Description

According to Latinobarómetro (2018), only 22% of citizens in Latin America have trust in the public institutions. Countries such as Brazil (7%), El Salvador (10%), Peru (13%), Guatemala (15%) and Mexico (16%) register the lowest levels of institutional confidence. Colombia, for its part, stands at the average of the countries of Latin America (22%), facing a very big challenge in the strengthening of citizen confidence in the state institutions. This challenge, within the context of a city such as Bogotá, increases when 86% of citizens consider that over half of public servants are corrupt and only 15% trust the city's government (Corpovisionarios, 2018).

In this sense, the District Citizens' Oversight Committee with the aim of helping to overcome the challenges that the city has against the low levels of institutional trust and non-fulfilment of commitments that public institutions and citizens agree in spaces for participation, designed and implemented a methodology to carry out monitoring of the commitments that communities and public agencies establish in spaces for citizen participation, whose goal is to strengthen access to public information, ongoing accountability and social control in the city.

Within the methodology designed by the District Citizens' Oversight Committee, is the interactive platform for the monitoring of commitments between citizens and public agencies called "COLIBRÍ", which is an instrument that administrates and monitors the commitments agreed by public agencies and citizens. This is an interactive platform that connects different citizen participation tools within a single ecosystem of participatory democracy. COLIBRÍ groups together in a single place the commitments agreed by public organisations and citizens in different organised and non-organised citizens' participation spaces.

Within the COLIBRÍ platform all the citizens and all the public agencies interested can consult the commitments that are being generated in the city. These commitments can be checked by simple filters such as the name of the organisation, government sector, issues, specific geo-referenced points in Bogotá.

The platform also manages to process the information on all the commitments agreed in the city and generates data related with the behaviour of the fulfilment of the commitments agreed by the government.

The application of the interactive platform for the monitoring of commitments between citizens and public agencies COLIBRÍ has reached its main goal insofar as it has achieved:

• The application of the platform in over 35 regulated and non-regulated spaces for citizen participation connecting, in a diverse ecosystem, various ways of participating and generating proposals for change to specific problems in the public management of the city.

• The signing up of 460 commitments, of which 169 have been fulfilled on the dates established between citizens and public agencies.

• The active participation of over 900 citizens.

• The participation of over 40 public agencies in the city.

• The management of social disputes in issues of security, environment, education, health, infrastructure, mobility and public space, among others.

• Free and democratic access of the platform.

• Access to public information, the promotion of transparency in the management of public agencies and ongoing and real-time accountability.

• Generate knowledge related with: 1) the dynamics of citizen participation in the city; 2) the issues that according to citizens require changes in the city; 3) the territorial concentration of commitments agreed between citizens and public agencies; and 4) the behaviour of the fulfilment of commitments by the public agencies.

This experience is unique in the countries of Ibero-America. For the first time, a city of Ibero-America has a practical tool for participatory democracy that enables citizens and public agencies to carry out the monitoring of the commitments that are established in spaces for citizen participation.

More information:

https://oidp.net/distinction/en/record02.2019.php