El Salvador Mid-Term Report 2016-2018

On its third action plan, El Salvador expanded participation from CSOs during the consultation process. Commitments had limited progress during the first year of implementation. Lack of ambition and diversification of themes continue to be challenges.

Highlights

* Commitment is evaluated by the IRM as specific, relevant, and has a transformative potential impact
✪ Commitment is evaluated by the IRM as being specific, relevant, potentially transformative, and substantially or fully implemented

Process

The Open Government Observatory (OGA in Spanish) led the co-creation and implementation process, which included an online and a territorial consultation. Ministries and agencies took part in the process, but it is still necessary to include the Legislative and Judiciary branches of government.

Performance

Commitments saw limited progress during the first year of implementation. Two commitments were withdrawn due to lack of support from authorities and issues in coordination. While all commitments are relevant to OGP values, they lack the ambition of previous action plans.

IRM Recommendations

1. Institutionalize El Salvador’s participation in the Open Government Partnership through mechanisms that guarantee the strengthening and sustainability of the Open Government Observatory as a multi-sectorial dialogue space with participation of public institutions committed to the Partnership’s consolidation.
2. Include participation by public institutions part of thematic councils –CONASAV, CONED and CNSSC – to establish commitments for the next action plan that complement initiatives developed by this councils or increase their impact.
3. Conduct early consultation processes with private sector stakeholders or CSOs that participate in innovating commitments, ensuring responsibility for fulfilling commitments and designing consensual proposals that allow for a results-oriented action plan.
4. Continue the territorial consultation process to design the new action plan, strengthening the scope of the announcement and establishing consensual guidelines for participation that ensure effective participation by minority groups.
5. Include local government and community leaders in commitments that require a high territorial component, especially those that seek to install platforms or web systems that are hard to access by communities with low information technology and communication penetration.