2024 Award "Best Practice in Citizen Participation"
18th Edition
São Paulo: Citizen Budget
The City of São Paulo is a pioneer in the area of open government, being one of the first local governments to join the Open Government Partnership in 2016. Ensuring the promotion of participatory democracy and citizen engagement in the formulation of public policies has been a decades-long commitment in the capital of São Paulo, even more so given its enormous socio-territorial diversity, manifested in a population of 11.5 million inhabitants.
The institutionalisation of the Open Government area in 2014, with the creation of the Intersecretarial Open Government Committee (CIGA-SP), and the city\'s subsequent entry into the OGP, led to greater institutionalisation and coordination of open government in São Paulo, making it possible to improve practices of social participation, transparency and responsiveness.
Through the Open Government Action Plans, several deliveries were made, including the Citizens Budget, the structuring of a participatory stage in the budget planning of the City of São Paulo in a territorialised way in the 32 administrative zones of São Paulo, called Subprefectures.
São Paulo had already experienced efforts to include social participation in the public budget, but the Citizens Budget allowed this process to be carried out in a structured way, with greater legitimacy and guaranteed transparency. Co-created with the population in 2019 and improved with their support in 2024, the process innovated at various stages, adapting to the city's challenges and the importance of including and engaging as many people as possible.
The allocation of R$320 million (almost 60 million euros) equally distributed in 32 territories for deliberation by the population, implied citizen empowerment, greater legitimisation of the process, and a sense of belonging for everyone in building the city of the future.
Carrying out the Citizens Budget on a territorial basis was in line with the expectations of decentralisation and the promotion of local development, and guaranteed the inclusion of citizens and the targeting of efforts to the needs of each region. The role given to participatory councils in prioritising proposals and talking to the population has helped to strengthen this participatory body, while at the same time distributing to them a workload that would not have been easily manageable for the public administration.
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