Decentralization and Local Development (SAO0007)

Commitment no. 2: “Decentralization and Local Development”
In public spending, prioritize action plans developed through social participation, discussing and deliberating collectively on local demands, respecting municipal participatory councils, agents and users of public facilities and other local participatory bodies, and also ensuring availability and accessibility of the public budget by region and agency and facility.
Commitment start and end date: January/2019 - August/2020
Lead implementing agency/actor
Municipal Secretariat of Subprefectures (SMSUB)
Commitment description
What is the public problem that the commitment will address?
During the co-creation process, civil society pointed out that there was no guarantee of execution of action plans built through participation, as there was no provision for implementation budget, or even the postponement of its development. This is the case of the Regional Action Plans and Neighborhood Plans, foreseen in “Plano Diretor Estratégico” (Municipal Law No. 16,050/2014, with guidelines on the city development and expansion), whose development and implementation deadline was not met (as provided by Decree 57,537/2016).
Overall objective(s) and expected result(s)
By implementing this commitment, we seek to make feasible the development of the aforementioned plans in a participatory manner, as provided by the legislation, and in dialogue with the Municipal Participatory Councils and their respective territories.
The development and implementation of the aforementioned Plans are expected to be carried out through a participatory process, detailing the guidelines included in “Plano Diretor Estratégico” within each of the 32 Subprefectures. The action should articulate sectorial and complementary policies and proposals related to urban-environmental issues in their physical and territorial aspects.

How will the commitment contribute to solve the public problem?
The commitment provides for not only the development, but also the implementation of the Regional Action Plans and Neighbourhood Plans. Since they are elaborated, it is possible to seek to put them on the municipal budget planning agenda, aiming at their prioritization in public spending.
In addition, the implementation of this commitment, as well as the other ones in this Action Plan, also contributes indirectly to the solution of the problem pointed out. 22

Why is this commitment relevant to OGP values?
In seeking to ensure the development and implementation of the aforementioned plans, the commitment helps strengthen the spaces and tools for participation, enabling citizens to indicate their regional needs and priorities.
Additional Information

Milestone activity with a verifiable deliverable
Start date:

End date:

Develop the Regional Action Plans and Neighborhood Plans, resulting from “Plano
January/2019
December/2019 Diretor Estratégico”, as provided for in Law no. 16,050/2014 and decrees regulating it.
Ensure the implementation of the Regional Action Plans and Neighborhood Plans developed.
January/2020
August/2020
Ensure the wide dissemination, in clear and simple language, of the aforementioned plans.
January/2020
August/2020
Contact information
Name of responsible person from implementing agency
Alexandre Modonezi de Andrade
Title, Department
Municipal Secretary of Subprefectures
Email and phone
+55 11 4934-3000

Other actors involved

State actors involved

Municipal Secretariat of Management (SG);
Municipal Secretariat of Finance (SF);
Secretariat of Municipal Government (SGM); Municipal Secretariat of International Affairs (SMRI)23.

Civil society actors involved

Fundação Escola de Comércio Álvares Penteado (FECAP); Associação de Projetos Integrados e Desenvolvimento Sustentável (PIDS).

2. Decentralization and local development: [8]

Commitment text:

Elaborate the Action Plans of the Subprefectures, listening to the territorial demands, the municipal councils, agents, and users of public facilities and other local participatory instances and guaranteeing the publicity and accessibility of the public budget.

Milestones:

2.1 Develop the Regional Action Plans, resulting from “Plano Diretor Estratégico”, as provided for in Law no. 16,050/2014 and decrees regulating it.

2.2 Ensure the implementation of the Action Plans that were created.

2.3 Ensure the wide dissemination, in clear and simple language, of the aforementioned plans.

2.4 Elaborate and publish a guide for the development of neighborhood plans.

Start Date: January 2019

End Date: August 2020

Editorial note: to see the complete text, visit

https://www.opengovpartnership.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Sao-Paulo_Action-Plan_2018-2020_EN.pdf

Context and Objectives

Overall objective and relevance

This commitment aims to improve access to information and civic participation at the Regional Prefecture (Subprefeituras) and neighbourhood levels. It directly addresses a non-binding policy provided in the city’s Strategic Master Plan, [9] which is the city’s main planning instrument to usher in urban development. This plan determines guiding principles and strategies and measures policy areas such as housing, mobility, economic development, and environment for a period of 10 years. This instrument is provided by the National Urban Policy, known in Brazil as Estatuto da Cidade (City Statute, Federal Law 10.257/2001). The Master Plan is a mandatory municipal law for every city with more than 20,000 inhabitants, and a new Master Plan must be passed every 10 years (CNM, 2013). [10] In São Paulo, the reform process started in 2013 by City Hall, and according to the Master Plan Illustrated Law Text, [11] it involved a participatory process, which comprised 114 meetings, virtual surveys, 25,000 participants, and 10,000 contributions from civil society and the general public.

