Action plan – Renca, Chile, 2026 – 2028

At-a-Glance

Duration

Dec 2028

Date Submitted

10th November 2026

Foreword(s)

Consolidating local democracy requires shifting from traditional public management to open governance, where citizens are active actors in socio-territorial structuring. The Municipality of Renca, led by Mayor Claudio Castro Salas, has adopted this paradigm, focusing on 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 public,... More, administrative probity, and effectiveness.

This shift began with the 1st Open Government Action Plan (2018-2019), a foundational pilot experience. Building upon this, the 2nd Action Plan is framed by Renca’s official entry into 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). For Renca, open government is a cross-sectional management framework. Milestones like the modernization of the COSOC council, the “Bank of Ideas,” and a Code of Ethics evidence an institutional structure built for social control and collective intelligence.

Emerging at a stage of institutional maturity, the 2nd Action Plan was developed through an exhaustive diagnosis integrating civil servants and the community. It targets critical areas: from strengthening grassroots organizations to enforcing openness in urban and environmental planning.

Alongside the Regional Government, Renca aims to deepen institutional openness toward binding co-creation. Moving beyond mere information, the Plan integrates civic deliberation into public security, sustainable urban development, and digital modernization. This mitigates trust gaps, aligns public investment with territorial priorities, and uses transparency and participation as catalysts for equity and social justiceTo address barriers that prevent citizens from having their justice needs met, OGP participating governments are working to expand transparency, accountability, and inclusion into all systems of justi....

To ensure outcomes, implementation relies on shared governance. A Multi-stakeholder Forum—comprising the municipality, civil society, and the Regional Government—will act as guarantors. Continuous monitoring mechanisms will enable citizens to oversee, evaluate, and recalibrate goals. The community is summoned to join this roadmap, proving that civic collaboration builds a commune governed by justice, probity, and democratic values.

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 long-term vision of the Municipality of Renca is to consolidate a local governance model founded on integrity, openness, and participation. This vision is not limited to isolated actions, but rather seeks to profoundly transform the municipal administration model. The key elements of this vision are:

• Integration of pillars: The convergence of transparency, probity, accountability, and public innovation as a single articulating framework.
• Active citizenry: To evolve toward a state where the inhabitants of the territory cease to be mere recipients of public policy and become active stakeholders in its design, implementation, and evaluation.
• Institutional sustainability: To establish these values as permanent and cross-cutting principles across all areas of institutional administration.

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

The Municipality of Renca has consolidated an open, collaborative administration focused on four fundamental pillars:

• Institutional strengthening: The Communal Civil Society Council (COSOC) was reformed in 2018 to establish transparent election procedures. It now features 23 members, convenes monthly (exceeding statutory requirements), and serves as a key accountability forum before 778 accredited organizations.
• Public participationGiving citizens opportunities to provide input into government decision-making leads to more effective governance, improved public service delivery, and more equitable outcomes. Technical specificatio...: Through the “Idea Bank” participatory budgeting system, the municipality funded 223 projects designed by social organizations with an investment of 300 million pesos. Permanent thematic working groups (housing, mobility, women’s affairs, and indigenous peoples) were consolidated, achieving key milestones like funding a ceremonial center.
• Integrity and transparency: In early 2024, Renca implemented the Municipal Integrity Policy, an Integrity Committee, and a Transparency RegulationGovernment reformers are developing regulations that enshrine values of transparency, participation, and accountability in government practices. Technical specifications: Act of creating or reforming .... Its new Code of Ethics was recognized by the Council for Transparency for having one of the most robust technical designs at the municipal level in Chile.
• Digital modernization: The Communal Data Observatory provides unrestricted public access to georeferenced data on services, public safety, and urban planning. Furthermore, the virtual assistant Rencat and the redesigned commercial licensing process have reduced administrative uncertainty and optimized direct communication with residents.

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

Through an institutional diagnostic assessment that included interviews with public officials and a documentary review, five common criteria were identified representing the primary areas of opportunity:

• Strengthening of community organization: To enhance the capacities of residents to organize.
• Standardization: To ensure that all municipal planning instruments incorporate open government standards.
• Innovation in public participation: To create alternative participatory mechanisms to traditional ones.
• Regulatory update: To implement a new public participation ordinance [ordenanza – municipal bylaw].
• Modernization of administration: To utilize the open government paradigm to streamline municipal administration.

Furthermore, the plan seeks to address specific issues such as neighborhood distrust regarding public expenditure and the deficit in the tracking of citizen requests.

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

The local government has set out to achieve concrete objectives through specific commitments over the next two years:

• Financial Transparency: To create a transparency and accountability channel that includes an investment map and a tracking system for neighborhood requests.
• Community Safety: To empower communities through community safety training and to ensure transparency regarding the budget allocated to this area.
• Improvement of Social Investment: To optimize the “Idea Bank” through accountability reports and feedback during the final stage of funded projects.
• Territorial Engagement: To redesign macro-zonal meetings [reuniones macrozonales – district-level assemblies] so that they possess a binding character and exert a greater impact on municipal administration.
• Prevention of School Violence: To implement participatory multi-sectoral working groups to address violence within educational communities.

