2023 Award "Best Practice in Citizen Participation"

17th Edition

Phase 6 of 7

Publication Preparation 18/09/2023 - 06/11/2023

Process phases

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Valle del Cauca: School for Open and Collaborative Government

Official proposal

29/05/2023 12:59

In order to strengthen leadership and citizen oversight capacities, the Government of Valle del Cauca launched the School for Open Government (Escuela de Gobierno Abierto y Colaborativo or EGA in Spanish), a space that provides tools for Valle del Cauca citizens to exercise social control. Highlighting the importance of these scenarios for the communities, Governor Roldán indicated that "this School is one more step in the work we do hand in hand with the communities, it is our contribution from the department to a new model of governance in compliance with the commitments made by Colombia with the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development".

Valle del Cauca, for the first time, is part of the IV National Plan for Open Government, which established commitments such as the implementation of the School of Open Government and the Valle del Cauca Dialogues, a strategy for citizen participation that reaches every corner of the department, and the programmes of Active Transparency and Open Data of Valle del Cauca; this means taking a step forward, an international step, to say that Valle del Cauca is prepared to take on the new governance that the world is proposing.

The director of the Office for Transparency in Public Management, Óscar Vivas A., pointed out that the School offers 4 modules: Open Data, Transparency and Oversight, Information and Communications Technology, and Citizen Participation and Accountability.

The Governor, referring to the processes being promoted by the Transparency Office, said that they are of particular importance, as she made clear in the framework of the final of the Overcoming Poverty Award, 'Territories on the road to development', which is carried out by Colombia Líder, in partnership with the Konrad Adenauer Foundation in Colombia (KAS), USAID Colombia through the Responsible Governance programme, Asobancaria, Fasecolda, UNDP Colombia and Telefónica Movistar, along with its Foundation.

The EGA is the new commitment to open government, framed in the international debate on transparency and access to public information, its great impact has been in democratic governments under the principles of transparency, accountability and participation; the mechanism that has allowed it to develop are the New Information and Communication Technologies (NICTs), along with online government initiatives, transparency portals, open data and policies for the promotion of citizen participation.

The EGA joins the work that the Government of Valle del Cauca has been carrying out with the Leadership School, which between 2021 and 2022 has trained more than 5,000 citizens of Valle del Cauca. The purpose of the EGA is to strengthen the capacity for citizen participation and social control of public affairs, promote citizen oversight and strengthen the processes of transparency, integrity and access to information on public management. Inclusion was achieved because we have the participation of 25 people with severe hearing loss (extreme deafness) and 2 deaf speakers, who have carried out bilingual processes, as well as simultaneous translation at events, complying with one of the requirements of Annex 1 accessibility to information - Resolution 1519 of 2020.

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