other aspects
- To contemplate the potential impact of initiatives to substantially advance in the process towards an Open State.
- That all commitments are co-created and generated from demands identified in different areas.
- To promote a cross-cutting approach that involves, depending on feasibility, the participation of several institutions related to the same topic in an articulated manner.
- To incorporate the gender perspective and the inclusion of the intersectional perspective in the commitments.
Stages
The process was developed in 4 stages and included the standards of participation and co-creation of the Open Government Partnership.
Description of each stage
- Stage 1 – Generation of proposals: The objective was to identify ideas and proposals that could be integrated into the plan. Two types of activities were developed during this stage: 1) Induction talks and workshops to prepare people to participate in the process. 2) Implementation of participation mechanisms, the first one through an online tool and the second through virtual dialogue and working tables.
- Stage 2 - Systematization and prioritization: All the ideas and proposals that emerged from the dialogue roundtables and the digital citizen participation platform were systematized and their viability was analyzed according to the criteria defined by each of the public institutions involved.
- Stage 3 - Co-creation of commitments and public consultation: The objective of this stage was to develop feasible proposals into commitments. To accomplish this, the public institutions generated a first version of the initiative and two participation mechanisms were established to generate the final commitments:
1) Co-creation workshops: developed with the aim of improving the commitments that would later be published for public consultation. In these workshops, public institutions presented their initiatives and received contributions from civil society organizations, academia, or the private sector. Seven virtual co-creation workshops were held.
2) Public consultation: Once the co-creation workshops were completed, the draft sheets of all the commitments were published for public consultation on the Digital Citizen Participation Platform.
- Stage 4 – Approval and publication of the plan: Once the Public Consultation was completed, the final version of the document of the 5th National Open Government Action Plan was generated and validated by the authorities of the public institutions responsible for the commitments contained therein. Finally, the plan was submitted to the Presidency of the Republic for its approval through the Executive Branch Decree.
All documents of the process and action plan are published in Gub. uy/gobierno-abierto, to start the implementation stage of the plan.
Follow-up process
The 5th National Open Government Action Plan shall be subject to a public follow-up and monitoring process that will include different stages, mechanisms, and tools, as approved by consensus by the Open Government Working Group.
All commitments will be published in the Open Government Viewpoint, and the representative mentors of each institution shall be responsible for updating the status of each one of the goals.
Semi-annual follow-up reports, 2 national self-assessment reports, 2 monitoring roundtables, and 1 accountability roundtable will be conducted. All information will be published in Gub. uy/gobierno-abierto and in the National Catalogue of Open Data.