Action plan – São Paulo, Brazil, 2021 – 2024

At-a-Glance

Duration

October 2024

Date Submitted

24th September 2021

Foreword(s)

In 2014, São Paulo institutionalized the open government agenda through the creation of the São Paulo Aberta initiative (currently the Supervision for Open Government Affairs) and the Open Government Intersecretarial Committee of the Municipality of São Paulo (CIGA-SP), responsible for disseminating, articulating and fostering the concepts and actions of open government in the Municipality. And, in 2016, the municipality joined the Open Government PartnershipThe Open Government Partnership (OGP) is a multi-stakeholder initiative focused on improving government transparency, ensuring opportunities for citizen participation in public matters, and strengthen... More pilot program for Local Governments and, through the institution of the Shared Management Forum – FGC (our Multi-stakeholder ForumRegular dialogue between government and civil society is a core element of OGP participation. It builds trust, promotes joint problem-solving, and empowers civil society to influence the design, imple...), has co-created the Action Plans.

The co-creation of the 3rd Open Government Action Plan started with the formalization of a new FGC, formed by eight civil society organizations and eight government organizations. To this end, a schedule was established with biweekly meetings to define the mission, vision, and strategic objectives, and then the design of the participative process to build the Plan, contemplating eight macro steps. 

To meet the recommendations of the latest Independent Evaluation Mechanism report, the construction methodology was improved and incorporated a stage of participatory workshops with citizens, specific meetings of the FGC to refine the proposed commitments and the respective milestones, and another stage of technical and legal analysis to anticipate possible impediments to implementation and rule out the need to change the document after the conclusion of the process.

Once these steps are completed and the Action Plan is submitted, the Shared Management Forum will create a working group for each commitmentOGP commitments are promises for reform co-created by governments and civil society and submitted as part of an action plan. Commitments typically include a description of the problem, concrete action..., detailing the actions to implement each milestone, as well as the indicators for monitoring, and will continue following up through periodic meetings. The Forum will also propose and carry out communication and engagement initiatives to get more actors involved in the implementation and monitoring of the actions resulting from the Action Plan.

Open Government Challenges, Opportunities and Strategic Vision

This subsection details the Open Government Strategic Vision in your local area that should guide the commitments for the action plan period.

What is the long-term vision for open government in your context and jurisdiction?

The municipality of São Paulo has 12 million inhabitants distributed over 32 administrative regions characterized, as the Subprefeituras, by cultural diversity and socioeconomic inequality. Promoting the creation of public policies in such a diverse, unequal context – with mechanisms that guarantee the broad and effective participation of the population – is a great challenge. 

To face this scenario, the strategic vision of open government intends that the entire community of São Paulo recognizes, benefits from and is collectively responsible for transparent, participatory, responsive and innovative public policies.

What are the achievements in open government to date (for example, recent open government reforms)?

Some of the recent open government achievements for the São Paulo community are a result of the implementation of the 2nd Open Government Action Plan, among them:

• Reformulation of the TransparencyAccording to OGP’s Articles of Governance, transparency occurs when “government-held information (including on activities and decisions) is open, comprehensive, timely, freely available to the pub... More Portal: modernization of the Portal with the expansion of the information made available, greater accessibility of the mechanisms for public consultations, better navigability, and easier access to the other City Hall information systems.
• Participe+ Portal: created from CONSUL – free software developed by the Madrid City Hall, the Participe+ portal hosts the main participative online processes of the City Hall. Until the submission of this Action Plan, 62 processes were carried out and counted over 40.000 participations.
• Reformulation of the elaboration process of the Annual Budget Law Project: Since 2020, citizens can send budget proposals to the 32 Sub districts of the city. The prioritized proposals go to a popular vote on Participe+, and the 5 most voted in each Sub-Municipality are sent to the relevant secretariats for feasibility analysis and later forwarding to the City Council, which finally approves the final version of the law, deciding what goes into the budget for the following year.
• Regionalization Portal: the portal presents georeferenced budget data, allowing detailed and regionalized views about the origin, destination, and execution of the Municipal Education Secretariat’s budget.