Stakeholders from civil society stated during the open government action plan elaboration process that decree number 57.537/2016, [12] which regulates the Master Plan, had not been implemented over the expected time. [13] The decree mandates the elaboration and implementation of the Regional Action Plans and provides the possibility of developing Neighbourhood Plans, which are both policies contained in the city Master Plan. According to this legal framework, the aforementioned plans are instruments that allow for taking into account the specificity and needs of a smaller scale within the city boundaries: districts and neighbourhoods. These Action Plans aim at detailing the propositions and guidelines contained in each Subprefecture Action Plan, and the law determines that those policies must be built in a participatory manner, including the Participatory Municipal Councils in the process and providing at least an introductory presentation of the objectives and purpose, a participatory workshop, and feedback session during a public hearing.

The main idea of the commitment is, thus, to promote the elaboration and implementation of the missing local plans. The commitment text also entails that for the participatory process to be effective, the population will need decentralized budget information to be able to decide which policies to give priority to.

To change the status quo, the commitment works as an opportunity to resolve a pending obligation regarding the main city planning instrument. In parallel, according to the Decree 57.537/2016, the local plans elaboration ought to be done in a participatory manner, contributing directly to civic participation. The commitment is also relevant to Access to Information due to improving the transparency of local budgets and publishing budget information at a more granular level (by facility).

Verifiability and potential impact

The IRM researcher believes the objective of the commitment is not clearly enough stated. The commitment is the implementation of a concrete policy (regional action plans), required by law. Some of the planned activities could be more specific. For instance, milestone1refers to developing the plans but does not say how this is going to be done, how many participatory meetings will be held and who is going to participate. Milestone 2 makes reference to securing the implementation of the plans, but it also does not specify the necessary steps to guarantee the implementation. Milestone 3 refers to the need to secure broad dissemination of the elaborated plans, but it does not mention how it will be done or what kind of media will be used. Milestone 4 refers to developing and publishing a guide to developing neighbourhood plans. This last milestone lacks details about how this guide will be developed, by whom, and what the consequence will be (what will be done with the guide) in the future. None of the four milestones refer to how local budget transparency will be advanced.

The regional planning process has the potential to contribute positively to citizen participation and policy implementation at the “sub-local” level, where every citizen can have an effective contribution to bring and at the same time can see the immediate impact of the urban intervention debated during the action plan's formulation. However, according to civil society representatives, the regional scale is not the most adequate or sufficient to ensure that citizens are heard and can effectively contribute and be part of the decision-making process. [14] The Subprefecture Action Plan scale is at the subprefectural level. Each of this sub-local units can have more than 500,000 inhabitants (such as Capela do Socorro, Campo Limpo and M’Boi Mirim). They argue that the creation of neighbourhood plans would be the best scale to work with communities and should complement the Subprefecture Action Plan. At that scale, the population potentially involved is narrowed down to some 20,000 people or less.

Another challenge is the lack of specificity about the transparency actions provided by the commitment text. First, it reduces the participation to the “listening to the territorial demands” whereas in the previous version of this commitment, the wording was more detailed about what this participatory process would entail (“discussing and deliberating collectively on local demands, respecting municipal participatory councils, agents and users of public facilities and other local participatory bodies”). Second, and more importantly, there is only a generic reference to publicity and accessibility to budget information (which is already provided by law), and there is no mention about the access and availability of sub-local budget data. This has been a historical demand from civil society organisations in order to tackle the deep territorial inequalities through the improvement of transparency mechanisms to advocate for more public facilities and budget allocation to poor districts. [15]

This commitment, as it is written, lacks specificity and transformative actions. On the one hand, the participatory processes are not sufficiently detailed, nor is the process of development of the Subprefectures Action Plans, and on the other hand, many actions provided, such as giving publicity and accessibility, are already part of the usual policy process and do not represent any significant advance. All in all, only considering the wording of the commitment and milestones as they are, if fully implemented, its potential impact is minor.

Next steps

The IRM researcher believes that, as the milestones bring only minor contributions, the commitment could be improved in order to be carried out and made a priority in the next action plan, as the policy area targeted could have a potentially transformative effect. To further this process, the IRM researcher recommends the adoption of the following advice:

• This commitment could be accompanied with the necessary actions to attain the objective of elaborating and securing the implementation of the regional action plans. For instance, the FGC could decide how many participatory sessions need to be done, the methodology to be used in this process, and what role is expected from each stakeholder. Most importantly, a critical milestone would refer to securing the budget to implement the regional action plans. This could be secured by including it in the Annual Budget Law, [16] approved every year.

• Particularly in terms of the participatory process, the IRM researcher recommends the Forum to be specific about the level of the participation needed to develop the local plans. The Forum could use the scale developed by the International Association for Public Participation [17] for guidance.

• The FGC could support civil society organisations and the population to organise themselves and make action plans on a small scale (neighbourhood) through participatory processes that organise the demands to the city hall and stimulate the engagement of the population in its territories to take part in the actions as well. Government could take advantage of the fact that there is already a successful existing pilot experience implemented by CSO and a university and study possibilities to replicate this plan in other neighbourhoods. [18]

In terms of milestone 4, ensure that the neighbourhood plan guide is followed up and is effectively incorporated in the future in a neighbourhood plan implementation.