Perú Design Report 2017-2019

The majority of the commitments in Peru’s third action planAction plans are at the core of a government’s participation in OGP. They are the product of a co-creation process in which government and civil society jointly develop commitments to open governmen... are verifiable and of moderate potential impact. However, its 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... did not include a feedback mechanism for the public justifying the acceptance or rejection of civil society contributions. In the future, it is recommended to create a platform that sheds light on processes related to information, consultation, feedback and / or decision-making during the processes of formulating and implementing plans of action.

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 (OGP) is a global partnership that brings together government reformers and civil society leaders to create action plans that make governments more inclusive, responsive, and accountable. The Independent Reporting Mechanism (IRM)The Independent Reporting Mechanism (IRM) is OGP’s accountability arm and the main means of tracking progress in participating countries. The IRM provides independent, evidence-based, and objective ... monitors all action plans to ensure governments follow through on commitments. Perú joined OGP in 2011 and has since implemented two action plans. This report assesses the design of Perú’s third action plan.

General overview of the action plan

The design of the action plan of Peru 2017-2019 makes an approach to the elaboration of commitments according to the priorities of seven sectors of the Peruvian State. The creation of the action plan had seven leading ministries: environment, energyEnsuring universal access to sustainable, dependable, and affordable energy is critical to every aspect of prosperity. Increasing public oversight and transparency in the energy sector can help to ens... More and mines, educationAccountability within the public education system is key to improving outcomes and attainment, and accountability is nearly impossible without transparent policies and opportunities for participation ..., transportation, health, sanitation and interior. As part of a 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... from the Presidency of the Council of Ministers, in which the country’s participation in OGP is coordinated, it was sought to generate commitments aligned with the Government’s policy priorities, which in turn can be fulfilled in the period of two years of the plan.

This sectoral approach has shown successes and limitations. Among the successes, it highlights that all commitments are specific enough to be verifiable, and a majority have moderate potential impact. Being closely associated with government management priorities, the evaluation of both indicators is positive. However, among the limitations, it is worth noting that some commitments have no relevanceAccording to the OGP Articles of Governance, OGP commitments should include a clear open government lens. Specifically, they should advance at least one of the OGP values: transparency, citizen partic... to the OGP values and others handle notions of access to information and citizen participationAccording to OGP’s Articles of Governance, citizen participation occurs when “governments seek to mobilize citizens to engage in public debate, provide input, and make contributions that lead to m... More that do not point to a higher level of ambitionAccording to OGP’s Articles of Governance, OGP commitments should “stretch government practice beyond its current baseline with respect to key areas of open government.” Ambition captures the po... with respect to previous action plans. Likewise, no commitment appealed to the value of accountability. These shortcomings suggest that the time and resources invested in the period of induction of OGP values, as part of the preparation of the 2017-2019 plan, were not adequate.

The Secretariat of Public Management of the Presidency of the Council of Ministers (SGP-PCM for its acronym in Spanish) designed two types of participation mechanisms for civil society. The first one, through three types of sequential tables (the so-called “thematic tables”, the “regional workshops” or “decentralized workshops” and the “national tables”, in that temporal order). Civil society organizations were convened through offices, and in the case of regional workshops and national tables, the call was added through the internet and social networks. The second mechanism was a virtual forum, in which the public could comment on the proposals for commitments that were created at the thematic tables.

All civil society respondents consider that the process was carried out in a hurried way and with greater prominence of the state offices. Likewise, for a majority of civil society respondents, the final selection of commitments did not correspond to the deliberations that took place at the thematic tables, spaces where they had a greater participation. Since 2014, Peru does not have a multi-stakeholder forum in practice. The Government has sought to remedy this situation with the creation of multi-stakeholder forums in each of the sectors that have commitments to OGP.

Given the evidence provided by the Government, the IRM researcher considers that the level of collaboration with civil society reached the level of consultations. The Government has not provided evidence that the participants have received justified answers on how decisions were made to include (or not) their contributions. Likewise, the national tables had a majority of representatives of the Peruvian State sectors. The veto power of state agencies was particularly strong at this stage as these spaces were called to reduce the number of commitments. Similarly, before its official publication, the commitments went through an additional internal validation process between the GSP-PCM and each of the ministries; process that the PCM has not documented.

Table 2. Noteworthy commitments

Recommendations

The IRM recommendations aim to inform the development of the next action plan and guide the implementation of the current action plan.

Table 3. Five key IRM recommendations