2022 Award "Best Practice in Citizen Participation"

The “Compromisos” (Commitments) policy began in Buenos Aires at the beginning of 2016, maintaining its continuity to the present. For its implementation, several successful antecedents from other parts of the world served as inspiration and were considered and adapted to the City of Buenos Aires.

The objective of the Commitments is, on the one hand, to strengthen trust in institutions and promote a more open, transparent and efficient government and, on the other hand, to order management by aligning the areas towards major common goals.

The Commitments improve the evaluation and monitoring of participatory democracy mechanisms: the initiative involves citizen participation ex-ante, during and ex-post. Many of the committed goals are based on proposals made by neighbors in local meetings.

The Commitments are made in 4 phases: formulation of goals, compliance planning, follow-up of each initiative, and citizen monitoring.

Communication and citizen participation are key factors of the Commitments. Through the institutional website (https://www.buenosaires.gob.ar/compromisos (External link)), official communication channels, and various meetings of the Head of Government with neighbors, accounts are permanently rendered on the progress of each Commitment, statistics more relevant, expected and effective trajectories, estimated impacts as well as the difficulties encountered, the challenges to come and the explanation of how they will be resolved.

Various quantitative and qualitative research studies have shown the effectiveness of the Commitments both to strengthen citizen trust in institutions and to improve government organization and promote effective citizen participation.

More information:

 https://www.buenosaires.gob.ar/compromisos (External link)

https://youtu.be/GkgQFGTWd8I (External link)