Citizen Oversight of Public Administrations
The Citizen Oversight of Public Administrations consists of extensive observation centers that are concerned with monitoring the rollout of the Municipal Reform Law 176-07, which was implemented with the objective of transforming the localities into participatory spaces, allowing citizens to shape the municipal and administrative policies. As of 2011, Fundación Solidaridad (lit. Solidarity Foundation), a civil society organization, in collaboration with the General Directorate for Multilateral Cooperation (DIGECOOM) and funded by the European Union, has organized the centers in eight municipalities across the Dominican Republic. Together with the policy design, the Law also allows citizen observation of municipal policies and invites civil society to monitor it. As part of the observation, citizen informants were selected to interview the corresponding administrative staff and to produce reports on the application of said law. The main object of the observation was the dedication of the municipalities to the implementation of the rights of the citizen, the dedication of the state to the social policies, as well as the use of the Municipal Council as a space for social policies. At the time of evaluating the rollout of Law 176-07 at the municipal level, the observatory focused on five subcomponents: citizen participation, transparency, gender, social policies, and work and services. The Municipalities observed were: Licey al Medio, Santiago, Navarrete, Punal, Sabana Iglesia, SaJoMa, Tamboril and Villa González. A report was published on each observed municipality. Furthermore, a meta-analysis of the results and the impact of the Citizen Oversight were drafted by Fundación Solidaridad.
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
- not backed by constitution nor legislation, nor by any governmental policy or program
- Frequency
- single
- Mode of selection of participants
- restricted
- Type of participants
- citizens civil society
- Decisiveness
- democratic innovation yields no decision
- Co-Governance
- yes
Means
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Ends
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