What are the current challenges/areas for improvement in open government that the jurisdiction wishes to tackle?

The City Hall of São Paulo has several participatory tools and forums that are not known by a significant portion of the population. To widely communicate the existence of these forums and tools and improve them, so that they become effective spaces with high engagement of the population in decision making about public policies, is one of the challenges to be faced.

A second challenge is the qualification of active transparency, whose tools also need to be more widely communicated and improved. This improvement is linked to the need for a change in the organizational culture of various sectors of the City Hall, associated with actions to raise the awareness of public managers at all levels as to the importance of the open government agenda.

What are the medium-term open government goals that the government wants to achieve?

The strategic vision of open government aims for the entire community of São Paulo to recognize, benefit from, and be collectively responsible for transparent, participatory, responsive, and innovative public policies.

 To arrive at this scenario, the goals established were:

• That the open government commitments have contributed to the sustainability, strengthening and legitimacy of the final public policies and Municipal Plans;
• That the instances of participation, especially municipal councils, be effective in the design, implementation, and evaluation of public policies;
• That the community of São Paulo be an integral part of it, recognize itself in the municipal public policies, and see the public administration in a clear and simple way, recognizing the value of the principles of open government;
• Strengthen and make effective the communication and participation of the São Paulo community in the process of co-creation, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation of the Action Plan, focusing on plurality.

How does this action plan contribute to achieve the Open Government Strategic Vision?

The commitments of the 3rd Action Plan were co-created in order to correspond to the vision of open government and its objectives. As a result, the Plan has commitments that aim to qualify and expand the availability of information regarding contracts and bids and also on data related to covid-19, strengthen the public policy councils and strengthen the engagement of the population for the monitoring of the implementation of the Municipal Agenda 2030.

Thus, the strategic vision of open government and the commitments are in harmony. Both call for a greater involvement of the population in public policies guided by the values of open government, so that the population is part of both the elaboration processes and their results.

How does the open government strategic vision contribute to the accomplishment of the current administration’s overall policy goals?

The strategic planning of the City Hall of São Paulo – SP is defined every four years, whenever a new mayor is elected, by means of a Goals Program. The current Goal Program runs from 2021 to 2024 and has 77 goals. 

The strategic vision of open government is transversal to most of these goals, structured in 6 axes: SP Fair and Inclusive; SP Innovative and Creative; SP Safe and Well Cared for; SP Global and Sustainable; SP Agile and; SP Efficient. But it has greater intersection with the goals of the SP Efficient axis, which seeks a more innovative, transparent and cooperative management and directly impacts the improvement of public services provided to the population. 

This is the example of goal 75, which seeks to raise the score of the Secretariats in the Integrity Index of Direct Administration, inserted in the Strategic Goal “Promote transparency and integrity of public agencies by improving mechanisms of municipal governance and combating corruption.

The strategic vision of Open Government will also contribute to the monitoring and evaluation process of the Target Program, enabling the accountability of the current elected government, because the 3rd Open Government Action Plan will create or strengthen tools and forums for monitoring the various municipal public policy plans.

Engagement and Coordination in the Open Government Strategic Vision and OGP Action Plan

Please list the lead institutions responsible for the implementation of this OGP action plan.

• Executive Management Secretariat
• Executive Secretariat for Planning and Priority Deliverables
• Municipal Secretary of Green and Environment
• Municipal Secretariat for International Relations
• Executive Secretariat for Institutional Relations
• Municipal Secretariat of Sub districts
• Municipal Health Secretariat
• Municipal Secretariat of Education

What kind of institutional arrangements are in place to coordinate between government agencies and departments to implement the OGP action plan?

The Supervision for Open Government Affairs, established in 2014, is the area responsible for the process of construction, implementation and evaluation of the Action Plan. It is worth mentioning that this area also coordinates the Interdepartmental Committee for Open Government of the City of São Paulo (CIGA-SP), an instance in which internal actions for the dissemination and strengthening of the open government agenda are discussed, including actions related to the Action Plan. 

