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Madrid, Spain · Spain

Inception Report – Action plan – Madrid, Spain, 2022 – 2023

Overview

Name of Evaluator

Álex González Ruiz and Anabel Suso Araico

Email

alex.gonzalez@red2red.net

Member Name

Madrid, Spain

Action Plan Title

Action plan – Madrid, Spain, 2022 – 2023

Section 1.
Compliance with
co-creation requirements

1.1 Does a forum exist?

Yes

Provide a brief explanation of your answer:

There are actually three discussion forums in which the Third Open Government Plan was debated: City Social Council (CSC), responsible for reporting, studying and proposing in matters of municipal strategic planning, local economic development and major urban projects; Sectoral Council of Associations and other Citizen Entities (CSAYOEC), which advises the City Council on its competencies in the area of associations; and Sectoral Council for the Elderly (CSPM), dedicated to consulting and advising municipal organisations related to promoting the welfare and improving the quality of life of the elderly in the City.

Provide evidence for your answer:

Provide references here (e.g. interviews):

1.2 Is the forum multi-stakeholder?

Yes

Provide a brief explanation of your answer:

CSC brings together representatives of the City Council, a multitude of social agents (trade unions, employers, universities, neighborhood associations, etc.), and experts in various fields (economy, urbanism, social services, etc.).
CSAYOEC is made up of representatives of the municipal corporation, other administrations and institutions, political and municipal groups and grassroots associations, federations, confederations, and unions of associations, among other groups.
CSPM is made up of representatives of associations, federations, confederations, and unions of associations, registered in the register of citizens’ organizations and declared to be of public utility, municipal, institutions linked to the council’s own sector of activity; councils, boards or forums for participation, Boards of Directors of the municipal Centres for the Elderly and areas of Madrid City Council competent in matters that directly or indirectly affect policies for the elderly.

Provide evidence for your answer:

Provide references here (e.g. interviews):

1.3 Does the forum hold at least one meeting with civil society and non-governmental stakeholders during the co-creation of the action plan?

Yes

Provide a brief explanation of your answer:

CSC Technical Innovation Commission held a total of three meetings (10/06/2021, 03/15/2022, and 05/10/2022) and its Technical Bureau three (11/30/2021, 02/10/2022 and 05/05/2022) to discuss issues related to the Plan.
Three sessions were held in CSAYOEC to address it: one in its Technical Commission for Regulation and Coordination (03/24/2022) and two in its Permanent Commission (03/30/2022 and 06/07/2022).
CSPM met once, on 30th March 2022, supplemented by a questionnaire sent to its members on 4th April.

Provide evidence for your answer:

Provide references here (e.g. interviews):

1.4 Has the action plan been endorsed by the stakeholders of the forum or steering committee/group?

Yes

Provide a brief explanation of your answer:

The Third Plan was approved in CSC, specifically at the meetings of the Technical Bureau on 5th May 2022 and the Technical Innovation Commission on 10th May 2022. In the case of CSAYOEC, it was submitted for approval at the meeting of 7th June 2022, receiving a favorable outcome with no objections. The remaining discussion forum (CSPM) played a consultative role in the process, specifically in relation to the content of one of the commitments.

Provide evidence for your answer:

Provide references here (e.g. interviews):

Third Open Government Plan of the Madrid City Council (2022-2023), pp. 23-25.

Section 2.
Recommended practices
in co-creation

2.1 Does the government maintain a Local OGP website or webpage on a government website where information on the OGP Local process (co-creation and implementation) is proactively published?

Yes

Provide a brief explanation of your answer:

“Decide Madrid” is the City Council’s online platform that seeks to promote and facilitate the direct and individual participation of citizens in municipal affairs, through the drafting of proposals, discussion threads generation, and the evaluation and support of other people’s proposals, among other participatory processes. The flow of information between 2022 and 2023 has generally been weekly, both in terms of public consultations and in the areas of proposals and citizen debate.
“Decide Madrid” includes information on the process of elaboration of the Third Open Government Plan (consultation, approved plan, and follow-up reports).
In addition, Madrid City Council has articulated an additional space to raise awareness of this local OGP process through the community of practice The Participatory Group.

Provide references here (e.g. interviews):

2.2 Did the government provide information to stakeholders in advance to facilitate informed and prepared participation in the co-creation process?

