Municipal Citizen Letters
The Municipal Citizen Letters are an initiative which is part of the process of decentralization and modernization of the state, whose main objectives are to bring the state closer to the people and to make public action more transparent. The purpose of the Citizen Letters is to make public the actions of the municipality, establishing public management commitments, facilitating and promoting the participation of the neighbors through the delivery of information and dissemination of standards of quality related to municipal programs and services. The process of elaboration of the Municipal Letters is participative. It is organized through meetings with the community in order to know their interests and real demands, as well as their willingness to commit themselves to more or better municipal services. The Citizen Letter design consists of 4 parts: objectives, which reveal the motivation of the mayor to deliver certain information; the associated municipal commitments; the responsibilities of the community in the use of said antecedents and, finally, the mechanisms for reception of complaints and suggestions by the neighbors. In this way, citizen letters seek to strengthen participatory democracy, inform and train neighbors in order to transform them into citizens who are advocates of their own local development and establish processes for continuous improvement of municipal management.
Institutional design
Formalization: is the innovation embedded in the constitution or legislation, in an administrative act, or not formalized at all?
Frequency: how often does the innovation take place: only once, sporadically, or is it permanent or regular?
Mode of Selection of Participants: is the innovation open to all participants, access is restricted to some kind of condition, or both methods apply?
Type of participants: those who participate are individual citizens, civil society organizations, private stakeholders or a combination of those?
Decisiveness: does the innovation takes binding, non-binding or no decision at all?
Co-governance: is there involvement of the government in the process or not?
- Formalization
- only backed by a governmental program or policy
- Frequency
- single
- Mode of selection of participants
- open
- Type of participants
- citizens
- Decisiveness
- democratic innovation yields a non-binding decision
- Co-Governance
- yes
Means
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Ends
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