2025 Award "Best Practice in Citizen Participation"

19th Edition

Phase 4 of 8

Results open vote 28/03/2025 - 31/03/2025

Process phases

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Comunidad Valenciana: Citizen audit of the regional government's public policies

Official proposal

04/02/2025 12:53

The Citizen Audit is an innovative experience that promotes the active participation of citizens as evaluators of public policies and services.

In 2022, the Valencian Regional Government, together with the Institute for Innovation and Knowledge Management (INGENIO), a joint center of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) and the Polytechnic University of Valencia, are launching a pilot project for an Engaged Citizen Audit, a new instrument for evaluating and monitoring public policies and services. This initiative represents an innovative experience with a focus on the active participation of citizens. In this way, they become evaluators of the policies and services offered by the Generalitat, with the aim of assessing them and proposing improvements, taking into account socio-environmental dimensions.

The project involves the co-design and implementation of a methodological proposal for the evaluation of public policies of the Generalitat by the citizens themselves.

The process consists of four phases:

First, a training process is carried out for the team that will drive the public service to be audited.

After this training process, the audit team is selected from among the citizens in a parameterized way and by lot. For the second citizen audit project, carried out in 2024, more than a thousand applications were received.

The third stage of the process consists of facilitating the participatory process through various workshops, both with the audit team and with the driving team. Special dedication is required to translate the complexity of the bureaucratic process to be evaluated, providing standard questionnaires that allow the audit team to assess all aspects of the service, policy or process to be audited, such as equity, diversity, gender perspective, sustainability, territorial diversity within the Valencian territory and other aspects of relevance for each service or process. Finally, a meeting is held between the two teams to share progress on the audit project.

The last stage consists of compiling the improvements and proposals for their implementation and transformation of public policy in a citizens' report.