Yes

Provide a brief explanation of your answer:

It can be seen in the minutes of the different meetings of the forums that the Department of Citizen Participation had both sent documentation in advance for the treatment of its content during the sessions mentioned in Section 1.3 and made a presentation of it by General Manager during the course of the sessions. In the process of reformulating some of the parts of the Third Plan, the same procedure was followed, except in CSPM, which dealt with the issue in its sessions in a single meeting in March 2022, prior to the first approval of the Plan and its subsequent reformulation.
On the other hand, the Decree calling for citizen consultation via “Decide Madrid” was published 5 days before the meeting. The form was open from 28 March to 11 April 2022, with a 2,022 participants. The participation report would be sent and presented to CSC and CSAYOEC in advance of their respective meetings in May and June. It was also published in “Decide Madrid” in April of the same year.

Provide evidence for your answer:

Provide references here (e.g. interviews):

2.3 Did the government ensure that any interested member of the public could make inputs into the action plan and observe or have access to decision-making documentation?

Yes

Provide a brief explanation of your answer:

In those sessions of the discussion forums where information on the Third Plan was presented, those attending had the opportunity to make observations and proposals on the content which, up to that point, had been developed by the CSC’s Technical Innovation Commission.
In addition, as previously mentioned, a prior citizen consultation was organized via “Decide Madrid” to the drafting of the Third Open Government Action Plan for the city of Madrid, through which the citizens of Madrid were able to contribute to the general content and part of the more specific content (the five commitments initially proposed, for example) by responding to a questionnaire with 13 questions for debate, 6 of them with open answers. A total of 2,022 people took part.
A similar exercise was carried out with the members of CSPM, who were sent a questionnaire with similar content and focused on the older population.

Provide references here (e.g. interviews):

2.4 Did the government proactively report back or provide written feedback to stakeholders on how their contributions were considered during the creation of the action plan?

Yes

Provide a brief explanation of your answer:

The presentations by the Department of Citizen Participation in the records for CSC and CSAYOEC show that the status and progress of the Plan’s drafting process were systematically communicated. Additionally, the Plan underwent various modifications as a result of debates in different forums, particularly in CSC, which had a greater level of prominence.
The results of the questionnaire sent to participants in the CSPM were reflected in the first version of the Third Open Government Plan (pp. 25-27), which was published in June 2022. Moreover, there were opportunities to address the results at meetings on September 30th and December 16th of the same year.
The Citizen Consultation and the publication of its results in April 2022 and subsequent presentation at meetings of CSC and CSAYOEC, should be understood as another form of feedback on the Plan’s drafting process. This feedback came directly from citizens and was intended to inform the subsequent work of the forums. Similarly, a survey was conducted in January 2022 among 75 young people between the ages of 13 and 31 on the Plan’s central themes, which was analyzed on pages 27-28. There was also a workshop organized with a group of experts in child participation from the Council of the City Council’s child and adolescent care area.
In addition, it is worth highlighting that the Third Plan document integrates this public feedback into its content, including links to minutes, documents, and analysis of the co-creation process as a whole, as well as the surveys conducted.

Provide references here (e.g. interviews):

2.5 Was there an iterative dialogue and shared ownership between government and non-governmental stakeholders during the decision making process, including setting the agenda?

Yes

Provide a brief explanation of your answer:

Although CSPM and CSAYOEC were consulted and had the capacity to make proposals regarding the establishment of priorities for the commitments, CSC was the main forum of debate. An outline of the main lines of action can be seen in the minutes of the constitutive session of the Technical Innovation Commission of October 6th, 2021 – as well as in the meeting of its Technical Committee on November 30th of the same year. These discussions, along with intermediate meetings held on February 10th and March 15th, 2022, as well as a letter sent to members on March 29th, ultimately led to the establishment of commitments for the Plan.
The decree approving the citizens’ consultation was published on March 23rd, and it was transmitted to the CSAYOEC on March 24th and 30th. The CSPM also met in the same month to address one of the commitments. The consultation finally took place between April 28th and May 11th, during which five initial commitments were designed iteratively with the three forums. The role played by the CSC in this process was particularly relevant”.

Provide evidence for your answer:

Provide references here (e.g. interviews):

2.6 Would you consider the forum to be inclusive and diverse?

Very

Provide a brief explanation of your answer:

In order to analyze the degree of inclusiveness and diverse participation, it is useful to consider the three forums as part of a common process. Each forum has a unique composition that reflects the competencies of its members.

