Argentina
01-12-2015
01-12-2019
13th.
With its experience for Citizen empowerment for participation in decision making processes, the Municipality of Cordoba, in Argentina, is one of the finalists of the 13th edition of the IOPD Award "Best Practice in Citizen Participation".
The idea is to connect different participation tools in order to create a participatory democracy "ecosystem".
The aim to connect different participation tools was achieved through the creation of the Cordoba, Social Capital concept. Three processes have been developed to achieve it:
The political decision to internalize citizen participation in every areas of the government, promoting and urging so the neighbors' opinion is considered and taken into account when designing and implementing public policies.
Democratization and hierarchization of the public institutions that depend on the municipality. Work has been carried out on institutional regularization and the processes that are carried out to assure transparency, free participation and formal organization of the neighbors.
Understanding the city as a whole and promoting the concept of Governance, the city tends to include different institutions, more than 2 600 (clubs, civil organizations, non gouvernemental, cultural, social, educational, religious, etc) so they can participate into decision making processes.
The basis of the experiment is its articulation with other stakeholders. Therefore, the city looks for invite and encourage them to be part of those processes from the moment ideas are created. Moreover, tools have been provided to facilitate participation and to invite to commit to governmental actions.
The innovation of this experience resides in the fact that Cordoba created its own specific label "Cordoba, Social Capital" from its tools for citizen participation and base its design of public policies on the empowerment of the citizens for participation in decision making processes.
With the creation of such a participatory "ecosystem", having for main goal to promote governance and human development, Cordoba is positioning itself on a national and international level. Therefore, Cordoba internalize the necessity to promote participatory processes and strengthen institutions that depend on the municipality and tend to incorporate many of these institutions in decision making processes in various subjects within the competence of the Municipal State.
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