04/05/2015
Chile's Council for Transparency, with the support of EUROsociAL, launches the “Ideas.Info: Tus ideas en Transparencia” platform to promote citizen participation in information access policies.
Citizen participation is a key element in modern public management, as it makes it possible to actively link people to the design and preparation of public decisions. It also opens up spaces and mechanisms for coordination between public bodies and diverse social stakeholders, promoting a culture of shared responsibility and mutual commitment.
As a way of promoting and orienting citizen participation actions, the Council for Transparency developed a technological tool called “Ideas.Info: Tus ideas en Transparencia”.
“Ideas.Info” is an online platform that allows people to send their best ideas, proposals and suggestions for improving Transparency and the Right of Access to Information.
This website, which had its debut a few days ago, already contains several ideas proposed by citizens. For example, there are some that refer to “Transparent Political Parties”, “Transparency in Political Campaign Financing”, and one that proposes “That transparency be extended to private industry in the area of energy and mining”, among others.
The innovative part of this repository for ideas is that people can present their proposals as “candidates” and promote them on social networks. The ideas that attract one thousand supporters in a period of three months will be taken up by the Council for Transparency, which will issue a statement on the issue.
“Ideas.Info” is, to synthesise, a sort of thermometer that can indicate where issues that are important to citizens lie, and which integrity and transparency standards authorities are being held to, thus promoting citizen control.
To develop this platform, and thanks to the support of the European Commission’s project, EUROsociAL has disseminated different successful experiences implemented in the European Union, such as the British Parliament’s HM Government e-Petition, the European Parliament’s Committee on Petitions, and the petitions platform of the German Parliament (Petitionsausschusses). These exchange visits took place within the framework of the transparency and anti-corruption action being coordinated by the FIIAPP with the CEDDET Foundation as its operational partner.