  • CSC’s Technical Innovation Commission, which has been responsible for developing and monitoring the Plan, includes representatives from a trade union organization, a business organization, two citizens’ federations, a public university, an official college, several political groups, and municipal organisms.
  • CSAYOEC and its Standing Committee include representatives from a wide range of organizations including cultural, consumer and user, neighborhood, sports, educational, children’s, youth, women’s, human rights, LGTBI, immigrant, health and mutual support, disabled people’s, business, professional and self-employed associations, among others. The forum also includes experts who are not necessarily affiliated with any particular organization.
  • CSPM. It is made up of members from associations and federations of retired and pre-retired people, educational, neighborhood, and health associations, NGOs, foundations, trade unions, and public organs, including Municipal Centers for the Elderly, entities of the Community of Madrid, and the City Council itself.

Overall, the plurality of these forums is a positive feature, as it reflects a commitment to strong community pluralism.

Provide evidence for your answer:

  • Decree of the Councillor Delegate for Territorial Coordination, Transparency and Citizen Participation regarding the sixth phase of the electoral process for the designation of representatives of citizen entities and groups in the Permanent Commission of the Sectorial Council of Associations and other Citizen Entities of the Madrid City Council.

Provide references here (e.g. interviews):

Section 3.
Initial evaluation
of commitments

1. Commitment:

Improvement of the transparency portal and increase of open data visualizations.

1.1 Is the commitment verifiable?

Yes

Provide a brief explanation of your answer:

In general, the activities set out in the action plan are defined and sufficiently detailed to make them measurable, especially given their exploratory nature of reviewing and identifying characteristics and errors in the databases.
It is also important to mention that the commitment to improve transparency and open data portals and promote data visualizations were originally separate commitments but were later merged in October 2022.

Provide evidence for your answer:

1.2 Does the commitment language/activities clearly justify relevance to OGP values?

Yes

Provide a brief explanation of your answer:

This commitment is aimed to facilitate and speed up the access and understanding of information for wider sectors of the population. The aim is to enable wider access to public information for the population without specific knowledge of the matters being published, which is essential to democratizing this access, its use, and the evaluation of the public administration’s activity. This intensification of transparency makes it possible, in turn, to improve the opportunities and tools for citizens to participate in public affairs. In addition, and more specifically in the Action Plan itself, the usefulness of the measure – and of transparency in general – is highlighted “as a brake on improper attitudes or conduct by public officials and significantly hinders the phenomenon of corruption” (p. 39).

Provide evidence for your answer:

1.3 Please select one option that best describes the commitment:

a new regulation, policy, practice, or requirement.

Provide a brief explanation of your answer:

The action plan itself diagnoses that the City Council’s open data portal is, until now, only accessible to people with a high level of technical knowledge or professionals in sectors dedicated to the processing of this type of data. Thus, a new form of presentation of the information for the population without technical knowledge is proposed, which will coexist with the publication of the information in the formats required by law and which are normally used by professionals in the information sector.
Overall, the commitment contains a medium to long-term objective that these improvements will enable the incorporation of technical requirements for the publication of public information and open data in such a way as to contribute to the construction of a “System of Public Integrity” (p. 39).
This is therefore a novel practice in the constitution of this portal, which interrupts or broadens its focus, hitherto limited to a very specific population sector and going beyond the regulatory requirements.

Provide evidence for your answer:

1.4 Please select one option that best describes the commitment:

is a positive change to a process, practice, or policy but will not generate a binding or institutionalized change across government or specific institution(s).

Provide a brief explanation of your answer:

As this is a concrete practice aimed at only one of the functions of a specific public policy area (Transparency and Quality Department), and despite its innovative nature, it cannot be identified as a commitment that will necessarily lead to binding or institutionalized transformations throughout the government or the entire area concerned.

Provide evidence for your answer:

1.5 Are there any recommended changes to the design of the commitment to help improve its implementation?

The design could consider broadening this accessibility further by defining in more detail the sectors or population groups for which the initiative is designed. Does the commitment want to target only the average population without specific training in data processing? Is it attractive, for example, to young people?

2. Commitment:

Community Actions for a Healthy City Strategy.

2.1 Is the commitment verifiable?

Yes

Provide a brief explanation of your answer:

The three activities of the commitment are set out in relation, firstly, to the specific objectives they address and, secondly, to the course of actions they comprise. The degree of concreteness of each activity differs. First, there is no indication of which actors have to build the Working Group, what exactly the program to be implemented is, what these communicative actions consist of, or to whom they are directed. In this way, the relationship between these activities and the objectives they pursue is blurred in the action plan, which is insufficient to contextualize the meaning of the activities.
The second and third activities, however, detail the target actors and groups and those who are key to their implementation, establishing some of the fundamental elements of the strategies to be developed: a network of alliances and coordination protocols, strengthening the role of preventive actors and awareness-raising actions focused on groups at special risk.