In the final stage of the co-creation processCollaboration between government, civil society and other stakeholders (e.g., citizens, academics, private sector) is at the heart of the OGP process. Participating governments must ensure that a dive..., working groups were created for each of the commitments – led and monitored by the Supervision for Open Government Affairs – made up of representatives of the responsible departments, representatives of civil society from the Shared Management Forum and, in the future, organizations and other social players that are external to the Forum but active in the themes. The groups will continue to meet periodically to further develop the frameworks, define monitoring metrics and then begin implementation actions.

What kind of spaces have you used or created to enable the collaboration between government and civil society in the co-creation and implementation of this action plan? Mention both offline and online spaces.

The main space used for the co-creation of the Plan were: the meetings of the Shared Management Forum; the meetings of the working groups about strategic vision, about co-creation and about communication formed by FGC representatives; online public consultations; workshops for detailing the challenges; workshops for mapping the solutions; meetings of the new working groups to elaborate the milestones and review the wording of the commitments; and the alignment meetings with government representatives (the only ones that were not open to civil society). 

Due to the restrictions imposed by the Covid-19 pandemic, the tools and forums used for the co-creation of the Action Plan were entirely digital. 

All the events of the process were documented in a “repository” available on the website of the Oversight for Open Government Affairs, where the videos of all the meetings and workshops, as well as materials generated throughout the process are available. In addition to the website, which also had a calendar with the stages of the process, communications were made on the area’s social networks and mailing list, as well as on the São Paulo City Hall website.

With the imminent post-pandemic opening process, it is intended to keep the same channels, however, mixing them with face-to-face actions, especially those aimed at strengthening the engagement of the population.

What measures did you take to ensure diversity of representation (including vulnerable or marginalized populations) in these spaces?

As the institutional websites of the City Hall are rarely accessed by the general population, we made an effort to disseminate invitations to participate in the co-creation process events via social networks (Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp). We counted on the support of government and civil society partners who shared the dissemination pieces, especially with colleagues from the Executive Secretariat of Institutional Relations who have contact with more than 1,000 citizens who are part of the Municipal Participatory Council, a council of ordinary citizens who monitor actions and services offered by the Municipal Public Administration in the 32 Sub districts. With this, we had the diverse participation of poor people, black people, women, young people, the elderly, etc., in some workshops and meetings.

Who participated in these spaces?

Participating in the co-creation process were civil society organizations from inside and outside the Shared Management Forum that are active in the themes covered by the commitments, public servants from different secretariats and agencies, participative municipal counselors, municipal counselors for the environment and sustainable development, and popular citizens.

How many groups participated in these spaces?

26

How many public-facing meetings were held in the co-creation process?

50

How will government and non-governmental stakeholders continue to collaborate through the implementation of the action plan?

Government and non-governmental actors will continue to work together through the monthly meetings of the Shared Management Forum and the working groups of each commitment, in which the actions for implementing and monitoring the Action Plan will be outlined, as well as engagement and communication actions in order to attract more people to the municipal open government agenda.

Please describe the independent Monitoring Body you have identified for this plan.

The independent monitoring of the Action Plan will be carried out by the área de Tecnologias e Governos do Centro de Estudos de Administração Pública e Governo (CEAPG) (Technologies and Government area of the Center for the Study of Public Administration and Government ) of Fundação Getúlio Vargas (FGV)  (the Getúlio Vargas Foundation). FGV is an educational institution of excellence and a reference in Brazil and abroad for its undergraduate, master’s and doctoral programs and its consulting work. 

The CEAPG has consolidated its work in the evaluation of public policies at the municipal and state levels, as well as in the analysis, monitoring and evaluation of social projects of national and international public and non-governmental organizations.

The Supervision for Open Government Affairs had contacted the CEAPG to inform about the call for civil society organizations for the new composition of the Shared Management Forum. The CEAPG participated in the election, but did not get enough votes to compose the collegiate, however, it was invited to be part of the process acting as an independent monitor, and promptly accepted.

