Local Roundup | August 2024

Here’s our monthly roundup of updates from the OGP Local community for August 2024. If you missed any of the previous roundups, you can find them here!

ADVANCING OPEN GOVERNMENT PROCESSES 

• Banská Bystrica (Slovakia) co-created its second OGP action plan for 2024–2026, focusing on expanding the use of CoLaboratory, a platform to co-create policies such as the Housing Development Programme.
• Córdoba (Argentina) invited citizens to give feedback on their second OGP action plan proposal.
• Quito (Ecuador) held six consultation workshops for co-creating their second OGP action plan for 2024–2027, collecting proposals from more than 200 participants around six themes. 
• Glasgow is running a survey to collect ideas from citizens, stakeholders, and third parties for its OGP Action Plan 2024-2027.
• Béni Mellal-Khénifra (Morocco) started to implement its commitment “Public Innovations Labs” by holding the first and second Collective Intelligence Laboratory in partnership with USAID and the National Democratic Institute. 
• Antigua (Guatemala) is set to start the co-creation of its first OGP action plan.
• Pristina (Kosovo) will conduct voting for projects proposed by residents as part of its participatory budgeting process. 
• In Medellín (Colombia), 117 entrepreneurs and business owners will receive training and financial support to strengthen their businesses as a result of the Participatory Budgeting process. 
• In Navarra (Spain) a new mobile office will travel through rural areas to bring administrative services closer to the community.
• Kakamega (Kenya) adopted the public participation and civic education policy to promote access to information and invest in capacity development for citizens.
• The City of Zagreb (Croatia) has launched the web application eSavjetovanje, a system to digitize and improve the process of public consultation on city decisions. 
• The city of Goiás (Brazil) has opened the registration for the Citizenship Ambassadors, a program based on the principles of open government, to promote civic education and encourage civil society to actively participate in state policies.
• Valongo (Portugal) has adopted the “Municipal Climate Action Plan” to address the impacts of climate change. The plan’s implementation will involve Parish Councils, companies, environmental associations, local authorities, and other stakeholders.
• Open Data Manchester (UK) developed principles to guide the responsible use of automated decision-making (ADM) systems, powered by AI and algorithms, by actively involving citizens in the process.
• Participation in budget allocations is important, as is participation in fiscal oversight. This new publication from the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) reviews 60 cases of how citizens can take part in fiscal control by public audit institutions.

AMPLIFYING COMMUNITY VOICES

• OGP Local members in Morocco came together at a workshop organized by the Ministry of Interior and the Association of Moroccan Regions to share their knowledge, successes, and challenges, and learn from each other’s open government experiences.
• Reformers from Rio Branco (Uruguay) met the Municipality of Curridabat (Costa Rica) and learned from their experience on the “Community Gardens Project” which focuses on developing laboratories to teach organic vegetable cultivation in public parks.
• Kaduna (Nigeria) assessed the current state and impact of the State Fiscal Transparency, Accountability and Sustainability program in Kaduna and explored strategies for sustaining reforms. 
• Machakos County (Kenya) engaged young people in the creation of the Machakos Youth Service, the Machakos Youth Fund, and various youth employment opportunities. 
• The Dean Initiative selected six students from the University of Abuja (Nigeria) as finalists for the “Student Open Gov Fellowship,” a training on open government for young leaders. 

PARTNER COLLABORATIONS AND OPPORTUNITIES

• IRI’s Technology and Democracy team is looking for local governments with experience in digitalization to engage in a short co-creation session for the development of the IRI’s Local Government Digitalization Playbook. 
• The Municipality of Quito (Ecuador)  is participating in the 2024 “OpenCities-Training in the use of collaborative data in local cartographies” program. This initiative, led by the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT) and supported by OGP Local and CoMapper, aims to improve disaster management, territorial planning, and geospatial information sharing. 
• Yerevan (Armenia) began implementing a project to boost citizen involvement in decision-making related to the green transition, developed under People Powered’s Climate Democracy Accelerator program.

MEET THE OPEN GOV CHALLENGE

For “International Youth Day”, we featured initiatives to involve youth in decision-making from OGP Local members like Quintana Roo (Mexico), which co-created and implemented a protocol to better engage with youth and Carthage (Tunisia), which is establishing youth ambassadors in each neighborhood to enhance youth participation in municipal activities and decisions.