Action plan – Santo Domingo de los Tsáchilas, Ecuador, 2021 – 2023

At-a-Glance

Duration

May 2023

Date Submitted

31st July 2021

Foreword(s)

Santo Domingo de los Tsáchilas, is a relatively young province, which as such was established on November 6, 2007. It is made up of 2 cantons that in turn are distributed in 10 parishes, its population by 2020 would be around 550,000 inhabitants. It is a land where the ecosystems of the Sierra and Costa del Ecuador meet, so it also represents one of the main road axes that connect these regions. The main economic sectors are: trade, and livestock, and agriculture.

The Provincial Government for about 9 years has been developing actions that promote 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. The current administration intends in its management to improve and strengthen the proactivity of the work team by focusing on; processes of 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 pub... More and accountability, highlighting the interest of citizens and innovating existing citizen participation processes, promoting the use and adoption of new methodologies to motivate citizen participation in the different projects implemented by the Provincial Government where the citizen constitutes in the axis for the development of public policies.

The first Open Government Action Plan of the Tsáchila province includes three commitments in the areas of Environment, Roads, and Economic Development. In these areas, it is proposed to enter innovative processes that enhance, optimize, and link the work and actions of the Provincial Government with the citizens, civil society, academia, and the private sectorGovernments are working to open private sector practices as well — including through beneficial ownership transparency, open contracting, and regulating environmental standards. Technical specificat... More, which together in an open government mean a change in public management and the model current citizen participation. The first Open Government Action Plan of the Province constitutes a historical milestone that will serve as the basis for transforming public management and bringing it closer to citizens, within the framework of strengthening transparency, participation, and collaboration.

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 vision of open government is projected towards achieving that in 2030 the Provincial Government continues to apply and strengthen this management model, as a basis to stimulate contact and relationship with people, promote transparency and the fight against corruption, and empower citizenship through the use of new technologies to achieve greater efficiency and co-responsibility.

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

The Provincial Government has had different achievements, regarding transparency, the Local Information System (SIL) that makes geographic and statistical data available to citizens. Internal management information is transparent, and Economic, Agro-productive, Demographic, Social, Health, and Historical information is also integrated, available from various official sources. This project has obtained recognitions such as in the “V Management Award for Development Results” from CoPLAC-MpRD and IDB in 2019, and in October 2020 as an outstanding practice by the Ecuador Global Compact.

Regarding methods of citizen participation, annually the participatory budget process is carried out that has among its functions, to achieve direct interaction with the leaders, associations, and organizations of civil society, with the purpose of linking and strengthening the opinion and citizen decision, through a budget for the annual fiscal year, to be distributed in a participatory manner, through processes that link society and prioritize care needs in a consensual manner.
As 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... to reduce the digital divide, in recent years the Project for the Provision of Community Wireless Networks has been developed, which provides free internet to the rural population. Due to the current health situation, its importance within these rural areas has been essential for the 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 ... and communication of citizens.

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

Based on 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... carried out to build this plan with the collaboration of the citizens, the following challenges were identified as facing the province of Santo Domingo de los Tsáchilas: priority attention to the agro-industrial productive sector and its value chains (cocoa, coffee, dairy, livestock, poultry, pork, among others); the environmental sector, in order to support actions that promote the sustainability of the territory; the road system that solves the needs of connection, transit and mobility between the parishes and local commerce; and, citizen participation that guarantees training and debate spaces for the appropriation of public policies promoted by the Provincial Government of Santo Domingo de los Tsáchilas.

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

The province of Santo Domingo de los Tsáchilas, when entering with the clear proposal of an open government framed in its competencies and capacities, intends:

1. Strengthen citizen participation, creating virtual spaces where citizens, together with the Provincial Government, share public responsibility for management.
2. Promote the production chains of local farmers, generating new and innovative proposals that integrate both the producer and the consumer, achieving fair trade.
3. Protect the environmental resources of the province with the collaboration of citizens, also making the environmental information available to the Provincial Government transparent to make progress and information available to the public as open dataBy opening up data and making it sharable and reusable, governments can enable informed debate, better decision making, and the development of innovative new services. Technical specifications: Polici....

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

This action plan contributes, being a tool to give an effective response to public needs or problems, through an innovation strategy built with representatives from various sectors, who present their problems and participate in the co-creation of their solutions.

The plan will also support community management. It will seek to recognize and guarantee the citizen’s exercise of organization and mobilization to influence public or governmental decision-making. In the same way, it constitutes a tool for the strengthening of community organizations in their exercise of administration and defense of the territories.

It will be up to the citizens and representatives of provincial sectors to exercise their co-responsibility to protect and defend the objectives of the implementation of this plan and ensure that the adoption of open government lasts.

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

By 2030, Santo Domingo de los Tsáchilas will be a territory with high competitiveness in the generation of added value and with sovereignty in agroproduction. In addition, a place that guarantees a safe and resilient environment to climate change, as well as a province interconnected to the transfer infrastructure network and regional and national connectivity and with the rest of the world, consolidating itself as a center of opportunities for tourism and industrial development. and technological, within a framework of respect for human and environmental rights.

The objectives of open government are broad to the development commitments that the province seeks, linked to transparency in management, citizen participation in decision-making, and collaboration with different civil society organizations and representatives of each sector, together to get the province to become a benchmark for open government at the subnational level, both inside and outside the country.

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.