Provide the contact details for the independent monitoring body.

• Profª Drª Maria Alexandra Viegas Cortez da Cunha, Professor at Getúlio Vargas Foundation – Center for Public Administration and Government Studies, alexandra.cunha@fgv.br

What types of activities will you have in place to discuss progress on commitments with stakeholders?

The Participe+ portal has a specific tab for monitoring the Action Plan that will allow visualizing the progress of each milestone and commitment. Periodic implementation reports will be made available on the site of the Supervision for Open Government Affairs. 

This accountability will support periodic events to take stock of the Plan’s implementation, with the participation of the actors directly involved in the implementation, as was done during the implementation of the 2nd Action Plan. 

With the post-pandemic reopening, the expectation is that the events will be held in a way that contemplates both face-to-face and telepresence participation. 

To be agreed upon by the Shared Management Forum, it is also intended to hold regionalized activities targeted to specific audiences to disseminate the most comprehensive actions, especially those linked to the commitments to strengthen the public policy councils and the engagement of the population to monitor the implementation of the Municipal Agenda 2030.

How will you regularly check in on progress with implementing agencies?

The secretaries responsible for the implementation of the commitments will send their respective working groups, coordinated by the Supervision for Open Government Affairs, periodic execution reports that will be presented and discussed in periodic meetings.

The area will be in charge of following up the meeting schedule and systematizing the information to be later made available on its website and updating the monitoring of the Plan on the Participe+ portal. It will also be responsible for contacting higher authorities in case meetings are not held and/or reports are not sent.

How will you share the results of your monitoring efforts with the public?

Unlike the 2nd Action Plan, the 3rd Plan will have a specific area of the Participe+ portal for monitoring the execution of each commitment and milestone. In addition, execution reports will be made available on the website and social networks of the Supervision for Open Government Affairs and presented at periodic accountability events.

Endorsement from Non-Governmental Stakeholders

• Emilly Carvalho Espildora, COLAB-USP (Colaboratório de Desenvolvimento e Participação)
• Jorge Alberto Silva Machado, COLAB-USP (Colaboratório de Desenvolvimento e Participação)
• Clarice Kobayashi, Instituto Prospectiva – Inspro
• Armando Dal Colletto, Instituto Prospectiva – Inspro
• Igor Pantoja, Instituto Cidades Sustentáveis
• Paloma Lima, Instituto Cidades Sustentáveis
• Carolina Guimaraes Motta Silva, Instituto Cidades Sustentáveis
• Gioia Matilde Alba Tumbiolo Tosi, Observatório Social do Brasil – São Paulo
• Letticia de Paula Diez Rey, Observatório Social do Brasil – São Paulo
• Sarah Aparecida da Silva, Observatório Social do Brasil – São Paulo
• Josmar Andrade, Agência Usp de Inovação
• Liliam Sanchez Carrete, Agência Usp de Inovação
• Carolina Aurélio Borges, Coletivo Ocupa Mãe
• Mayara Oliveira Torres da Silva, Coletivo Ocupa Mãe
• Silvia Cervellini, Delibera Brasil
• Fernanda Império, Delibera Brasil
• Jésus Gomes, Fundação Escola de Comércio Álvares Penteado (FECAP)
• José Orcélio do Nascimento, Fundação Escola de Comércio Álvares Penteado (FECAP)
• Jorge Kayano, Instituto Pólis
• Danielle Belo, Open Knowledge
• Fernanda Campagnucci, Open Knowledge
• Gabriela Boechat, Instituto Governo Aberto
• Vanessa Menegueti, Instituto Governo Aberto
• Amanda Faria Lima, Instituto Governo Aberto
• Laila Bellix, Instituto Governo Aberto
• Natalia Alessandro, Way Carbon

Cocriação do 3º Plano de Ação em Governo Aberto

3º Plano de Ação em Governo Aberto – revisão dos compromissos e marcos