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

The Second Action Plan serves as the requisite roadmap for systematically adopting the open government paradigm. It contributes in the following manner:

• Co-creation: The plan emerges from a process of inclusive dialogue and joint decision-making between the government and civil society, ensuring that the commitments are ambitious and measurable.
• Gradual Targets: As a biennial plan, it allows for a perspective of progressive improvement, departing from an “all or nothing” rationale and enabling the municipality to advance in accordance with its capacities.
• Institutionalization: It designates clear accountable parties within the municipality and establishes milestones 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..., thereby guaranteeing that the strategic vision translates into concrete operational actions.

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

Since 2016, the administration of Mayor Claudio Castro has sought a profound transformation of the governance model. The open government vision serves as the driver that enables the achievement of the overarching objectives in the following manner:

• Efficiency in Public Investment: The pillars of transparency and accountability ensure that resources are utilized with probity and efficiency, marking a substantive difference from previous periods.
• Legitimacy and Trust: By opening the administration to public scrutiny and participation, local democracy is strengthened, and residents’ distrust is mitigated.
• Territorial Identity: By involving citizens in the resolution of public affairs, the administration succeeds in fostering a shared identity within the territory, directly improving the quality of services received by the citizenry.

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.

• Ilustre Municipalidad de Renca

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

For the operationalization and normative monitoring of the OGP plan, an institutional governance structure has been established that cross-sectorally articulates various administrative bodies:

• Regional Government Innovation Team (GORE): Provides the regional strategic vision and technical-methodological support for the modernization of public management.
• Renca Legal Directorate: Exercises procedural legality control and assumes leadership in the normative adaptation of ordinances related to openness policies.
• Renca Integrity Committee: A transversal collegiate body dedicated to the design, adoption, and oversight of administrative probity policies.

This intergovernmental collaboration is consecrated through quarterly coordination sessions, oriented toward impact evaluation, supervision of milestone compliance, and audit of budget execution. Likewise, liaison authorities (points of contact) are designated to ensure convergence with technical standards issued by the OGP Support UnitThe OGP Support Unit is a small, permanent group of staff that work closely with the Steering Committee and the Independent Reporting Mechanism to advance the goals of the Open Government Partnership.....

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 procedural path for formulating the plan included a preliminary phase of institutional audit and diagnosis (December 2023 – May 2024), through consultations with municipal civil servants. Subsequently (August – September 2024), face-to-face deliberation instances were held with elected members of the COSOC and organic leaders of neighborhood councils. With the imperative of safeguarding representative plurality and mitigating participation asymmetries in historically excluded groups, decentralized participatory mechanisms were implemented. Territorial managers, trained by the Tribu Foundation, intervened as methodological mediators, guaranteeing access to citizen discussion. Accordingly, it is projected to replicate community empowerment schemes based on self-management and peer facilitation, following the experience of the “Renca Women’s Roundtable.”

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

• Design of alternative participatory mechanisms: The municipality identified as a strategic opportunity the creation of methodologies designed to reach out to residents who conventionally self-marginalize from traditional participatory processes.
• Strengthening the role of territorial managers: Public officials operating directly within the territory were trained in participatory methodologies. Leveraging their comprehensive knowledge of the local reality, these managers served as facilitators in the workshops to guarantee that the deliberations were accessible and open to all social sectors.

Who participated in these spaces?

The process directly involved four (4) social and administrative strata during the materialization of three (3) formal co-creation assemblies:

• Municipal Civil Servants (18 professionals): Empowered for the organic evaluation of open government.
• COSOC Councilors: Legitimate representation of the spectrum of more than 700 community organizations.
• Neighborhood Council Leaders (20 leaders): Primary spokespersons for neighborhood phenomenology.
• Municipal Territorial Managers and Tribu Foundation: Technical-methodological support agents.

How many groups participated in these spaces?

4

How many public-facing meetings were held in 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...?

3

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

The collaborative articulation between public law entities and civil society actors will be functionally perpetuated through:

• Cross-sectoral Working Roundtables: Ad hoc bodies oriented toward intervention in focused problems (e.g., “Stakeholders Roundtable against School Violence”), endowed with pluralism in their convocation and an eminently participatory design.
• Multi-stakeholder Technical Monitoring Forums: Control and surveillance bodies aimed at overseeing the materialization of adopted commitments, ensuring that these are established as institutional public policies, detached from political-electoral conjunctures. The use of civic-technological platforms will be strengthened to guarantee the procedural and financial traceability of the initiatives.

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

The Transparency, Public Interest, and Human RightsAn essential part of open government includes protecting the sacred freedoms and rights of all citizens, including the most vulnerable groups, and holding those who violate human rights accountable. T... Legal Clinic of the Universidad Alberto Hurtado has been cultivating institutional engagement with public agencies and corruption prevention entities through the right of access to information for the past six years, while concurrently providing legal counsel on various human rights violation cases at both the domestic level and within the Inter-American system. 

Provide the contact details for the independent monitoring body.

• Branislav Marelic, Profesor encargado, [email protected]

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

Semi-annual working groups shall be established to report on and evaluate adjustments or improvements in accordance with the needs and context of the municipality of Renca. 

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

The administrative obligation to issue continuous inter-institutional communications and to formulate a consolidated accountability report on an annual basis (Public Account) is established. 

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

The results and evaluation matrices of the plan will be subject to free citizen scrutiny, mandating their obligatory and peremptory publication in institutional repositories and web platforms of the Illustrious Municipality of Renca and the Metropolitan Regional Government, thereby giving full compliance to the standards of Active Transparency.

Endorsement from Non-Governmental Stakeholders

• Tomas Gonzalez, Director, Fundación Tribu