Costa Rica Design Report 2019-2021

Plan after plan, Costa Rica continues to improve its co-creation processes. This time participation improved in terms of quantity and quality, as it engaged more organizations and achieved greater ownership from them throughout the process. The funds allocated to execute 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... made a difference, especially in terms of the information that was available at every one of its stages. The thematic areas included in the plan are relevant to the national context,  but increasing the 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... 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 in the development of the commitments remains a challenge.

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. Costa Rica joined OGP in 2012. Since, Costa Rica has implemented three action plans. This report evaluates the design of Costa Rica’s fourth action plan.

General overview of action plan

The new action plan included eight commitments that address issues relevant to a large portion of the national population, such as safety, unemployment, economic downturn and environmental degradation. However, the proposed initiatives lack ambition and its potential impact to make significant progress in addressing the identified issues is low.

The plan is considered an Open State plan, since, in addition to the Executive Branch, it engaged the JudiciaryWhile a majority of open government reforms occur within the executive branch, OGP members are increasingly taking on commitments to increase the openness of the judicial branch. Technical specificati...; later on, the Legislature would be included. The plan was developed through the most participatory process ever undertaken. The process included two in-person workshops, with participation from 139 participants; a launch event; and workshops hosted outside the metropolitan area, with participation from 93 attendants. In addition, the process included an online component, whereby dozens of proposals and comments were received.

The process was adequately documented and information was shared promptly. At every stage, input gathered by the public was systematized and published in the national open government portal.

The National Open Government Commission (CNGA in Spanish) led the co-creation process, with support from a technical team, which consisted of civil society organization ACCESSA and the open government team. ACCESA received a grant from the World Bank and the Open Government Partnership to execute the process, which brought about significant improvements. The deliverables proposed to receive the funds included reports about resource execution and lessons learned throughout every stage of the co-creation process, which helped improve the documentation of this open government cycle.

It remains a challenge to ensure that commitments respond to the level of ambition expected and proposals conveyed by the civil society. In the opinion of civil society organizations, the 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... drafting process was largely led by implementing and government agencies. Thus, in many cases, commitments do not adequately reflect the proposals put forward by the public during the co-creation process.

Table 2: Noteworthy commitments

Recommendations

The IRM recommendations aim to inform the development of the next action plan and guide implementation of the current action plan. Please refer to Section V: General Recommendations for more details on each of the below recommendations.

Table 3. Five KEY IRM Recommendations