Provide evidence for your answer:

2.2 Does the commitment language/activities clearly justify relevance to OGP values?

Yes

Provide a brief explanation of your answer:

Although the presentation of the first activity makes it difficult to make a clear diagnosis, it can be affirmed that, in general terms, the relationship of the activities with OGP values is justified, since they are based on the promotion of the participation of the different agents directly and indirectly involved in the problems they are trying to solve. Moreover, all of them try to initiate the assent of different networks, alliances, and/or community dynamics focused on forms of direct citizen participation which can be integrated into the daily activity of these agents, be they public or private entities, the educational community, different social services, families or neighborhoods.

Provide evidence for your answer:

2.3 Please select one option that best describes the commitment:

a continuation of ongoing practice in line with existing legislation, policies or requirements.

Provide a brief explanation of your answer:

The first activity is related to the Prevention of Complicated and/or Pathological Grief Program, which integrates the measures of the Madrid, a Healthy City Strategy 2021-2024. Likewise, the Compassionate Communities project for the prevention of complicated grief was launched as a pilot project in certain neighborhoods of Madrid within the framework of the Madrid City of Care Plan 2017-2021.
The second activity corresponds to the measure (already started by November 2021) Strengthening suicide prevention strategies in at-risk populations of Madrid, a healthy city strategy. This is the least consolidated and developed line of action so far of the three.
The third activity proposed would be an extension of the Food, Physical Activity and Health Program 2020-2023 and, more specifically, of its Project for the Prevention and Tackling of Childhood Obesity, which has two pilot experiences in two community health centers: one in Vallecas and the other in Carabanchel. On this occasion, the plan expands on these experiences by extending the pilot to 11 educational centers, instead of CMSc, working on another of the Project’s aspects.

Provide evidence for your answer:

2.4 Please select one option that best describes the commitment:

is a positive change to a process, practice or policy but will not generate a binding or institutionalized change across government or specific institution(s).

Provide a brief explanation of your answer:

The strategies that seem to frame the sense of these activities also emphasize coordination and even multi-stakeholder co-creation. However, it is limited to governmental actors (local and regional) in order to optimize the set of public services offered. Although some of them also point to the participation of non-governmental stakeholders, their definition and implementation so far do not seem to have gone beyond the realm of community health centers or the occasional pilot project. This commitment, on the other hand, and especially the 2nd and 3rd activities, detail the non-governmental actors whose participation is central to the deployment of the proposed measures. Without denying their potential as a reference for transforming Madrid Salud’s policies, these activities are limited to the treatment of three specific problems and areas, so it is not yet possible to determine the impact they will have on the institution.

Provide evidence for your answer:

2.5 Are there any recommended changes to the design of the commitment to help improve its implementation?

The main change to be noted would concern the approach to the first activity. As noted above, it lacks sufficient definition and requires greater clarity on the internal relationship between objectives and specific actions. The description in the action plan does not indicate which actors have to build the Working Group, what program has to be implemented, nor what these communicative actions consist of or to whom they are directed.

3. Commitment:

To improve the Decide Madrid platform, in order to encourage citizen participation in decision-making on city matters

3.1 Is the commitment verifiable?

Yes

Provide a brief explanation of your answer:

The commitment is crossed by 4 activities clearly related to its objectives and detailed by means of several concrete actions. This explicitness of the variables makes their level of implementation fully measurable.

Provide evidence for your answer:

3.2 Does the commitment language/activities clearly justify relevance to OGP values?

Yes

Provide a brief explanation of your answer:

In a similar vein to the first two commitments, this one seeks to increase the accessibility of a web portal for citizens as a whole. In this case, the purpose of the commitment acquires greater significance if we consider that it revolves around the improvement of “Decide Madrid”, the main current tool for direct and individual citizen participation in municipal affairs, through the initiation and development of threads of the debate, assessment, implementation, and support of proposals, etc. In this way, the fulfillment of the commitment would predictably lead to an incentive and improvement of participation in public management, an increase in the democratic quality of the municipality, and a greater awareness of civil society and public employees about the benefits of collaborative design of public policies.

Provide evidence for your answer:

3.3 Please select one option that best describes the commitment:

a continuation of ongoing practice in line with existing legislation, policies or requirements.