• Gobierno Autónomo Descentralizado Provincial de Santo Domingo de los Tsáchilas
• Universidad de las Fuerzas Armadas sede Santo Domingo (ESPE-SD)
• Fundación de Ayuda por Internet (Fundapi)

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

• Framework collaboration agreement signed between the Autonomous Decentralized Provincial Government of Santo Domingo and FUNDAPI, with the aim of carrying out joint actions in relation to the adoption of open government and open data in the province.
• Framework Agreement signed between the Autonomous Decentralized Provincial Government of Santo Domingo and INABIO (National Institute of biodiversity) to carry out the biotic study of the province, to have a technical tool for environmental protection.
• Interinstitutional Agreement signed between the Autonomous Decentralized Provincial Government of Santo Domingo and the Food Corporation (CADE); to strengthen the mechanisms of technology transfer and information dissemination, related to the development of food chains.
• Interinstitutional Agreement signed between the Provincial Decentralized Autonomous Government of Santo Domingo de los Tsáchilas and the Honorable Provincial Decentralized Autonomous Government of Chimborazo; to strengthen the processes of economic reactivation through the exchange and commercialization of products and improvement of the economic levels of small producers.

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.

For the co-creation of this Action Plan, workshops were held with the participation of representatives of various sectors in particular, the following:

• Creation of a Multisectoral Provincial Forum to coordinate actions related to the co-creation of the Action Plan.
• Virtual meetings for the socialization of the process, respecting the biosecurity measures that the COVID-19 pandemic demands.
• Face-to-face meetings to socialize the process and receive contributions from rural sectors and ancestral communities.
• Digital surveys to receive contributions and proposals to incorporate in the Action Plan.
• Virtual spaces for dissemination, deliberation, and decision
• Virtual workshops for evaluation and complementation of the commitment proposals.

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

• The digital survey that was created to receive contributions and proposals were disseminated through social networks, with exclusive segmentation towards the province, reaching nearly 30,000 people who use these spaces.
• The people who make up the Provincial Multisectoral Forum that coordinated the process were asked to share the invitation to send proposals to their contact bases.
• Additionally, face-to-face presentations were made with citizens, as well as representatives of the Tsáchila ethnic group to collect their contributions to the process.
• In the same way, identifying capacities, responsibilities, and competencies of the Provincial Government, a constant permanent invitation was made to organized groups of society, professional unions, academia, and social actors linked to citizen participation processes.

Who participated in these spaces?

• Environmental activists,
• Agrícola Exportadora FRUGALP.
• GAPSDT Provincial Citizen Assembly
• Chamber of Commerce of Santo Domingo,
• Chamber of Popular and Solidarity Economy of the Province of Tsáchila,
• Chamber of Small and Medium Industry of Santo Domingo (CAPEI),
• La Concordia Canton Tourism Commission,
• National Council of Rural Parish Governments of Ecuador – Santo Domingo,
• Public Construction Company (EPCO),
• National Federation of Provincial Chambers of Tourism – FENACAPTUR,
• Fundación de Ayuda por Internet – FUNDAPI,
• Higher Technological Institute “Tsa’chila”,
• Women’s Network – Santo Domingo,
• Rural tourism Tsáchila (Mushily),
• Luis Vargas Torres University – La Concordia,
• University of the Armed Forces ESPE – Santo Domingo

How many groups participated in these spaces?

16

How many public-facing meetings were held in the co-creation process?

8

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

• The Provincial Multisectoral Forum will continue to function during the implementation of the Open Government Action Plan to supervise and promote compliance with it.
• Likewise, the counterpart entities of both the government (Provincial Government Planning Directorate) and civil society (Fundapi) will continue to be active to monitor the progress of the process and coordinate the actions that are necessary to promote compliance with the plan.

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

Instituto Superior Tecnológico “Tsa’chila”

Provide the contact details for the independent monitoring body.

• Estuardo Cevallos, PhD, rector@tsachila.edu.ec

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

• Meetings for discussion and evaluation of the progress of the plan.
• Socialization workshops to reference the progress and development of the plan.
• Online citizen consultation.

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

• Semi-annual evaluation among stakeholders and partners on the development and fulfillment of the plan’s goals.
• There will be a system for self-evaluation of the progress of the plan.

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

• Preparation of a massive communication program, which allows access to the information generated in the plan
• Appropriate use of the alternative, community, and digital communication media to improve adequate and timely access to information.
• Improve the online information mechanisms that allow breaking the technological barrier and that the data reaches most of the population.

Endorsement from Non-Governmental Stakeholders

• Eduardo Béjar, Director, Fundación de Ayuda por Internet (Fundapi)
• Héctor Revelo, Investigator, Universidad de las Fuerzas Armadas (ESPE)
• Ximena Orosco, President, Consejo Nacional de Gobiernos Parroquiales Rurales Del Ecuador (CONAGOPARE)
• Dalember Vallejo, Manager, Empresa Pública de construcciones (EPCO)
• Patricia Mora, Secretary, Federación Nacional de Cámaras Provinciales de Turismo (FENACAPTUR)
• Jorge Puyol, Coordinator, Universidad Luis Vargas Torres (ULVT)
• Ana Vera, Coordinator, Red de Mujeres Santo Domingo
• Ricardo Gutiérrez, President, Cámara de la Pequeña y Mediana Industria de Santo Domingo (CAPEI)
• Dennis Jarrín, President, Cámara de la Economía Popular y Solidaria de la Provincia Tsáchila (CEPS-SD)
• Édison Enríquez, Director, Cámara de Comercio Santo Domingo (CCSD)
• Alex Yaguana, Engineer, Independent Environmental Activist

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