Participatory Evaluation of Neighborhood Interventions (ARCRR0009)

Commitment ID

ARCRR0009

Commitment Title

Participatory Evaluation of Neighborhood Interventions

Problem

The absence of a participatory evaluation tool limits the capacity of both the State and citizens to assess the actual impact of neighborhood interventions. Without mechanisms that incorporate community perspectives and allow for the review of medium and long-term effects, opportunities are lost to learn from past actions, improve future policies, and consolidate sustainable transformations in local territories. This shortcoming weakens the feedback loop between public policies and citizens, and restricts the possibility of developing more effective, equitable, and place-based policy actions. In Rosario, there are various tools for evaluating public policies, as well as a process developed in collaboration with What Works Cities and the City Data Alliance of Bloomberg Philanthropies. However, these tools generally do not cover the period following interventions or, when they do, they remain partial and are not commonly used.

Status quo

The neighborhood intervention policies of the Municipality of Rosario are diverse and cross-cutting: Plan de Plazas (Public Squares Program), Erradicación de Microbasurales (Elimination of Informal Dumping Sites), and Operativos Barriales (Integrated Neighborhood Improvement Programs), among others, often articulated with mechanisms such as the Participatory Budget. While they usually incorporate participatory components in their planning and implementation, in most cases, they lack a systematic methodology for subsequent evaluation. Assessment is limited to verifying whether the intervention was properly executed, without extending into a process that would allow for analyzing whether the achieved changes are sustained over time, whether they were embraced by the community, or whether they generated tangible impacts on the neighborhood’s quality of life.

Action

The commitment aims to design and implement Participatory Evaluation methodologies for Neighborhood Interventions, enhancing the capacity and knowledge required to carry out these evaluations correctly, while also promoting a culture of evaluation within the municipality. Participatory Evaluation is a key tool for strengthening public policies, as it proposes that the stakeholders themselves—residents, social organizations, local leaders, technical teams, and policymakers—actively participate in the design, development, and analysis of an intervention’s evaluation. This methodology transforms evaluation into a democratic, inclusive, and formative process. It is not only about measuring results, but about creating a collective space to review past actions, share community knowledge, foster collective learning and improve future decision-making.

How will the commitment contribute to solving the public problem described above?

Given that the commitment aims to design and implement Participatory Evaluation methodologies for Neighborhood Interventions, enhancing the capacity and knowledge required to carry out these evaluations correctly, we expect it to allow us to develop the necessary methodologies and begin addressing the existing gap in evaluation policies. We are not referring to evaluations conducted at the completion of a project or intervention, but rather to those that accompany the process of citizen appropriation of the space, tracking its impact on the territory and its physical state. This initiative seeks to increase the capacity and knowledge required to conduct these evaluations effectively, while continuing to promote a culture of evaluation within the Municipality of Rosario.

What long-term goal as identified in your Open Government Strategy does this commitment relate to?

In the long term, and through collaboration with other organizations such as What Works Cities and the City Data Alliance of Bloomberg Philanthropies, we pursue the goal of contributing to a culture of evaluation within the municipality through various mechanisms and methodologies.

Primary Policy Area

Civic Space, Regulatory Governance, Other/NA

Primary Sector

Land & Spatial Planning, Policing & Corrections

What OGP value is this commitment relevant to?