Provide a brief explanation of your answer:

The action plan itself states that the platform is “immersed in a process of continuous improvement, requiring a continuous process of review and innovation”. If we also take into account the vocation of “Decide Madrid” since its emergence in 2015, the objective of improving the commitment based on increasing the accessibility and usability of the platform is fully aligned with its principles and operating requirements, as well as with the content of the Transparency Ordinance of the City of Madrid of 27 July 2016.

Provide evidence for your answer:

3.4 Please select one option that best describes the commitment:

is a positive change to a process, practice or policy but will not generate a binding or institutionalized change across government or specific institution(s).

Provide a brief explanation of your answer:

Although it is a “logical” development of the platform’s development and updating practices already in place, the commitment brings new actions that can be described as innovative. In particular, the use of Machine Learning systems and the creation of a new space for social innovation. The first activity would provide public employees and citizens in general with an opportunity to appreciate and process in a systematized way the content created by the platform’s users up to now, which is “raw”, making a minimally detailed analysis of this amount of information extremely complex.
The second activity, on the other hand, would give rise to the functionality of “Decide Madrid” that goes beyond the individual capacity for proposal, decision-making, and debate, i.e., the possibility of setting up multi-stakeholder alliances from the portal itself around ideas for experimentation. Particularly noteworthy in this aspect is the direct involvement of the CSC and its Innovation Committee in the first pilot, as well as the use of related information from the survey on the quality of services, the City Council’s suggestions and complaints tool, and the proposals received through “Decide Madrid”.

Provide evidence for your answer:

3.5 Are there any recommended changes to the design of the commitment to help improve its implementation?

No, there are not.

4. Commitment:

To broaden the spectrum of participation by developing specific programs aimed at those sectors of the population with less participation such as the elderly, children and young people, and other vulnerable groups.

4.1 Is the commitment verifiable?

Yes

Provide a brief explanation of your answer:

As in Commitments 1 and 2, in general, the activities included in the action plan are defined and contain sufficient detail to make them measurable, especially given their initial exploratory nature of analysis and identification of possible actions for the problem they seek to address, which is well defined. The feature of this initial action in both activities makes it difficult for the remaining ones to reach a greater degree of concreteness, being coherent as actions resulting from this initial exploratory and co-design work and being verifiable.

Provide evidence for your answer:

4.2 Does the commitment language/activities clearly justify relevance to OGP values?

Yes

Provide a brief explanation of your answer:

The pursuit to increase participation among both young and old people is aimed at broadening the target audience of one of the City Council’s flagship Open Government policies, “Madrid Decide”. The commitment seeks to incorporate the perspective of groups hitherto partially relegated from the use of this tool -either for reasons of technical knowledge or age regulations-, which offers an opportunity to democratize public management and raise citizens’ awareness of the values of OGP. The latter is particularly relevant among youth and children, preparing them “for adult life”. Overall, this commitment contributes to shaping a more active, supportive, and committed citizens with democratic values and public affairs concerns.

Provide evidence for your answer:

4.3 Please select one option that best describes the commitment:

a new regulation, policy, practice or requirement.

Provide a brief explanation of your answer:

The nature of the commitment is mixed. On the one hand, we can consider the participation programs aimed at older people as a continuation of both the continuous improvement processes of the web platform and the “Madrid, a friendly city for older people Plan” (actions 26.1 and 26.2).
On the other hand, the implementation of participation programs aimed at children and young people had not been integrated into any plan or strategy until now: the participation of this sector of the population in “Decide Madrid”. Beyond this novelty, the implementation of this initiative would entail the partial modification of the platform’s Conditions of Use, which restrict participation to people over the age of 16, also representing a pioneering challenge both in terms of citizen participation in itself and at a regulatory level, given the special importance of protecting the rights of minors.

Provide evidence for your answer:

4.4 Please select one option that best describes the commitment:

is a positive change to a process, practice or policy but will not generate a binding or institutionalized change across government or specific institution(s).

Provide a brief explanation of your answer:

As noted above, it seems that the change proposed by the pledge is mostly limited to the programming of children and youth participation in “Decide Madrid”. Now, it must be considered that this measure is limited to a modification of the terms and means of youth participation in only one of the municipality’s Open Government tools, so its impact is still limited in the rest of the practices of its government or institutions, although it can serve as a reference experience for even more ambitious transformations.

Provide evidence for your answer:

4.5 Are there any recommended changes to the design of the commitment to help improve its implementation?

No, there are not.

Filed under: Europe Inception Report Local Official OGP Documents OGP Community OGP Member Information Report

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